Todrick Hall

Todrick Hall (born April 4, 1985) is an openly gay^[1] vocalist, actor, director, choreographer and entertainer from Arlington, Texas. His fame arose when he auditioned for American Idol Season 9; he made it to the semi-finals. Since then, Todrick Hall has been performing on Broadway, and YouTube. As of 2013, Hall is under the management of Scooter Braun Projects.^[2] He was featured in Forbes Top 30 under 30 in the Hollywood category in 2014.^[3]

Career

Broadway and Other Stages

In 2008 Hall introduced his original production Oz, The Musical. In 2009 he directed Koobyrots, and CinderellaROCK.^[4]

On August 17, 2010 Hall joined the cast of the Tony Award-Winning Musical Memphis. His last performance was January 4, 2011. Hall was previously seen in the Broadway Musical The Color Purple from June 2007 until January 2008 playing the role of Bobby and the understudy to Harpo.^[5] In addition to The Color Purple, he has appeared in The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular and Hairspray.^[6]

American Idol

Hall auditioned for American Idol Season 9 in Dallas, TX on June 26, 2009; the episode aired January 27, 2010. Hall performed a song about all three judges including Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson.^[7] Todrick made it all the way to the semi-finals after singing songs such as What's Love Got to Do with It (by Tina Turner) and Since U Been Gone (by Kelly Clarkson). Hall was eliminated during the week of March 11, 2010. He performed Somebody to Love (by Queen).^[8]

YouTube

Restaurants and Franchise Flashing

Hall's first video was uploaded on January 14, 2008 of him singing It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday. His first viral video was The McDonalds Drive Thru Song uploaded on May 27, 2010. As of January 2014, the video has over 7 million views. Hall followed this video with two sequels. Hall has many other renditions involving large fast food franchises: Starbucks, Subway, Dominos and Coca-Cola (performed in Times Square - Manhattan, NY).^[9]

Beyoncé, Disney and Oz

Hall is heavily inspired by the music and story of The Wizard of Oz. He has released full productions of the story on stage and on screen. For his YouTube audience, he produced Wizard of Ahhhs^[10] with the A Capella group Pentatonix.^[11] Hall also did a mash-up of Drake's Hold On, We're Going Home infused with themes from The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz.^[12]

One of Hall's most successful videos is the Beyoncé End Of Time Flash Mob, a flash mob tribute to Beyoncé taking place in a Target store. Todrick continued to be inspired by Beyoncé. He created other videos such as Cinderonce, infusing Disney's Cinderella with the music of Beyoncé.^[13]

This was not his first remake of a popular Disney film adopted to popular music. Cinderfella and Beauty And The Beat released in 2012 an 2013 respectively, were both infused with similar styles.^[14] The Spell Block Tango (a play on words from hit musical Chicago's Cell Block Tango), is one of his biggest fairytale productions.^[15] It portrays the iconic jail scene where the alleged "murderesses" explain why their crimes were committed through song and dance featuring Glee's Amber Riley and former American Idol finalist Adam Lambert.^[16] Hall casted this murderesses as a Disney villain in his parody.^[17]

Hall's work led him to collaborate with Beyoncé on her new album Beyoncé (2013) as a choreographer for the song entitled Blow.^[18][19]

What The Funny and other Spoofs

In October 2013, Hall partnered with Scary Movie franchise co-creator Marlon Wayans to produce 30 short films, fairytale and pop culture parodies for What The Funny. The site includes successful videos such as How The Grinch Stole Crenshaw, and Grown Woman Disney, a pop video from the album Beyoncé (2013).^[20][21]

Hall has produced many other spoofs including Mean Gurlz,^[22] and I Wanna Be On Glee aimed at hit television series Glee's co-creator Ryan Murphy.^[23][24] The video features gospel and pop music set on a high school campus.^[25]

Virgin America

In November 2013, Virgin America produced an entertaining pop-music safety video directed by Jon Chu with music by Jean-Yves "Jeeve" Decornet.^[26] Hall starred in the video and wrote the song and lyrics.

The Music

Although Hall is mainly known for his video-driven projects, he also has many musically driven projects as well. Hall has many covers on his YouTube channel. In December 2013 Todrick released a Christmas album entitled Dear Santa. It features popular favorites such as This Christmas and Sleigh Bells, but also originals like So Cold and SplitsOnXmasTrees with appearances by Chester Lockhart and music by Jean-Yves "Jeeve" Decornet and production group wiidope.^[27] Hall is also producing a new YouTube series entitled Pop Star High in 2014.

Selected videography and discography releases

2010-2011

• It Gets Better
• McDonalds Drive Thru Song
• Beyonce End Of Time Flash Mob
• I Wanna Be On Glee

2012-2013

• Grown Woman Disney Parody
• How The Grinch Stole Crenshaw
• Dear Santa
• Todrick Hall's The Wizard of Ahhhs feat. Pentatonix
• Hold On, We're Going Home
• Spell Block Tango (as Scar from The Lion King)
• Beyoncé (2013) - Choreographer - Blow

2014

• Pop Star High

References

External links

• Todrick Hall at the Internet Movie Database
• Todrick Hall's channel on YouTube