If you were one of 40 million people watching Sunday night's Grammy Awards (to watch the Whitney Houston tribute or to ponder who Bonnie Bear is), you may have seen this Target ad, featuring a young girl singing Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" on a bus. It turns out she's one of the belters from the P.S. 22 chorus and the retail chain found her through one of the group's YouTube videos!
According to the Staten Island Advance, "Target began tracking Denise down for the commercial after seeing her lead the PS 22 Chorus in a version of the song on Youtube -- a video that has more than 1 million views... Producers couldn't reach Denise's mom, Dextina Lincoln, so they called PS 22, and got in touch with music teacher and chorus leader Gregg Breinberg." Denise said, "He called my mom and my mom told me the good news, and I got really excited."
The 11-year-old met with producers and was cast in the commercial. The video was shot in NJ on a city bus—Denise says, "In the commercial, in the city bus it looked like it was driving, but it was really being towed by a tow truck"—and then, on Sunday night, she and her mom stayed up to watch the commercial on national TV.
Denise is now at I.S. 51—here's her version of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" with the PS 22 chorus:
And to further pull at your heartstrings, here's PS 22's version of "Someone Like You":
