Girl meets girl, girl falls in love with girl—and then girl creates an album with girl.
This is just a glimpse into how Bria Kam and Chrissy Chambers came to form their musical duo BriaAndChrissy, who recently released their debut album, Face Your Fears.
"It is time for two women to be able to showcase their love for each other and it be marketable to all audiences," said Chambers. "We definitely like to cross boundaries."
Their love story began in September 2011 at a bar called Mary's in Atlanta, Ga. Chambers went to the bar expecting to meet her future girlfriend. Realizing she would not find her love in the bar area that night, she decided to leave and as she descended the stairs just before stepping out of the building, with what seems like fairy-tale luck, she met Kam who initiated the conversation.
The couple now resides in Atlanta and celebrated their two-year anniversary Nov. 13—the same day the album was released. The album is the creation of two passionate artists brought together by love and a product developed from their YouTube channel, which they established in August 2012.
"The videos just spread like wildfire," said Kam. "We didn't have any subscribers, we didn't have any real social pull or any influence. So it was just completely the power of the Internet."
Kicking off their channel with political satire videos focusing on Chick-fil-A President/COO Dan Cathy's anti-gay stance and Todd Akin's ( R-Mo. ) "legitimate rape" comments, they soon moved onto anti-bullying material. From there the theme evolved further, predominantly concentrating on their passion of LGBT issues.
"I think we were really pushing ourselves to find a place in the Internet world and that's really the trick," said Kam. "Anyone that wants to start a YouTube channel, or anybody that wants to become a successful artists, you need to find your niche, what separates you from everybody else and what you stand for. I think we were struggling to find ourselves. When we realized that it was music and it was LGBT and that was our audience, I think everything just fell into place."
With more than 10 million views and 80,000 subscribers, their drive to continue entertaining through social media comes from the feeling they are changing people's lives.
"Having people reach out to us everyday, multiple times a day, saying that they were thinking about doing something to themselves, but because they watched our videos they thought otherwise and how they felt confident to come out because they watched our videos," said Kam. "Things you never thought in your life that you would hear and being told, it really changes you and gives you a purpose. It gives you the passion and desire to keep moving forward to making a change."
Loving to mix things up, each of the pop duo's YouTube videos include conversational clips or musical performance clips covering current popular songs. Chambers describes it as a variety channel that has the general theme of wanting to inspire and make people feel better about themselves.
"We don't ever want to do too much talking because we love to sing, but we also wouldn't want to just be known as cover artists because it feels like we want to do so much more than that," said Chambers.
Currently, BriaAndChrissy are vying to win Ryan Seacrest's national contest for "The Best Cover of Lady Gaga's 'Applause'" and continue to move between the top three spots.
Face Your Fears, however, takes on a different form than their musical YouTube posts, which typically include piano and vocals. Bria is the primary songwriter and both sing on all the tracks.
This project, featuring 10 original tracks, has an electronic-pop, top-40 dance style. Overall, they describe it as "fun, cute, sweet, sexy" and having something for everybody.
The lyrics, they explain, are unique in that they solely uses female pronouns in each song to portray two women singing about their relationship, while telling different stories of lust, love, or desire. With some songs being true of their own relationship, they say, some are fictional, but retain a realistic feeling.
"There are many songs that are inspired by our relationship, but we want the album to seem like it was just us writing about our relationship," said Chambers. "We want it to be relatable to a lot of people. So, there are songs that are about couples in relationships and just the ups and downs of being in love."
Kam explained the album's title and title track implies the idea of people feeling comfortable with themselves and feeling the confidence to come out and be who they are, not specifically coming out as being LGBT, but facing one's fears.
"We just want people to know that this is us and we're really happy with how it's come out," said Kam. "It's going to be fun and the first of its kind. We want people to love it just as much as we do."
To learn and hear more from BriaAmdChrissy, visit www.youtube.com/BriaAndChrissy or www.facebook.com/BriaAndChrissy. Face Your Fears can be found wherever mainstream digital music is sold.
