Lisa Lavie

Lisa Lavie (surname pronounced  lah -) (born May 6, 1983) is a Canadian singer and songwriter originally from LaSalle, Québec, Canada.

Lavie is known for using the Internet to independently promote her own music and concerts. Lavie's vocals have appeared on soundtracks of major motion pictures, and her independently produced debut album Everything or Nothing was released on iTunes in 2008.

Lavie has received national television coverage for her vocals, and for her production of the charity collaboration video "We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition)." She was chosen as a vocalist for Yanni's 2010-2011 tours of South, Central, and North America, his late-2011 tour of Eastern Europe and Asia, and his 2012 tours of Mexico, Canada, the U.S., Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

Childhood and discovery
Lavie won a singing part in a school variety show at age 10. Lavie's older brothers Michael, a hip hop dancer, and Danny, a disk jockey known around Montréal as DJ Devious, were her family musical inspirations. She said she listened devotedly to Mariah Carey.

By age 16 she toured Canada as a backup singer with the French-Canadian hip hop group Dubmatique, performing before thousands. Also at age 16, Lavie recorded a demo CD. Meanwhile, Lavie worked on the fringes of the music industry, including co-owning and managing Harmony Karaoke in Montréal in 2002.

In 2004 her demo CD reached songwriter-producer Ben Margulies, a co-producer of Mariah Carey's first album. Margulies was struck by what he called a "one in a million" voice: "It was like the first time I heard Mariah." Lavie initially thought Margulies' attempts to contact her were friends' hoaxes, playing on her childhood devotion to Carey.

After three months, Margulies and Lavie connected. After Lavie sang her original, "Guys Are All the Same" to Margulies over a cellphone from a Montréal shopping mall, Margulies responded: "I heard something really special in her voice... I said, fly out here right away." Lavie later wrote "I couldn't believe that Mariah Carey's producer had discovered me. From the age of 10 to 17, I don't think I even listened to anybody else. Her voice and melodies captured me." A planned three-day visit to Santa Barbara, California in July, 2004 evolved into a permanent move for the 21 year old Lavie.

Breaking into the business
Early on, producer Ben Margulies expressed his estimation of Lavie's potential: "Lisa has an undeniably brilliant tone and a vocal quality that is beyond my ability to quantify. ... I've worked with a lot of great singers, and she's got that something extra, something special... everything it takes to be a superstar." Lavie developed her songwriting ability, her lyrics said to be based on her own life experiences. Lavie is listed as songwriter/composer on all songs of what was to become her first album, including solo songwriter/composer on three tracks.

Lavie placed songs on the soundtracks of the 2006 motion pictures Stick It starring Jeff Bridges (Lavie's original song "If I Only Knew") and The Guardian starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher (Lavie's version of "Mockingbird").

In August, 2006, Lavie signed as a songwriter/publisher with the performing rights organization Broadcast Music, Incorporated (BMI), formalizing her entry into the profession. She was featured in the "Hitmakers" section of BMI MusicWorld Magazine in spring of 2007. Lavie attended the 56th annual BMI Pop Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on May 20, 2008 in Beverly Hills, California, and attended the 2008 Spirit of Life Award dinner honoring Doug Morris on October 15, 2008 in Santa Monica, California.

Even after the movie soundtrack vocals, a career breakthrough remained elusive, relying on personal contacts and networking in media and record labels. Lavie later characterized praises from industry executives as enthusiastic but non-committal, leading to independent production of a first album.

Creating her own buzz
In March, 2007, Lavie opened an account on the video sharing website YouTube, loosely mirrored by her MySpace page. She said she did not anticipate that her do-it-yourself video performances would advance her career: "I had no idea what to expect when I started uploading videos on YouTube." She initially posted non-studio videos of herself singing her own original songs, including two videos of her singing inside a car. Lavie said she responded personally to so many viewer comments that she said she developed carpal tunnel syndrome requiring the wrist brace visible in her ET Canada interview.

Lavie's responses to viewers backfired on September 11, 2007. YouTube software interpreted her many replies to viewer comments as computer bot-generated spam, and automatically suspended her account. Her YouTube fans initiated an online petition campaign, and Lavie's YouTube account was reinstated two days after suspension.

Weeks after her channel's reinstatement, Lavie's studio performance of her original song "Angel" was featured on YouTube's "front page" and attracted over one million views within days. For days surrounding October 3, 2007—when the "Angel" video achieved its 1,000,000th view—Lavie continued to interact with viewers online. But past were the days in which she could attempt to respond to every viewer comment: the "Angel" video alone had registered 10,000 viewer comments when it crossed the 1,000,000 view threshold.

During the period of the "Angel" feature, Lavie's YouTube channel grew from under 4,000 subscribers (mid-September 2007) to about 8,000 subscribers (October 7, 2007), and, after ensuing television exposure in October and November, to over 11,000 subscribers (early December 2007). Total video views in the same periods grew from 188,000 to 1.79 million to about 3.3 million, respectively. In three and a half months, Lavie's YouTube channel rose from 74th to 34th most subscribed YouTube musician of all time.

Skeptical of the value of YouTube views alone, the Globe and Mail commented that "Angel"'s YouTube views put the video in "not what you'd call exalted company," noting that "an unsuspecting prairie dog whose five-second long glare at the camera became known as the Dramatic Chipmunk clip" had received three million views "in a matter of days." However, after describing "real" world accomplishments of YouTube "stars" Esmee Denters and Ysabella Brave, the Globe and Mail article commented that "Lisa Lavie may have reason to expect big things."

By the time of the Globe and Mail commentary, Entertainment Tonight (ET) Canada had already dubbed Lavie an "Internet singing sensation" and "Internet phenomenon", quoting her new designation, "the next Mariah Carey." The following month, CTV's eTalk featured how "music stars" like Lavie would "get to the top on their own terms." In that televised phone interview, Lavie explained how in today's music business, to earn the confidence of skittish record labels, artists themselves have to create their own buzz.

After this media exposure, Lavie continued to use Internet websites such as YouTube (mainly), but also MySpace, Facebook, BlogTV and Twitter, to propagate that buzz. She continued to work, personally, on her own promotion and communication with existing fans. The YouTube Partner Program, a revenue sharing arrangement allowing creators and producers of original content to earn money from their videos, accepted Lavie. In February 2008, Lavie was one of three YouTube musicians invited to perform at the "YouTube Event" in New York. In March, 2008, Lavie's video performance of her original song "Angel" was among six YouTube Awards finalists among all of that website's music videos. In November 2008, Lavie performed at the San Francisco YouTube Live event.

Continuing without affiliation with a major record label, Lavie performed at the 2008 "SPARKLE Freedom Celebration" Independence Day concert in Santa Barbara, California the Gibson Showcase in Beverly Hills, the "Women Taking Care of the World" concert in St. Petersburg, Florida, and as one of the "YouTube Sensations" featured at an AEM national conference. Lavie also performed for charity events, such as the televised Santa Barbara Christmas Telethon and the Festival du Bonheur (Happiness Festival) in her native province Québec.

By the end of its first year, as of March 2008 Lavie's main YouTube channel acquired about 13,500 subscribers, and total upload views numbered about 3.75 million. By the end of 2008, the first full calendar year after the ET and eTalk features, Lavie's YouTube account had over 35,000 subscribers, her YouTube videos collectively having 12.7 million views, 96,000 viewer comments, and having been "favorited" over 52,000 times; plays of Lavie's MySpace tracks numbered approximately 1.2 million. During calendar year 2009, subscribership grew to over 112,000, views to over 30 million, viewer comments to 186,000, and favorites to over 126,000, while a video was viewed, on average, every 1.8 seconds. By the end of 2010, Lavie's YouTube channel had over 212,000 subscribers, and on January 10, 2011, her channel's total upload views reached 50 million. By the end of 2011, Lavie's YouTube channel had over 263,000 subscribers, and by May 8, 2012 her channel's total upload views had surpassed 70 million.

Debut album -- Everything or Nothing
Four years in the making, Lavie's debut album Everything or Nothing was released on the iTunes music download website on May 13, 2008. Lavie is credited as writing or co-writing all of the lyrics and melodies of Everything or Nothing, including solo songwriter/composer on three tracks.

The album reached as high as #20 on the iTunes pop chart, and #70 on the iTunes overall music chart, at a time when Lavie had no backing or promotion by a large record label but about 20,000 YouTube subscribers.

Four months later, Lavie explained that the album includes a jazz track, a lot of ballads, and some nitty-gritty up-tempo songs. Allmusic's Matthew Chisling wrote that Lavie synthesizes elements of pop, dance-rock, and jazz, and showcases many ethnic influences that propels the album to "a new level of multi-dimensionality," but noted that this "abundance of diversity" made the collection feel "erratic, jarring, and difficult to relate to in its entirety," concluding that "she's difficult to fit into any one genre, which leaves her out in the dust for certain forms of mainstream success." Chisling further wrote that casual listeners will find it hard to compare Lavie with any other artist, but that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, that this "seemingly odd combination (of genres) actually works for Lavie." Concerning the album's genres, Lavie explained she hadn't created one particular style but rather "it's kind of like seasons," adding that the listener gets to pick and choose, "which is great in regards to (music download website) iTunes."

Independent artist
In an interview published in March 2010, Lavie explained "I'm no longer working with the guy that I once worked with, so that's a nice change for me." Concerning affiliation with a record label, she added that "I'm an independent artist. ... It would definitely have to be the right fit and I have not found the right fit up until this point so I'm just doing things on my own. ... I'm just going to concentrate on creating and building a fan base online."

Lavie also expanded her collaborations with other artists, including a singing role in a spoof of T.I.'s song Dead and Gone, and a role impersonating television personality Kendra Wilkinson in a series of spoofs of the "Kendra" reality television series.

In February 2010, Lavie conceived, organized, performed in, and co-edited, the musical collaboration video "We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition)" for charity relief of victims of the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake. Lavie's video, a collaboration of 57 unsigned or independent YouTube musicians, was a cover of We Are the World, produced in 1985 for African famine relief. Lavie's video was posted as a video response to the celebrity remake, We Are the World 25 for Haiti, which had been released eight days before. Receiving its first half-million views on YouTube in two days, Lavie's video became the subject of worldwide media attention,         including multiple features on CNN,    and a primetime news feature  on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer in which the video's contributors were named ABC News' "Persons of the Week" for the week ending March 19, 2010. Before the television feature, Lavie had explained to Sawyer that she "thought it would be great to have regular people who sing, as well. I think it reaches people in a different way" than the celebrity remake. Lavie was characterized by USA Today as a "visionary" behind the "phenom" YouTube video.

In early July 2010, MTV's "MTVIggy" listed Lavie among the top ten people most likely to become "the next Justin Bieber," referring to Bieber's "discovery" after posting singing videos online.

In July 2010, three days after performing at the Festival du Bonheur (Happiness Festival) charity event in Québec, Lavie appeared on CTV's Canada AM national news program. Canada AM first recognized Lavie's collaborative video We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition) and her YouTube channel's then forty million video views, before she performed her original song "Angel."



On tour
On September 13, 2010, Yanni's official website introduced Lavie as one of two vocalists to accompany Yanni and his orchestra, days before the opening of a South American tour to Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. Lavie continued with Yanni's tour stops in Puerto Rico (2010), and Mexico, Panama, Canada, and the U.S. (all early 2011). Lavie continued on Yanni's late-2011 tour of Eastern Europe and Asia and El Morro Castle in Puerto Rico, and his 2012 tours of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. and Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

Auditions were said to be "the deciding factor" in Yanni's choosing the two vocalists, who together performed "Aria" and "Niki Nana" (translation: "We Are One").

During gaps in the Yanni tour schedule, Lavie's performances included events in Doha, Qatar (for the first anniversary celebration for celebrity chef and restauranteur Gordon Ramsay's Maze restaurant), Bangkok, Thailand (for the Thailand Festival), and at the Streamy Awards (as backup singer for Shontelle).

Artistry and influences
Lavie explained that her Everything or Nothing album was named in part based on her refusal to compromise her artistic standards, that if a label wanted to sign her it would have to accept her, everything or nothing. Still later, Lavie reaffirmed "Labels have been showing interest but until the right deal comes along and it's the perfect fit, I'm going to keep on doing my thing and creating my own destiny." Lavie said that "a lot of record executives were trying to change my style. .... 'We want you to be more "ghetto."' But I'm not 'ghetto.'"

The Allmusic reviewer of her debut album Everything or Nothing wrote in 2008 that Lavie's voice is "quite mature, ... well adapted to the many pop-influenced styles" in the album, adding that Lavie "nails each style with ease, and displays mastery over many different flavored tracks, solidifying her as a true singer."

In 2007 Lavie mentioned Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men & Brian McKnight, to whom she listened while growing up, as being "definite influences on (her) music and vocal style," and more recently named Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Céline Dion, Whitney Houston and Lara Fabian. She also said she considers Alicia Keys "brilliant" and "feel(s) that our song-writing styles would mesh really well."

Philanthropy and other activities
In October 2009, Lavie headlined a concert at the "Women Taking Care of the World" event of the International Association of Moxy Women.

To inspire donations for relief of victims of the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake, in February 2010 Lavie conceived, organized, performed in, and co-edited, a charity musical collaboration video "We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition)"

Lavie also performed in the May 9, 2011 charity collaboration video and single, "We Pray for You (YouTubers Edition)" to benefit victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (Japan) and 2011 tornado outbreak (southern United States).

The "We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition)" collaboration followed her January 16, 2010 "Altar Call (Haiti)" solo singing video for Haiti relief.

Lavie performed at the Festival du Bonheur (Happiness Festival) in her native province Québec for the "Happy Well-Being Foundation" that "gives grants to encourage athletic projects, literature, organic agriculture and artists."