Grant Perez on Music, Memory, and Making Peace With the Internet

How grentperez turned bedroom covers into a global sound

In the summer of 2019, a young boy in western Sydney pointed a camera at himself, strummed his guitar, and sang a cover he had just learned by ear. He didn’t call it art, or a debut, or anything close to that. The video description was blunt and unserious: “best fart.” And yet, unknowingly, Grant Perez had begun the slow, steady work of becoming grentperez.

Today, at 23, the Filipino-Australian artist stands at a different threshold. His songs have crossed oceans, his tours sell out within hours, and his debut full-length album Backflips In A Restaurant has been described as a cinematic coming-of-age told through chords and revelations. It is a record that feels both nostalgic and new, with one foot in the karaoke warmth of his childhood and the other planted in the restless present tense of modern pop.

A sound between generations

It’s tempting to call him an “old soul,” but that doesn’t quite capture the specificity of his sound. grentperez’s music feels less like a throwback and more like a translation, a 70s melody filtered through a 2020s sensibility, or what happens when you grow up with Bread and The Carpenters playing in the background while the algorithm steers you toward Rex Orange County and Daniel Caesar. “Those old melodies could never leave me,” he says.

A decade ago, Grant’s world was a suburban bedroom and a laptop. Now, it’s stages in New York, London, and Tokyo. Yet the core of his work hasn’t changed much. His songs remain small-scale in their intimacy, written from the same instinct that once drove him to record covers as a teen: to translate feeling into sound and make something fleeting last a little longer.

There’s an honesty in the way he talks about those early days, not as an era he has outgrown but as something he still carries. “I do miss them,” he admits. “There was a certain blissfulness in the air that’s now shifted.” What began as random, lighthearted uploads has turned into a career that demands consistency: year-long release campaigns, meticulously planned tours, and the exhaustion of being both artist and brand. Yet Grant approaches it with a soft defiance. He isn’t chasing virality so much as he is trying to stay visible to himself.

Learning through mistakes

His approach to creation is that of someone unlearning perfection in favor of possibility. “I’ve learnt to really go on and make mistakes,” he says. “Playing around with different things and building a library of sounds that suit your taste, which ultimately become a representation of you.” His willingness to experiment, which he calls “testing limits,” has taken him through unlikely detours. “I’ve definitely made a few dance demos,” he laughs. “They’re honestly still really cool, in my head. But would I release them? No.”

What makes Grant’s music so affecting is the interplay between the sincere and the unserious. His live shows feel like proof of that duality, a mix of joy and introspection, as though the audience has been invited to an inside joke and a confessional at the same time. “I just think that performing is fun,” he says.

That spirit of improvisation, of allowing his art to grow in public, is what sets him apart in an age that demands polish. Perez has famously left all his old YouTube videos online, even the ones he now finds cringeworthy. “It’s just cool to see how far someone’s come,” he says. “How their brains have shifted over the years and how the world has shaped them.” It is a small but radical act of transparency, a reminder that an artist’s evolution does not need to be curated into disappearance.

The art of everyday creation

Offline, that same ethos carries into the way he builds his world. His cars, his doodle-filled luggage, and even his wardrobe are extensions of his creative instinct. “At first thought, I’d consider them hobbies,” he says. “But in reality, I guess they’re just a physical representation of how my mind works. How I love decoration, how I love to create perfectly imperfect things. Perhaps it’s the same with my music.”

Still, Grant’s relationship with the digital world, the one that built him, is complicated. He grew up in the YouTube boom but now faces the hyper-speed culture of TikTok. “Short form is a plague,” he says plainly. “I consume too much of it. I think the whole world does. But alas, we crave dopamine.” Yet unlike many artists who feel trapped by algorithmic pressure, Grant finds joy in content creation. He edits his own videos and plays with form. “Any excuse to edit something is fine by me,” he shrugs, as if to say that this, too, is art.

If Tyler, The Creator represents one end of the artistic spectrum, the side of radical authenticity, then grentperez has taken that lesson and turned it inward. “So far, not yet,” he says when asked if being himself has ever come at a cost. “But I think it’s a good problem to have.”

The power of continuity

In conversation, Grant often circles back to one theme: learning. He calls this current stage of his career his “learning phase,” and he says it with pride. There is no illusion of mastery, only a deep curiosity about what might come next. He talks about genres the way he talks about people, each with its own personality and rhythm to be understood. He even jokes about making a country song someday. “I’d work with George Strait,” he says, half serious and half amused. “Wouldn’t change a thing baby. Country all the way.”

What unites all these pieces, the music, the cars, the doodles, and the jokes, is a sense of gratitude for motion itself. Grant doesn’t seem interested in finality. He is more fascinated by the in-between, by the moments of fumbling, of trying, of changing one’s mind. When asked what his future self might thank him for, he answers without hesitation:

And maybe that’s the truest measure of grentperez’s success, not the gold records or the sold-out shows, but the way he has managed to turn growth into something gentle. He has chosen continuity in an industry that rewards reinvention. The kid with the webcam is still there, just older now, a little more sure of the light he is standing in.

Photography Arvin Prem Kumar

Fashion Yuzhen Wang

Grooming Jessica Yang

Hair Eric Marom

Production Ben Yeoh (Avenue Creative Talent) and Jessica Seinor

Production design Arvin Prem Kumar and Yuzhen Wang

Photography assistants Brendan Manning and Anna Pihan

Fashion and Production design assistant Jade