Throwing it back to when I got the chance to talk to Christina Grimmie, way back when she was just exploding into the limelight! Catch a portion of the interview below and for the full article click HERE!

Welcome back to the Celebuzz Meet & Greet, where we talk with rising actors, musicians and entertainers before they hit it big. Watch out for these future A-listers!

There’s no doubt that we’ve all been on YouTube in search of hilarious videos, music from our favorite artists or to see someone cover a familiar song. What we don’t always expect is YouTube user to break out and make a name for herself. Well, major music contender and singing sensation Christina Grimmie has done just that and Celebuzz got a chance to talk to her about her journey to stardom!

Christina’s YouTube channel has received over 100 million views and is filled with videos of her recording amazing covers from popular songs. Accompanied by just a piano, she has gained more than one million subscribers on her channel over the last year! At just 17 years old, her first EP debuted at #31 on the Billboard chart and she recently ended a summer tour with Allstar Weekend and Selena Gomez + The Scene.

Recently, Christina was chosen as one of three up-and-coming artists to compete in the Coca-Cola collaboration project. Her fans voted her as the winner and she will now have the honor of performing at the Coca-Cola Red Carpet Live at the AMA’s this Sunday!

How did you start your music and YouTube channel?

When I was little, I always sang — always messed around with the piano. I’ve always been into music and YouTube didn’t come along until I was 15. My friend told me to put a video up and I didn’t want to do it. She said I should just do it and I gave it a shot and, well, here I am!

How has your life changed now there’s all this attention given to you?

I’m traveling a lot now. I have so many awesome fans that I love and they are kind of like family. I’ve really gotten to bond with them and I’m getting to really make music which is what I’ve always wanted to do.

This summer you got to show your music by touring with Selena Gomez + The Scene. How was that?

That was really awesome. I expected to be a lot more homesick than I was. It went really well and just getting to sing every night was really unbelievable. You know you love something when you’re comfortable singing in front of tons of people who maybe don’t know who you are and just want to see Selena. But I just want to sing!

What was something that you didn’t expect while on tour?

I certainly did not expect the amount of fans that I actually did have out there. I would do the signings after the entire show each night and there were so many people and, to me, that was mind blowing. I was like, “Why are there so many people at a Selena Gomez concert for me?” I got a lot of people saying, “I didn’t come here for Selena, I came here for you.” Hearing that is like insane and it means so much to me and I love them.

There’s plenty more on Celebuzz!

Happy Thursday.