The 13-year-old musician from Sterling, Va., recently made a YouTube video to highlight and encourage people to vote for cancer research in the Pepsi Refresh contest. Her inspiration was her friend 5-year-old Taylor Love, of Ashburn, who suffers from neuroblastoma. Voting ends Thursday and the winning charity will receive $250,000. To watch, visit youtube.com/nasotang00.
The charity went from No. 4 to No. 2 in 72 hours. What’s it like knowing your music and video had an impact?
It was really cool to know that a lot of people now do know about Taylor’s story. I just think it’s a really, really cool thing and it’s great that I made an impact on votes.
Why did you choose “When I Look at You” to sing in the first video?
That song – if you really just listen to it – it’s pretty much just feeling a warmth in somebody just by looking at them and how much they mean to you. And Taylor does, she means so much to me and I would not want to lose her.
Have you always been involved in music?
My mom always told me I could sing before I could talk and I could dance before I could walk and everything. I know from home videos that I could sing before I could talk. I mean, I would just sing gibberish but it would always rhyme and it would have melodies.
What do you want to accomplish with your music in the future?
I knew I wanted to be a normal person but I also really just wanted to play music and I wanted to have fame, but not in the way that other people look at fame, in more of a helping kind of way. Like fame as people look up to you and people see what you do for other people. – Anna Waugh
