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" Meet soulful singer/songwriter Kina Grannis. If her name sounds familiar, well, her single &amp;quot;Valentine&amp;quot; has been viewed on YouTube nearly 2.5 million times! The 24-year-old made her mark online back in 2007 when she entered and won the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest. Her video for a song called &amp;quot;Message from Your Heart&amp;quot; was seen by the 97 million viewers of the game and well, the rest is history. Now the unique indie-pop darling of Japanese, English, Irish, French, Dutch, Welsh, and Scottish descent self-released her debut album Stairwells in February and has been on the road ever since. CG was lucky enough to pin Kina down and get the scoop on what it&amp;#039;s like to live out her dreams! Cosmogirl: When did you start singing? Kina Grannis: I&amp;#039;ve loved singing since forever. Whether it was with my sisters while cleaning the kitchen, putting shows on for my stuffed animals, writing songs about my stuffed animals, starting an a capella group with my cousins while on vacation, or awkwardly singing along to karaoke tracks alone in my bedroom - singing always found a way into my life. However, it wasn&amp;#039;t until halfway through high school that it dawned on me that singing wasn&amp;#039;t just a hobby, it was something I had a growing need for in my life, and that was about when I adopted the neglected guitar I found under our piano and started singing about all the things I could never say. CG: You have a multiethnic background - how has that influenced you? KG: Being hapa, or more specifically, half-Japanese half-Euro mutt (English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, Welsh, German. . .in case you were wondering), has definitely helped shape who I am. It&amp;#039;s very cool to get to identify and learn about all these unique cultures and I think it&amp;#039;s helped put the world in perspective. Since I don&amp;#039;t feel like I belong solely to any one of them I find that it makes me even more interested and open to other cultures as well. It&amp;#039;s also fun looking ethnically ambiguous because no one can quite put a finger on what I am and it&amp;#039;s very entertaining to me! CG: You won the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest a few years ago - what was that like and why do you think you won? KG: That was an amazing experience. The two months I was competing in the contest were completely insane . . . I posted a video a day for almost two months and was hardly sleeping, but I think it really pushed me to give music everything I had in me. I knew it was a chance I couldn&amp;#039;t miss. The funny thing is I never saw my music video when it aired during the Super Bowl because as soon as I heard my song start I was in tears for the next 10 minutes! The most amazing thing that came out of all of this, however, was the support that had developed online. Without the people that came back day after day to vote for me, I&amp;#039;d be nowhere, and I really owe it all to them. CG: You were very brave and actually walked away from your first record deal. Why? KG: The people at the label were great but at the end of the day our visions didn&amp;#039;t match up and I knew I had to do it my way. The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn&amp;#039;t quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made. It was a hard decision to make, but I&amp;#039;ve never regretted it for a second and it&amp;#039;s only become more clear to me after making and releasing Stairwells that it was the right one. CG: Tell us about Stairwells and the inspiration behind the album.   KG: In college, I faced an interesting problem. I wanted to play music all the time and yet I wasn&amp;#039;t ready for anyone to hear it. To remedy this, I took to retreating to stairwells as a safe place to sing and write music. It was there that I wrote most of my songs in college and really grew into an artist. When I was trying to name the new album I did a lot of reflecting on how far I&amp;#039;ve come from those days and it just seemed like the right time to pay tribute to all the stairwells that took me in. CG: Your first single is called &amp;quot;Valentine.&amp;quot; What have you experienced when it comes to love and relationships? KG: There were two main points I wanted to get across in Valentine, the first being that yes, Valentine&amp;#039;s Day is an arbitrary day, but why would you not take that excuse to celebrate love? The second point. . .since it is just an arbitrary day. . .why not treat every day like Valentine&amp;#039;s Day? In finding love, I think it&amp;#039;s important to be patient. In being in a relationship, I think it&amp;#039;s important to be honest, to communicate, to respect and trust, and to strive to give more than you take. As for heartbreak. . .there&amp;#039;s no easy way out, but it&amp;#039;s important to remember that even though everything feels awful now, it will get better, you will meet someone else, and in the meantime, you can continue to grow and learn and live life surrounded by people that love you. Check out more of Kina&amp;#039;s music on her MySpace page! Have you listen to Stairwells yet? Let us know what you think! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/a11812/kina-grannis-interview/>