Difference between revisions of "Rob Cantor"

During Tally Hall's hiatus, in 2012 Rob opened his website '''robcantor.com'''<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120423214225/http://www.robcantor.com/ robcantor.com Circa 2012] April 23rd, 2012. Archived Via The Wayback Machine.</ref> (Now defunct). About this time he also made a SoundCloud account and uploaded multiple new songs. Some of these included: [[Cuckoo]], [[Country Good]], and [[Christian Bale Is At Your Party]]. One of these was [[Shia LaBeouf]], which was uploaded to Soundcloud on the 3rd of March 2012,<ref>[https://soundcloud.com/rob-cantor/shia-labeouf Shia LaBeouf on Soundcloud] Shia LaBeouf. 3rd March 2012. Rob Cantor. ''Soundcloud.com''</ref>.

This song soon became a viral hit and would gain recognition from actor Rob Lowe<ref>[https://twitter.com/roblowe/status/423352177461972992 Rob Lowe tweet] ''twitter''.</ref> and eventually Shia LaBeouf himself<ref>[https://twitter.com/thecampaignbook/status/396017996571082754 Shia Labeouf tweet] ''twitter''.</ref>. The track also went to the front page of the group blog Boing Boing<ref>[https://boingboing.net/2012/04/18/a-song-about-shia-labeouf-mas.html A song about Shia LaBeouf: mass murdering, cannibalistic superstar by Dean Putney. BoingBoing] ''boingboing''.</ref>, which would help the track reach half a million streams on SoundCloud.<ref>[https://hitsdotcom.tumblr.com/post/22221351087/half-million-plays-achieved HITSdotcom Tumblr post about Shia LaBeouf] ''tumblr''.</ref>

In 2013, Rob wrote some audio cues for television shows with composer David Benjamin Steinberg. These were for shows like Island Hunters, Friends To Lovers, and Life with La Toya.<ref>[https://www.ascap.com/repertory#/ace/works/publisher/4077757/ROB%20CANTOR%20MUSIC ASCAP songwriters database page for Rob Cantor.] Accessed February 22nd, 2022. ''ASCAP''.</ref>

2014 would see the announcement of [[Not A Trampoline]], Rob's first solo album, which the members of [[Rob's Street Team]] would help to promote. The album was put up for preorder along with two tracks, [[Old Bike]] and [[Ghost]]. The music video for Old Bike was directed by [[Andrew Laurich]] and was uploaded to YouTube on March 4th 2014.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z4iWAnrMGU OLD BIKE - Rob Cantor.] ''YouTube''.</ref> The album would be fully released on April 14th, 2014.

2014 also saw the recording and release of an extended live version of Shia LaBeouf, which too, became a viral hit. The music video for this version features the titular star at the end, clapping for their performance. The video would go on to accumulate 82 million views, and Rainn Wilson of The Office fame would tweet out the video on Twitter<ref>[https://twitter.com/rainnwilson/status/525464011098185728 Rainn Wilson tweet] ''twitter''.</ref>. The part with Shia clapping would become a popular GIF on the internet as well.

Another internet hit of Rob's would be [[Perfect]], a video showing Rob and Andrew performing the song with Rob doing 20 celebrity impressions.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6PxMRUgmbA 29 Celebrity Impressions, 1 Original Song - Rob Cantor.] ''YouTube''.</ref> This, however, was a farce. In truth, Rob hired multiple professional celebrity impersonators to do the impressions for him, lip-syncing to their recorded tracks with some clever editing after-the-fact.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDikWvEPpLg The Making of "29 Celebrity Impressions, 1 Original Song".] ''YouTube''.</ref>