What a night of pride! Last year I was asked to sit on a panel discussion for the music industry at YES Montreal. One attendee, Lea Longo, was quite eager and had many questions. After the session she pulled me aside and asked if I could spare her some additional time. We spoke and she told me that he had recently won the Mix 96 song competition and that she wasn’t 100% sure about how to get some publicity going for that as a catalyst to move forward. We met, she brought her music and I thought her singing and songwriting was strong. I suggested that she speak to two publicists that I knew and they could decide whether or not to work with her.
One was local, one was based in Toronto. She actually started working with the Montreal one. He was a former BMG and Warner Music promo rep and was doing his own thing – he and I had been friends for years. He worked with her for the past little while and through their work, her album was picked up by Dep (a local label) and will be distributed through Universal Music across Canada – her song Ugly, now called Miserably Happy, is all over the radio and the video is now playing on MuchMusic and Musique Plus.
So, she comes to one YES session, gets a lead and BAM – she’s off to the races. Major label, video on TV and song playing on the radio. I wish I could take all the credit, but many people have helped her along the way.
I was at her “launch” party tonight where CHOM FM‘s Too Tall was there, Nick Carbone (the guy responsible for Mitsou, France D’Amour and Kevin Parent’s success) and the entire cast and crew from Universal Music Canada and many other local luminaries.
YES helped her – how many other stories like this are out there?