YouTube sensation Chris Collins puts his viral vlogs aside to pursue his passion in music with the release of first official Vevo release, “Aint Ready.” Starting at the age of 12, Chris was able to jump into the YouTube scene during its early stages and continued to grow with the platform, building a dedicated community of over 2.2 million subscribers. Now, after building an empire of over 15 million followers across all of his social media, Chris Collins has chosen to pivot his focus onto his music career. We had the opportunity to have a one-on-one interview with Chris to learn more about his transition into the music industry and while gaining further insight into the making of “Ain’t Ready”.
While his claim to fame is vlogging, Chris is no stranger to music. “I grew up in a musical family so music was always a part of my life,” Chris stated. On his personal YouTube channel, WeeklyChris, Collins previewed some of his musical talents by posting several covers and original songs. However, music wasn’t the main purpose of this channel: “music videos were here and there between my YouTube show and other stuff I was doing, but most of it was side projects, something fun I would do once in awhile.” Although he was gaining a lot of attention for his vlogs, his passion for music continued to develop. “I kinda fell in love with music,” Chris explained, “so last two years have been heavily focused on music and diving fully in on music being the main content.”
In pursuit of his passion, Chris explained to his followers that he was officially taking a break from vlogging. Using Vydia to create his own Vevo channel separate from WeeklyChris, Collins establishes himself as an artist. “I wanted to make sure that for the viewers that came from my original channel and social media, I could still create regular content for them but I also wanted to create content for the music listeners as well” said Chris ”I thought the best way to do that was to work with Vevo as my main channel for the music content.”
“Ain’t Ready” was a great choice to introduce his new channel and jumpstart his music career. Chris gives us insight on this catchy, emotional ballad that depicts the struggles of a problematic relationship:
The concept behind ‘Ain’t Ready’ was, more so, explaining the story of a difficult relationship. I think it’s a story a lot of people can relate to and I wanted to tell it.
The black and white filter effect adds a simplistic aesthetic to the visuals while contributing to the serious tone of the lyrics. For most of the video, Chris walks alone surrounded by motionless couples, driving home the theme of isolation one might feel from constantly fighting with a significant other. Throughout the video the featured couples would come to life, acting out various stages and interactions of a relationship like the exchange sly glances or heated arguments. Chris commented on these scenes explaining that the “different couples present both the good and the struggles of a relationship and tell more of the dark side.”
When Chris launched his official Vevo channel and published his first video through the Vydia platform, his devoted fans welcomed the new project with the same enthusiasm as the vlogs. They’ve gone as far as to start a Twitter campaign, adopting the #AintReadTo200K pushing for 200,000 views and succeeding with flying colors.
Reflecting on the video’s release, which is now pushing 250K views, Chris had this to say: “Every time you release something, you put your heart into it and you never know what people are going to think of it when you put it up so I definitely appreciate the support.” He’s working hard to keep producing music to follow-up his successful release. “The team is expanding, Randy Jackson just jumped on board and then SwaggaSquad,” Chris continued, “We’re building a team to create some higher end content and really knock out some video productions. I can’t say too much but I think we have the next project picked.”
We’re eagerly waiting for Chris’s next video and upcoming tour. In the meantime, stay up-to-date on Chris Collins news by following him on Twitter at @WeeklyChris and Snapchat with the handle Weekly-Chris.