"Grace Kelly" Singing Challenge

About

The Grace Kelly Singing Challenge or "I Could Be Brown" Harmony Challenge is a harmonizing challenge on TikTok where users try to accurately sing a section of Mika's song "Grace Kelly" in the correct pitches to create a harmony with their own voice and test their singing ability. The trend began in May 2021 and spread over the course of the year. It was notably performed by Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell in September 2021.

Origin

On May 15th, 2021, TikToker^[1] @daragh_daly posted a video harmonizing to Mika's "Grace Kelly" in a variety of different pitches, attempting to create an accurate harmony with only his voice (shown below). Each vocal and pitch change is represented via an on-screen checklist. The video gained over 1.3 million views in four months.

Spread

The trend spread steadily over the course of the year under the hashtag "#gracekelly," which gained over 132 million total views across its associated videos by September 2021. On May 18th, 2021, TikToker^[5] @sampopemusic posted a video taking the challenge, gaining over 10 million views in four months (shown below).

On August 6th, Hank Green attempted the challenge on TikTok,^[3] claiming on the video he can only do the first four parts and needs people to Duet him with the other parts, gaining over 1.5 million views in a month (shown below, left). On August 8th, TikToker^[4] @nickmoore_official posted a duet with the video, gaining over 4.9 million views in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

On September 14th, actor Ryan Reynolds posted a video doing the challenge to his TikTok^[2] page @vancityreynolds in which Will Ferrell joins halfway through, gaining over 49 million views in a day (shown below). Insider^[6] reported on the video that day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References