Boston, MA. (Top40 Charts/ Krysta Youngs Official Website) - Escaping from the 'burbs of
Detroit back in 2002, Krysta Youngs headed straight for Boston's Berklee College of Music. It was there that she met producer Yan Perchuk, and began working on her debut. Perchuk saw potential in her MTV-savvy/Top 40-styled songs and set to work molding her eclectic compositions into a musically unified whole.
The collaboration resulted in dramatic success. Stories falls somewhere between Avril and Nellie MacKay, with equal amounts of style and substance. Krysta possesses a canny gift for storytelling, a delightful penchant for hi-octane, hugely melodic pop, and danceable grooves that just won't quit. Her performances throughout the album are captivating. Her songs-rockin', funky, heartfelt, and literate-often pack devastating impact.
On 'Leave Me Alone,' for example, one of Stories' pivotal tracks, Youngs wallops with a big lyric and a rock and roll roundhouse of a hook: 'Leave me alone, leave me alone / Don't come any closer / I'll punch you out, knock you unconscious / Leave me alone, leave me alone / This fight won't be over till one of us is dead.' 'I needed a release,' she says about the song. She got one again on the take-no-prisoners opener, 'It's Going Down,' in Youngs' words, 'a rock out, pick a fight, speed in your car kind of jam.' Krysta sings, 'Well, you thought you knew me, but all my demons are coming out / I'm breaking the silence, pulling the duct tape off my mouth.' Her lapel-grabbing urgency is fresh, winning, and irresistible.
It might confuse things, or at least go against type, to know that Krysta Youngs has a fetish for the color pink, an infatuation with Top 40 stardom, and a fabulousness that just won't quit. But it's the yin of her straight talk and the yang of her girlie girl side that makes her completely unique, and who she most definitely is.
Frankly, you've got to see it to believe it.
Krysta's CD release show supports Project Smile, a non profit organization dedicated to helping children.
Project Smile donates stuffed animals, coloring books/crayons, small toys and children's books to police and fire departments for police officers, fire fighters and paramedics to give to children in traumatic situations. Since their founding in October 2003, they have donated over 20,100 stuffed animals and have worked with 128 police and fire departments in New England, including Boston Police, Boston Fire and many local departments. Many of the children who receive these items were involved in car accidents, witnessed domestic violence, are victims of child abuse or other violent crimes, coping with the loss of a loved one, or sick/injured.
They also recently launched the Operation Elder Care program which provides elderly residents of nursing homes with gifts of stuffed animals. These items offer gestures of warmth and compassion to elderly who are transitioning to life in a nursing home, many of whom are sick and frail.
As part of its national efforts to help children, they maintain a reserve supply for use after large scale disasters. Within days of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, they had 3,700 stuffed animals driven directly to the Houston Astrodome for the thousands of children staying there, many of whom had lost their homes and all their possessions.
Shortly after the horrific wildfires in Southern California in 2007, they sent shipments of hundreds of stuffed animals for the many children who had lost their homes.
