Steve Grand on dark side of fame: ‘The criticism and attacks of all kind came just as swiftly as did the praise’

As you know, Steve Grand exploded into the public eye in the summer of 2013 when his video All-American Boy went viral.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard it over the Fourth of July weekend and absolutely loved it.

Since then, the singer-songwriter has been navigating fame as an independent artist and admits in a video he posted on YouTube today that it has not always been easy.

‘I have been through some shit and I think a lot of people don’t think that just by looking at me,’ he says. ‘We seem to make a lot of judgements and assumptions about people by the way they present themselves, by the way that they look.

‘We’re all carrying out own baggage.’

Grand admits that he has let mean comments made on the internet get to him in the past.

‘I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety my whole life but the way I was allowing the words of others affect that way I feel about myself really sunk me to new lows.’

For all the support he got from fans, there were those online critics who attacked him for his music, his videos, his body, old modeling photos, or for his selfies on social media.

‘The criticism and attacks of all kind came just as swiftly as did the praise,’ he says. ‘I let a lot of things that were said get to me a lot of the time.’

But Grand says he’s now learned to not take it all so personally and to actually find constructive things in what some people have to say even of they are being indelicate in how they are saying it.

‘I’m certainly not done struggling with things – I know this is how life goes. But this is a big milestone for me … I really do feel okay about myself and I can’t tell you how liberating that is. … So in some ways thank you mean internet commentators.’

The singer wants to make clear that he’s not claiming victimhood and that his video is not about Internet hate.

‘It’s about learning that the real struggle is feeling okay enough with yourself that you don’t fall apart every time someone has an unpleasant opinion of you,’ he writes on his Instagram page.