Happy Monday, readers!
Meet our new Music Monday artist this week, Christian Collins.
You may recognize Christian Collins from his WeeklyChris YouTube videos. This social media influencer began posting online videos in 2010, showing off his teen life and delivering inspiring and encouraging messages through his humorous and lighthearted videos. Now, Christian is embarking on another exciting journey — releasing his first EP.
The 19-year-old grew up in a musical family, so for him, music was always in his life. However, he waited until only a few years ago to share his talent online with his 15 million viewers. He’s done covers of “Chains” by Nick Jonas, “See You Again” by Charlie Puth and “Like I’m Going to Lose You” by Megan Trainor.
Christian released his first single “You Don’t Have To Go” in December of 2015 and he’s slated to release his debut EP of seven original songs this year. He has identified his own unique sound and style that reflects who he is and he’s excited to share his music across all of his content.
CelebSecrets4U spoke with Christian about his debut EP and what we can expect from the songs and when we can expect it to be released. We also talked about his favorite social media platform, his crazy insomnia and his weird snack obsession (his words, not ours). Plus, he revealed a secret that he’s pretty sure not many people know about from his public life, so make sure to read our Q&A with Christian below!
Check out the official lyric video to Christian’s first single, “You Don’t Have To Go.”
CS4U: You’re working on your debut EP right now, so can you tell us a little bit about the songs?
Christian Collins: “Definitely. Yeah I’ve been working on it for the last year or so putting everything in it. Pretty much in the studio every day, but a lot of it is just me expressing my conscience or things on my mind. Just playing with different sounds on the production side. I don’t know. I think they’re going to enjoy it. I’m putting everything I have into it.”
CS4U: Do you have a timeline of when it’s going to be released?
Christian Collins: “I don’t want to rush it. We’ve been changing different things. The goal would be in the next few months or so. I don’t want to delay it any longer than that, but I also don’t want to rush it.”
CS4U: What has been the most challenging part of getting this EP ready?
Christian Collins: “I think the most challenging part would be that I’m a crazy perfectionist. I’ll constantly go back and think ah this sound I can make it better or my voice will improve over time so I can do that part better or change this or that or like looking back you’ll have one song you think is amazing and then a month later you’re like I don’t know I could do it better. That kind of perfectionist thing.”
CS4U: What made you decide to make the jump from digital to music and what did you learn from doing the YouTube videos that you’re taking into your music?
Christian Collins: “I grew up kind of doing music. I have a very musical family so music was always kind of a part of my life. I didn’t really share a lot of it until the last couple of years on social media, but it’s been cool to kind of get a really cool response from viewers and listeners. I think one thing that I learned from the social media family is that I can’t, in creating content is not to compare yourself to other people when looking at what other people are doing all the time or what other people create and stuff. You kind of have to just focus and create. Just do it . Do what you love doing. Naturally out of that, you end up create your own unique thing and focusing on improving yourself and improving your content.”
CS4U: What can fans expect from your future WeeklyChris episodes?
Christian Collins: “Recently it’s been a little bit crazy because I manage all of the social medias and then I’ve been really focusing on the music right now. I’ve got a lot of ideas coming out for some different shows. I want to kind of start doing some different projects I’ve been working for the YouTube channel, get it back to a kind of weekly thing. A lot of content will be coming out really soon. I’ve been working on a lot of it.”
CS4U: Besides YouTube, what is your favorite social media platform to use to connect with your fans?
Christian Collins: “Well I love them all to be honest with you. I think Snapchat is a really good one. I like that I can just film throughout my day random pieces and put it up. Musical.ly is a good one. They’re all awesome, but I think I’ll go with Snapchat.”
CS4U: You seem to be awake all of the time. How do you manage to stay awake at all hours and still have the energy to get everything done?
Christian Collins: “I have crazy insomnia so I gotta — I should probably fix that, but I’m like a workaholic in the sense that I feel like if you’re doing what you love, you just don’t stop. I’ll start a song at — I’ll like get up early to go running or start my day and start getting stuff done and then I’ll start in the studio later at night like 8pm, and once you start working on something, you don’t want to stop and so I’ll go until like 6 in the morning. There are too many things I want to do in the day. It’s hard to kind of sit down and sleep, but I should probably get better at that.”
CS4U: You’re always talking about how much you love snacking, so what’s your go-to snack?
Christian Collins: “I have a lot of crazy snacks that a lot of people probably wouldn’t. I’m like known for my weird — I’m like a really healthy eater actually and I have like a lot of weird snacks. I have a snack cabinet in my room where you can find a lot of crazy, crazy snacks.”
CS4U: Since we are CelebSecrets4U, can you tell us something about yourself that your fans may not know?
Christian Collins: “Some people know me better than I know myself (laughs). I’m trying to think of something with my life being pretty publicly out there, but I think a lot of people probably don’t know that, when I was younger, I trained with the Olympic athletes for gymnastics and tumbling. I was around 7, 8, 9 years old. I guess a lot of people don’t know that.”