Mat and Savanna Shaw

Mathew Shaw (born July 26, 1980) and his daughter Savanna Shaw (born 2004) are an American musical duo based in Utah. They started releasing music videos at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. "The New York Times"s music critic Jon Caramanica said the father and daughter duo "became a quarantine-era YouTube success story for their acoustic duets of religious-esque songs that were pinpoint precise, verging on stern".
At the beginning of the pandemic, Savanna's choir practices were canceled. To remain connected with her friends, she created her first social media account, an Instagram account. For her first post on the account, she asked Mat, her father, to sing "The Prayer" with her since she was too shy to sing by herself. After recording it, they published it on Instagram in late February2020 and then Facebook, where it went viral. They created a YouTube account on March 6, 2020. The Shaws were interviewed by "Good Morning America", "The Kelly Clarkson Show", and a show in Japan.
On October 23, 2020, they released a 13-song album titled "Picture This", which had an eponymous original song that told the story of how they shot to fame. After selling 12,000 copies, the album was ranked number one on "Billboard"s Emerging Artists and Classical Albums charts and 54th on the "Billboard" 200. On November 20, 2020, they released a seven-song extended play titled "Merry Little Christmas". In his review of the album, "The New York Times" Caramanica found that Mat "booms like a drill sergeant" and Savanna "sings with airy sweep". The Shaws will release a third album, "Stand By Me", on May 21, 2021.
Personal life and music career.
Mat Shaw, whose full name is Mathew Shaw, was born on July 26, 1980. In his youth, Mat Shaw was passionate about singing and had aspirations to become a Broadway performer and create music. After Shaw's father died when Shaw was 14, the family experienced monetary difficulties and he moved with his family from Los Angeles to Kaysville, Utah. During his high school years, Shaw was a choir member and musical theater performer. Shaw was a student at Farmington Junior High School, where he performed in a play adaptation of the novel "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" in 1994. He attended Davis High School, where in 1996 he played the banker Bobby Childs in the musical "Crazy for You" and in 1997 he played the factory superintendent Sid Scrokin in the musical "The Pajama Game". Shaw served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years beginning in 2000 in Cebu in the Philippines. With funding from a vocal performance scholarship, he studied at Weber State University, where he graduated with an accounting degree. Shaw was a member for eight years of the Army National Guard. He runs a real estate business with a partner. Shaw concentrated on building up his real estate firm and spending time with his new family. He devoted less of his energy on music, saying in an interview, "My priority was to make sure that my family was secure and taken care of, and I knew music wasn't going to do that for my family." At home, Shaw continued to sing and his voice sparked his daughter, Savanna Shaw, to start singing. He is married to Brooke Shaw, whom he lives with in Kaysville, Utah, with their four children, Savanna, Easton, Eric, and Pennie Jean. Shaw said his favorite love song was Jim Brickman's song "Love of My Life", which was the earliest song he sang for Brooke, who would become his wife. During their wedding, Mat and Brooke Shaw did a duet of the song.
Savanna Shaw was born in 2004 and is the oldest of her three siblings. As a young child, she enrolled in voice lessons and harp classes. Shaw enrolled in a choir for children organized by the Hale Center Theatre. The shy Savanna became friends with the choir members. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the rehearsals were discontinued at the start of March. Shaw created an Instagram account to remain connected with friends from her choir. The account was her inaugural foray into social media. As her initial post on the account, she wanted to record a cover of the Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli song "The Prayer". But she didn't want to sing by herself. Savanna approached Mat Shaw, her father, while he was doing yard work to ask him to sing the song with her. Savanna wanted Mat to become more presentable as he had on a Brigham Young University hat and a family reunion T-shirt but he brushed her off, saying, "Savanna, your choir friends aren't going to care what I'm wearing. It's not a big deal." They recorded a cover of "The Prayer" at the end of February2020. The first platform they chose to upload the four-minute video to was Instagram. Mat uploaded the video to Facebook next to allow family members including his mother who lacked Instagram accounts to view it. They received a substantial amount of attention on Facebook and then started their "Mat and Savanna Shaw" YouTube account on March 6, 2020. As they had little technical experience, they spent multiple hours to complete the YouTube upload. By a few days later, it had 2,700 views and 60 shares and by three months later, it had received more than six million views. After the video had received one million views, the father and daughter uploaded their cover of a second song, "A Million Dreams". At the end of March 2020, the duo did their first two interviews with the local television stations KSTU and KTVX]. By May2020, they had over 400,000 YouTube subscribers. According to "Deseret News" journalist Lottie Elizabeth Johnson, the Shaws' cover of "The Prayer" acquired them "a massive following" and that "[w]ith one video, they've achieved more success than many people who go on shows like "America's Got Talent" and "The Voice"".
The duo use a closet as their recording studio and practice location. They enlist a small mic connected to an iPad and supported by some pajama pants to record their singing.  While playing the audio recording of their closet performance, they sit at their kitchen table to videotape themselves singing to it. In May2020, Ken Davenport, an executive producer for Andrew Lloyd Webber, interviewed the Shaws. He introduced them to the Broadway actress Sierra Boggess, who has played Christine Daaé in "The Phantom of the Opera" and whom Savanna greatly admires. When Mat was a youth, he watched "The Phantom of the Opera" as his initial live performance. His mother required him to read the book before he could watch the show. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Savanna regularly viewed performances of the musical while sheltering at her house. Davenport offered to pay for the father and daughter to travel to New York and watch the musical live after the Broadway shutdown ended. Davenport said to them, "You have put such love and such joy and such positivity in the world. You've done obviously such good for so many millions … of people that this is just a little small something to say thank you from all of us on Broadway." The Shaws perform songs that resonate with them, including the Colbie Caillat song "Try" and the "Coco" song "Remember Me". They share on social media why they selected those songs. Mat Shaw said on Facebook that "Try", a song about body image, speaks about identity and about how other people's views about you can affect you. He wrote, "I want my daughters to know that they never need to change themselves to belong. Find your people. Love yourself. I will love you forever." They like to perform Broadway musicals songs and big band songs as well as 1950s and 1960s songs.
In a July 2020 livestream video, Mat Shaw said the duo were "intentionally vague" regarding the topics of religion and politics. He said, "We want people to come to our music and have it be a safe place where you can feel what you want to feel without us pushing our beliefs or agenda." In August 2020, they created the website The Shaw Fam backed by Patreon that lets their fans send them money to receive membership benefits such as recommending the songs they should sing next and the ability to view videos before non-members can see them. They decided against signing with a label because they wanted to have full power over what music they could make and what events they could attend. In an interview with "The Daily Signal", Mat noted that he had friends signed to labels who had planned to perform at charity events but were blocked by their labels. The Shaws organized a food drive on November 24, 2020, in Sandy, Utah, and Kaysville, Utah, after they discovered that the Utah Food Bank was having difficulty in meeting the strong need for food caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Shaws have received substantial media attention including on "Good Morning America", "The Kelly Clarkson Show", and a show in Japan. "The New York Times"s Jon Caramanica said the duo "became a quarantine-era YouTube success story for their acoustic duets of religious-esque songs that were pinpoint precise, verging on stern". They have been recognized during trips in public such as to Costco. Mat put in less time on his real estate firm, which had had its business diminished at the beginning of COVID-19, opting to devote his time to singing practices, recording, and encasing their albums. His colleague at the practice picked up the slack. Savanna transferred from her high school to virtual school to give her the ability to spend her energies on making music. She graduated a year in advance of her high school class after completing her final two years by 2021. Although she was very bashful before going viral in "The Prayer", she gained certitude and became more sociable in the months afterwards.
Albums.
"Picture This".
The Shaws initially wanted to write an original song to share more information about themselves. Instead of just releasing a single song, they decided to create an album since they had wanted to make one. When recording their first album, "Picture This", they used a "professional" recording studio instead of the home closet studio they had been using for their videos. For the album, they chose songs that had been proposed by their audience, that they liked, or by Stephen Nelson, who arranged the music. They released their first album on October 23, 2020, containing 13 songs. The Shaws enlisted the assistance of their extended family to load and send 10,000 CDs of the album. Initially expecting it to take about half a year for the 10,000 CDs to sell out, they received a large number of pre-orders and ran out before their album's release date, which was two weeks after they had placed the order. The duo placed a second order for 10,000 additional CDs. Their house turned into a repository for CDs, and they worked in the living room and kitchen to prepare the albums. The Shaw children assisted and received pocket money. Pennie Jean Shaw, Mat's six-year-old daughter, joined in by contributing to the label by writing her initials and penciling in a small heart. The album was ranked first on the iTunes pop and classical charts, ranked third on the iTunes chart that included all song genres, and ranked third on Amazon. After it sold "12,000 equivalent album units" based on MRC Data, it was ranked first on "Billboard"s Emerging Artists chart on November 7, first on its Classical Albums chart, and 54th on the "Billboard" 200.
The first song is a mashup of the songs "Fly Me to the Moon" and "Come Fly with Me". Savanna selected the song, calling herself an "old soul". The second song is "I Hope You Dance" and was recommended by Nelson, their arranger. The third song is "Picture This", an original song that the father and daughter began composing in July 2020 to describe how they suddenly became famous. They published a music video for the song on the same day they released their album. Mat said, "This song is about just being brave, and what if all it takes is a moment believing, a single moment of courage, putting yourself out there, and you just never know what will happen, what kinds of opportunities, what kinds of dreams will come true." The fourth song is "You Raise Me Up", which they first published the cover for in August 2020 and was the song that their audience most asked for. The fifth song was suggested by their audience and is "What the World Needs Now Is Love", which they published a cover for in September 2020. The sixth song is the Colbie Caillat song "Try" and the seventh is "Only Hope", which had been sung by Mandy Moore, whom Savanna admired. The eighth song is the "Coco" song "Remember Me". The ninth song is the Beatles' "Let It Be". They published their cover of it as a single in July 2020 and it was the initial song they made in "professional" recording studio. The tenth song is Phillip Phillips's "Gone, Gone, Gone" and was proposed for inclusion by Nelson. Although they were reluctant to perform it initially, they grew to like it. The eleventh song is "Hallelujah" with Nelson participating as a singer. Around 2009, the father and daughter were audience members at a recital where Nelson was playing the piano and singing "Hallelujah". Mat was "spellbound" by the performance. Mat and Savanna have another version of "Hallelujah" that they made with Peter Hollens. The twelfth song is "Tonight You Belong to Me" and the thirteenth song is "The Prayer", which has a different arrangement from the cover they released in February2020.
"Merry Little Christmas".
The duo released an extended play on November 20, 2020, titled "Merry Little Christmas" that had seven songs. By November 27, they had sold over 12,000 copies of the album. For their debut album, the Shaws had worked on preparing the albums in their living room and kitchen. For their Christmas EP, they relocated the packaging work to their basement where they labored at night to encase the CDs. The first song is "O Come, All Ye Faithful", which has music from a guitar, drums, a cello, and a piano accompanying their singing. The second song is "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and has their arranger Stephen Nelson playing the piano. The third song is "Mary, Did You Know?" and was the most asked for by their audience. The fourth song is a jazz arrangement and mashup of "Let It Snow" and "Walking in a Winter Wonderland". The fifth song is "O Holy Night" and was the second most asked for by their audience. The Shaws chose to include the song in their album very late into its production. The same week that they were preparing to mail out CDs of their first album, they practiced how to sing the song and record it. The sixth and seventh songs are "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" and Josh Groban's "Thankful" from his album "Noël". In its first week and for the week of December 4, the album was ranked first on "Billboard"s "Classical Crossover Albums" chart.
In "The New York Times" music critic Jon Caramanica's review of the album, he said that their cover of "Mary, Did You Know?" is "poignant and elegantly spacious, almost nervy in its conviction", their performance of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" has surprising parallels to the Extreme song "More Than Words", and their cover of "Thankful" has the two "harmoniz[ing] into billowy bliss". Caramanica noted that in their album Mat "booms like a drill sergeant" and Savanna "sings with airy sweep". In an AllMusic review, critic Marcy Donelson gave the album 3.5 stars out of five, and praised the duo for their "graceful, stage musical-friendly singing deliveries". She said that they "fare best here with their piano-accompanied arrangements of the more tender selections" such as a "string-embellished" "Mary, Did You Know?", "Thankful", and "a well-harmonized" "O Holy Night".
"Stand By Me".
The Shaws will release their third album titled "Stand By Me" on May 21, 2021. On that day, to mark the occasion, the two will perform at Salt Lake City's Eccles Theater for the first time. The concert will have in-person attendees and also will be livestreamed for online viewers. They completed the album's recording around March 2021. Arranged by Stephen Nelson, the album has 13 songs. The first song is the Coldplay song "Something Just Like This" and uses strings and background singing. The second song is a mashup of Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" and The Temptations's "My Girl". The third song is "You'll Be in My Heart", a Phil Collins song written for the 1999 film "Tarzan". The Shaws sang it with Madilyn Paige, a contestant on "The Voice"s sixth season. The fourth song is the Hunter Hayes song "Invisible", which the Shaws made available in April 2021 to promote Autism Awareness Month. The fifth song is the "Pie Jesu" segment of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Requiem". As an admirer of Lloyd Webber's music, Savanna enjoyed "Pie Jesu" though was worried about singing it. After performing the song, she found that it allowed her to exercise new aspects of her voice, which gave her more confidence. The sixth song is "Annie's Song", a John Denver song. Out of the entreaties the Shaws receive, their followers called for them to perform a Denver song the most. Mat, who had listened to Denver songs as a youth with his dad who was a Denver fan, had a sentimental experience performing the song. The seventh song was "For Good" from the musical "Wicked". When Savanna watched "Wicked" as a 10-year-old, the experience kindled her strong interest in becoming a singer.
The eighth song is the Christian hymn "Amazing Grace". With their arranger Nelson playing the piano, the Shaws collaborated with a gospel choir and the soloists Aitana Alapa and Mark Vaki. The ninth song is "Better Song" by Jack Johnson. The duo added the song to the album at Savanna's urging despite originally not planning to do so. The tenth song is "Homeward Bound", a song composed and written during World War I. When his children were younger, Mat sang it to them like a lullaby. Nicole Pinnell, a cellist, accompanied the Shaws in their cover of the song. The eleventh song is "Dear Fear", which is the Shaws' second original song. The song is a message about Savanna's uneasiness and apprehension. Savanna's mother, Brooke, participated in writing the song, and said, "The purpose of this song and the message that we really hope to portray is that you can be afraid and also be brave at the same time. Vulnerability is just part of progression in our lives, and Savanna really felt like she wanted to write a song about this because it's been such a big part of her year. ... It's learning that you don't have to run from the things that scare you, it's OK to allow them to exist inside of you while still just pressing on." The twelfth song is "You Will Be Found", a "Dear Evan Hansen" song that the duo received numerous entreaties from viewers to cover. Mat said, "People have just been put through the wringer this past year, and there's a lot of loneliness, anxiety, insecurity. This song is just an anthem to say, 'We're here for you, if nothing else through our music. You're not alone.'" The thirteenth song is "Keep Us Safe", a song that Carrie Underwood helped co-write and sang during the 2014 concert event "ACM Presents: An All-Star Salute to the Troops". The song is a reference to the Shaws cover of "The Prayer", which made them go viral. Lottie Elizabeth Johnson of "Deseret News" summed up the album, "For the Shaws, the common thread across all of the songs on the album is a message of hope — which has been their main focus ever since performing 'The Prayer' from their kitchen table more than a year ago."
Shows.
The Shaws performed in their inaugural concert on September 5, 2020, for Operation Underground Railroad at the Midway, Utah-based River Bottoms Ranch. Mat became sentimental during the concert on reflecting about how the audience applauded his daughter's singing prowess after she put in a lot of time and effort rehearsing. Savanna called it "a special moment on stage" since she had never observed him crying before then. On November 28, 2020, the duo performed at a live virtual concert titled "What The World Needs Now: An Evening of Music and Inspiration with Mat and Savanna Shaw". Sierra Boggess was the director of the concert. They sang Broadway and holiday songs, sang their original song "Picture This", and relayed narratives about their lives. Prior to the November 2020 concert, Savanna's mother gifted her a bracelet decorated with silverfish and goldfish swimming in different directions, telling her, "This just reminded me of you because you're choosing a different path." On December 1, 2020, the Shaws were the first performers in the Temple Square Christmas concert "Celebrating the Light of the World" during which they sang "O Come, All Ye Faithful".
On December 5, 2020, the Shaws performed at two shows at the Maverik Center alongside GENTRI, a trio of tenors, for a concert titled "'Tis the Season — A Christmas Concert with Gentri and Friends". On December 20, 2020, they participated in a livestream Christmas concert hosted by the United States Army Field Band.