ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Aragon, YouTube Sensation

            Maria Aragon is a YouTube sensation who became famous overnight. Maria lives in Winnipeg, Canada, she is a fifth-grade student at the Isaac Brock School, and she is of Filipino descent

            Maria has been singing in YouTube for 3 years, but fame started to be with her after Lady Gaga’s lead song for her second album, Born This Way, has been released. Maria quickly uploads a video of her singing the said single to her sister’s YouTube channel, February 16.

Lady Gaga is one of them and is captivated by Maria’s talent that she retweeted a link to the video to her eight million followers saying “Can’t stop crying watching this. This is why I make music. She is the future.” causing a sensation and launching Maria to instant international fame. The video garnered over 10 million views on YouTube in five days. In 6 days, her video, "Born This Way (Cover)" on Youtube had reached over 26 million views.

            Thank’s to that Maria was catapulted to absolute fame and was even featured at Ellen where she performed Born This Way and got a standing ovation and at Good Morning America (where its anchor George Stephanopoulos handed her a gift certificate for six months of piano lessons).

Toronto's Virgin Radio 99.9 was among the first media outlets to reach out to Maria and attempted to fly Maria and her family to Toronto so that Maria could perform live on air. Those plans were cancelled due to the weather. During an interview on HOT 103 in Winnipeg, Lady Gaga called into the show to tell Maria how moved she had been by her performance. Lady Gaga then invited an already surprised Maria to perform "Born This Way" with her at The Monster Ball Tour concert in Toronto in March, an offer which Maria enthusiastically accepted. On March 3, 2011, Maria joined Lady Gaga on stage in front of a packed audience at the Air Canada Centre, where together they performed an acoustic duet of "Born this Way" with Maria sitting on Gaga's lap, playing piano and Lady Gaga working the pedals. At the end of the song, Gaga turned the microphone over to Maria who thanked the audience and Gaga for allowing her to perform.

            Maria later rejoined Lady Gaga and her team of back up dancers for an up-tempo finale version of "Born this Way" culminating in a group hug and loud cheers from the audience.

            Maria got her dream, to sing with one of her idols Lady Gaga, come true. With this out-breaking fame there’s no stopping her from getting to the top. We look forward to her bright future and we wish her luck.