On the heels of his EP It’s Never Really Over, the Toronto pop star is 17, finishing high school in lockdown and figuring it out as he goes.
Johnny Orlando still can’t quite believe it. “It blows my mind sometimes,” he says. “Especially when I’m doing concerts, or I’m out in public seeing fans and meeting people. I’ll be waiting in my car at a stoplight and people will cross the street just to take a picture with me. Those little moments put everything into perspective.”
He is 17. Between homework and skateboarding with friends, the Toronto-born singer, who started out posting acoustic covers on YouTube in 2011, has built a following of more than 6 million people on Instagram and more than 9 million on TikTok.
His new EP, It’s Never Really Over, is about the year he spent growing up, “in kind of an indirect way.” “When I was 16, I thought that was the end of my growth as a person for some reason,” he says. He laughs about it now. “Now, I look back on that period and realize how dumb it was of me to think that. I’d say I was very naive.”
The biggest change is that he stopped performing for other people. When he was younger, he admits, his personality shifted depending on who was around. “It was exhausting,” he says. “I was tired of it. Now, I just really don’t care. I’m myself and if somebody doesn’t like it, then so be it. That’s fine.”
He has a teenager’s gift for putting things in proportion. “In the grand scheme of things, we’re just little things floating on a rock in space,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. None of it does.”
He gets compared to Justin Bieber and Shawn Mendes, but the Toronto artists he looks up to are Drake, Alessia Cara and The Weeknd. He doesn’t buy the idea that the city suddenly got lucky. “I don’t think something was added to our water or anything,” he laughs. “There’s always been talent here, but only now is it being noticed.”
The pandemic has kept him home for his senior year. He filmed the video for “See You” in his bedroom, went thrift shopping with friends and ate at La Carnita and Terroni, his two favourite restaurants. “Everybody has their home and Toronto is mine,” he says. “It’s where I’ve grown up. I know the city from the inside-out, I know the streets and I know how to get everywhere. I just love it here.”
Some of it still stops him. “One thing I’ll never get tired of is that the Gardiner goes straight through the skyline,” he says. “I love seeing that when I’m driving downtown and always get caught staring at the buildings.”
He is about to turn 18 and graduate. “It’s such a weird time in my life,” he says. “Sometimes it feels like there are so many things that are uncertain with your future and it can feel like a bottomless pit.” He has made a kind of peace with that. “As you get older, you realize that nobody really knows anything. Anyone who looks like they have it figured out absolutely does not. We’re all just going through life and winging it.”
So who is Johnny Orlando becoming? “I have no idea,” he says. “Hopefully a better version of myself.”
The title of the EP turns out to be a question he asks himself. “It’s never really over, is it?” he says. “The answer is no.”
Words by Braeden Alexander. Photography by Justin Boruta.
