A new beginning!

Here, have a happy for the new year:

Video posted by A Great Big World


That video is just reportedly just as unscripted as it looks, according to Chad King and Ian Axel (aka A Great Big World), in a Reddit AMA. They were at a friend's holiday party when Lief Parton (another friend) came up with the idea, so they just filmed it there and then, using the partygoers present. In their words, "[W]e just wanted to capture pure, unscripted joy," and who can't use some of that?

In a 2014 Huffington Post interview, the two had this to say about the song:

In 2008 we went to the most epic New Years party ever in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. On our way back, we felt incredibly inspired by life. This song came from a place where making changes and resolutions in our lives seems to only happen once a year, and we feel like they should be and can be made every day.

***

King's birth name is Chad Vaccarino (he changed it in 2015), and I have no reason whatsoever to think he is Jewish. However, this song was originally released on Ian Axel's debut solo album (and later rereleased as an A Great Big World song), and Axel is Jewish. The two met at NYU and have been writing together ever since.

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