And fans who watched him play young rocker and genre jump all over the place on the show might be surprised.
His first single falls squarely into the acoustic singer-songwriter vein.
And it’s a song he wrote, an impressive tune called “Reality.” You can check in out in the video at right. Braiden delivers an excellent vocal, too.
The fact that Braiden wrote his first single stemmed from a bit of advice he got from Blues Traveler frontman John Popper, according to an article in The New London Day.
You’ll recall that Braiden auditioned for The Voice with a Blues Traveler song (“The Mountains Win Again”), then was invited to one of the band’s concerts.
According to the newspaper article, Popper told the teen the best way to ensure long-term success as a musician is to write one’s own music.
Braiden has also decided to switch to online schooling so he can travel as necessary to pursue a career in music without interrupting his education.
“We (his family) decided that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he told The Day. “With this much exposure and everything that is coming out of it, we might be able to make something of this. I mean, it’s a one-in-a-million chance — but it was a one-in-a-million chance that I’d make it as far as I did on the show. So why not give it a shot?”
Braiden was just 15 when he auditioned for The Voice; he wound up being the youngest singer to earn a spot on Season 9.
He advanced all the way to the Top 9, and his cover of “Amazing Grace” cracked the Top 10 on iTunes’ singles chart.
His new single charted, too, though not quite so high. It climbed to the 30s on the iTunes’ singer-songwriter chart when it was released last week.
But Braiden was still clearly enthused, writing on Facebook: “Last I checked ‘Reality’ was at #36 on the singer songwriter charts! I wrote a charting song!!! SO COOL!!!”
You can follow Braiden through that Facebook page. On Twitter, he is simply @BraidenSunshine.
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