The lights were shining in his face, the Brushy Creek elementary school cafeteria was packed with familiar and unfamiliar faces. Fifth grade Andrew Tran stepped up on stage and gave it his all, delivering his first ever public performance by singing Stand By Me for his fifth grade show. This would be the first of many performances Andrew put on.
Andrew Tran has turned his passion of singing into something bigger. Andrew now has 11 singles on Spotify and over 30,000 followers on Instagram. What was once a hobby for him when he was a little kid has turned into a future.
“One of the things I’ve noticed, he’s just very loud. He’s loved music since he was born. When he was probably nine months old, we went on this road trip with friends, and the entire time he had songs that he would like. So if you’re playing something, he would laugh, and he got really hooked on Jason Mraz’s on yours. anytime we turned it off or switched to another song, he’d start crying,” Andrews mother Randy Tran said, “so we’d go back to it and he’s like all happy again. So we drove like that for three hours on this road trip, none of my friends can ever listen to that song again. That was kind of the beginning of like “this kid really likes music”,”
In 2024 Andrew got chosen to participate in the 20th annual GRAMMY camp where like-minded young artists can learn from other artists. In 2024 the guest artists were Blue De Tiger, Maren Morris, and Jeremy Zucker. The camp is a 7-day long camp taking place in Los Angeles.
“It was really interesting and such a great experience to get to meet other kids who were really passionate and just had such a great love for music. And it was very motivating because no one viewed music as just a far off dream. Everyone was actually very motivated to try to do their best at it,” Andrew said, “I’ve collaborated with a lot of those Grammy camp students already. I was very excited. to be a part of all of that. And then, also, they were hosting it at the Village Recording Studios, which is, like, a historical recording show. It’s the site where they built straight up recording studio bay for Stevie Nicks which is very cool,”
Tran didn’t let his young age stop him from pursuing his passion for music in his earlier years. Even before he was old enough to drive or participate in some of these classes or programs Andrew would still shoot his shot despite what the age requirements may have been.
“I picked up the guitar right whenever COVID hit because I saw that there was a class that Berkeley, the School of Music, was hosting, that was a songwriting workshop. And the age range for that was 18 and up. I was 11. So I emailed them and asked them if I could audition for it and they were just like, yeah, sure, like send the song in and we’ll, you know, we’ll see,” Andrew said “And so I got a guitar and like taught myself how to play guitar on using like Google images of people like playing guitar. And then, eventually kind of transitioned the YouTube videos to teach myself,”
Once Tran taught himself how to play guitar, his next venture was song writing. After versing himself on the structure of writing a song he sat down and started writing. Tran now has 11 original songs on Spotify.
“Every song kind of comes a different way and I watch a lot of interviews and I read a lot of articles about my favorite musicians and they talk about different ways that music comes to them. Ryan Tedder, one republic, talks about one of the ways he writes sometimes is he’ll go in and he’ll build out a full track of music, and then he’ll riff on it, and then chat to find a melody, and then find the words that match. And sometimes I do that,” Tran said “ And then sometimes there are things that I actually feel like writing down and saying, ’cause it just helps to put things out in writing just to process them. Usually, anytime I write, like, poetry or something like that, it always comes with music. I never really have to, like, consciously think about it. It just kind of makes sense,”
Tran found writing to be more than just a hobby or a qualifier for a camp but it instead turned into a release of sorts. Writing soon became a form of expression and therapy for Andrew.
“I think music does all those things for him, and then he often says it gives him a language, in a way of processing his emotions and what he’s feeling when he writes, that’s what he tells me,” Randy said “ I think it’s a language of sorts to him. Or maybe a puzzle, like mathematics. It’s kind of all the same, right? A painter may see in colors and lines. They paint their feelings and ideas. Andrew sings and strums his feelings,”
In his songs Andrew likes to discuss current events in order to process them and in hopes it can help others process what’s happening.
“So the first song I ever wrote was called Hey Friend, and that’s at least where the title of my first album comes from. It was right, during 2020. And so you had the Black Lives Matter protests happening. You have, COVID and, like, basically all these massive issues and these protests happening, basically,” Andrew said, “And so lyrically in the song, it’s, it’s a song that asks the question of, like, are we gonna be all right? And like, how do we kind of make sure we maintain kindness and preserve that portion of humanity during times where people are going through a lot, you know?”
After he wrote Hey Friend in 2020 he continued writing music, in 2024 he started releasing his music to spotify. In late 2025 Tran wrote the song Eden, a song about a recent breakup. Eventually in 2022 Tran made an instagram account for his music @andrewtranmusic, the account now has over 36 thousand followers.
