Young piano prodigy Andy Morris surprised his classmates with a note-perfect performance of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” in the cafeteria earlier this year, picking up 6.9 million views on YouTube. The young pianist confidently plays his own arrangement which includes the vocal melody on piano, to shocked reactions from classmates.
Morris also plays “Glimpse of Us” by Joji and “Mia & Sebastian’s Theme Song” by Justin Hurwitz, which is from the La La Land soundtrack in the video. He plays his own unique arrangements of all three, without skipping a beat at any point. There’s a variety of reactions, including open-mouth stares, people filming and others completely forgetting about their lunch and phones to watch.
Andy Morris is a 24-year-old American pianist, who was born on October 7, 1998. He’s a star on YouTube and TikTok, having gained 1.05 million and 3.5 million subscribers on the platforms respectively. He is known for posting covers, his original music and piano challenges, as well as taking requests for songs from his fans.
His viral video showcasing “Viva La Vida” is his most popular on YouTube, but Morris also has a half a dozen other videos with over one million views. One of the other popular videos from his channel features Morris dressed up as villain Mike Myers and playing the theme from the 1978 slasher flick Halloween, as you can hear below.
Morris certainly has a knack for creating viral videos, as the slasher video is titled “This got 100M views on TikTok: Michael Myers plays piano”, which is bound to get some attention. And it certainly did, with 2.2 million views on YouTube so far. In the second half of the video the young pianist mixes in the Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg classic “Still D.R.E.” while a buddy, also dressed as Myers, dances along.
It’s got a long way to go until it catches up with the popularity of Morris’s “Viva La Vida” video though. Coldplay released the song in 2008 as the second single from their fourth album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. Morris titled his YouTube cover of the song “Everyone recognizes this song immediately…” which is undoubtedly true as the tune was an international smash hit for the band.
“Viva La Vida” enjoyed critical acclaim and went to #1 in both the US and UK, becoming the band’s first song to achieve such a success. It picked up Song of the Year at the 51st Grammy Awards and has subsequently been listed on numerous best songs lists for the year and decade, including big name publishers such as the BBC, MTV and Rolling Stone.
The song is led by Chris Martin’s hooky vocals and an upbeat piano vamp, making it perfect material for a solo piano interpretation. “Viva la Vida” is a Spanish title and was taken from a painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who had numerous chronic health issues. The title can be translated as “Long Live Life”. Martin commented on the meaning of the song, stating “[Kahlo] went through a lot of pain, of course, and then she started a big painting in her house that said ‘Viva la Vida’, I just loved the boldness of it.”