Cameron Sharp: How a Lounge-Room Song for His 96-Year-Old Grandparents Hit 2 Million Views
The Forbes musician on the spur-of-the-moment video that went viral — Lukas Graham commented, Crowded House shared it — and the 17 years of grassroots grind that made him ready for the moment.
When Cameron Sharp posted a grainy video of himself playing guitar for his 96-year-old grandparents, he had no plan, no strategy, and frankly low expectations. "There was no intention there," he says. "I just thought, you know, it might be something different for content." He posted one of the clips and went to bed.
He woke up to about 900 comments and a couple of hundred shares. Two of those videos now have over 2 million views on TikTok. The singer Lukas Graham — the voice behind "7 Years" — left a comment. Crowded House shared it on their page.
It's the kind of overnight moment people assume is luck. Sit with Cameron Sharp for an hour and you realise it was 17 years in the making.
The video that wasn't meant to be posted
The story behind the clip is almost too wholesome. Cameron's dad came home from Woolies one afternoon and mentioned he'd bumped into a Forbes local. She'd asked him a simple question: why does Cameron never take his guitar up to sing to his grandparents?
"That kind of planted the seed," Cameron says. "And then one night I just thought, I'm going to do that." He took the guitar up with no intention of filming anything. But the atmosphere in the room was so good — real, warm, unhurried family time — that he changed his mind. "I thought, oh man, they're 96, I should just film this for me. I want to keep this as a memory." He propped his camera against his Yeti microphone. The quality was bad. The moment was perfect.
His grandparents, he's quick to add, are remarkable: 96, still living at home, still looking after each other, having only recently stopped driving. That, as much as the song, is what people responded to.
"When that stuff happens, you use it to your advantage. You just keep doing exactly what you're doing."
"Hard work beats talent"
If there's a thesis to Cameron Sharp, it's a phrase he returns to again and again: hard work beats talent.
It started early. He won his first talent quest at age 10 — "a short little fat kid," in his words — playing Coldplay's "Yellow" at the Forbes Town Hall. His voice was shaky, but he got through it, and he never forgot the feeling of looking out at teachers smiling back. "I got a buzz off the crowd, and I just was like, I want more of that."
By 14 he and his schoolmate Kent had busked their way into the top five at the Tamworth Country Music Festival — picked by roving scouts off the street — and played the main stage in front of around 4,000 people, covering Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait" and Green Day's "Good Riddance."
Then came the hard part. At music college after school, he felt completely out of place. "Everyone around you was just so much more talented naturally. I just had to work that little bit extra harder." He pulled out of uni early and made a decision: if he wanted to get better, he had to be out gigging — learning "how to sing in a pub for four hours straight without losing your voice," even when no one was watching.
No one wanted to be in a band with him, so he engineered a solo show worth watching: a loop pedal (the Ed Sheeran influence), a stomp box, and a commitment to becoming a better guitarist. "If you're going to be solo, it's one thing to be a good singer, but you always want to be working on your guitar playing."
The honest stuff: ego, nice guys, and social media
Some of the most useful parts of the conversation are the uncomfortable admissions. For years, Cameron says, he was too nice — always stepping back, letting others through, then going home feeling he'd missed his shot. "It feels so ugly to admit that you want it more than all these other people. But sometimes you just have to step over that person."
He's candid about social media too. He hates Instagram and TikTok, and points to phone-driven comparison as one of his lowest periods. His workaround is a rule he swears by: always use the first take. "Because it was the most authentic. When you do it again, you start trying to look better. It's stupid."
And he's clear-eyed about how crowded the field has become. "Literally anyone can put a phone in front of them, grab a guitar, sing a song — and they qualify as a singer. So if you're someone who's been working at it for years, it's harder to stand out, as funny as that sounds."
Why it resonated
Cameron's marketing mate told him the viral video was "the perfect thing" — not because it was polished, but because it finally showed people who he actually was. Before it, he reckons, people probably saw "just another musician who thinks he's God's gift." The grandparents clip cut straight through that.
Quoting the singer of Mumford & Sons, he says songwriting "should be the hardest thing you ever do" — that real songs need life experience and emotional intelligence, not just chords and words. It's the same instinct that made him hit post on a lo-fi video of an old couple in their lounge room: the real thing travels further than the perfect thing.
This is the very first episode of The Open Tab, and it's a cracker. Watch or listen to the full Cameron Sharp conversation →