Claire Rosinkranz grew up genuinely surrounded by music — a composer father, a singing-and-piano mother, an opera-singer grandmother on one side and a children's-music songwriter on the other.
She'd been filling notebooks with lyrics since she was eight, homeschooled and helping her dad write jingle melodies on the side, and 'Backyard Boy' was the last song she wrote for what became her debut EP, almost an afterthought.
It went viral on TikTok during the pandemic when she was 16, eventually passing a billion total streams, earning RIAA Platinum certification, and winning Best Breakthrough Song at the 2021 MTV VMAs. She signed to Slowplay Records, a Republic subsidiary, off the strength of a song she almost didn't include.