She won ‘AGT’ at just 12 — but turns out, the childhood fame came with a hefty price: 'Don't trust...'
Child artist Grace VanderWaal was merely 12 years old when she won season 11 of 'America's Got Talent' in 2016. The 21-year-old recently reflected on her early rise to fame and confessed that the NBC talent show put her life under a microscope. "I honestly felt like it helped me as a person because it threw me into scrutiny," she told TikToker David Carmi during an impromptu appearance on his 'Confidence Heist' videos while being spotted in New York. "And it forced me to sink or swim," she added.
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“Having somewhere to go makes you look confident because you’re just in a rush,” she replied to his initial query about being a positive individual. In response to a question about how to become more self-assured, she said, "Just accept who you are… ew, that's so corny but it's true," adding that people should concentrate on their "strengths." Additionally, VanderWaal said that she would counsel her younger self to exercise greater caution if she could go back in time, “Don’t trust anyone,” she said. On June 7, 2016, the South Carolina native auditioned for 'AGT' and performed an original track - 'I Don't Know My Name'. She advanced directly to the live quarterfinal round after judge Howie Mandel awarded her performance with the golden buzzer.
Simon Cowell was so impressed with the child prodigy that he dubbed her the next Taylor Swift. However, during an exclusive with E! News, VanderWaal recalled the experience as mentally traumatizing. "Looking back, I have faced the mental repercussions of that growing up," she told. "I keep learning about how to take care of myself better, and my biggest thing recently is just acknowledging your triggers." In a recent interview with Teen Vogue while promoting her latest album 'Childstar', VanderWaal became nostalgic, recounting her early brush with fame.
She claimed to feel bad about not enjoying the process and constantly being in a state of anxiety. "This feeling of being unhappy while good things were happening to me. Guilty is a good word. I felt guilty for feeling bad about those things. There's a liberation from telling a secret," she said. "I felt isolated and was also just a weird kid. I've always felt really alone with my childhood, even as a child," she added. With her new release, VanderWaal wishes to break free from her 'AGT' childlike innocence once and for all. “I feel like some people would take what I'm doing as tarnishing my legacy, but I feel the exact opposite. I feel like I'm finally putting a cap on it,” she told Nylon.
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While explaining the theme of her latest album, VanderWaal explained that "it’s about being a golden child and having to be super mature and strong.” It comes with nine biographical tracks that deal with 'fame', 'a child craving validation', and the 'birth and death of an iconic image'. VanderWaal stated that it was difficult to process her childhood memories and pen them into inspirational soundtracks. "The concept of the album is hard for some people to grasp, especially getting into girlhood and womanhood," she concluded.