YouTuber Costco Piano Girl touched the hearts of shoppers with an impromptu piano duet of “Someone Like You” by Adele, with a little help from a piano salesman, going viral in the process.
14 million viewers watched the clip on Costco Piano Girls’ channel, with the top comment pointing out the heart-warming reaction from a father in-store, who swayed and danced to the song with his young child in his arms.
Costco Piano Girl doesn’t reveal her real name on her channel, but states that she’s a Korean-American who moved to SoCal to pursue her dream of becoming a pianist and musician. She does however name her duet partner: Yamaha piano salesman Justin Romanowich.
She later created another viral video at Costco, this time performing Ariana Grande’s megahit “Thank U, Next” as a piano duet with piano salesman Izzy, which you can hear below.
The pair enjoyed a much cleaner recording the second time around, as in the older video of “Someone Like You”, some enthusiastic children played the pianos nearby, creating a bit of cacophony among the beautiful music of the duet. Costco Piano Girl explained that the viral video of “Someone Like You” happened after she walked into a Costco in Torrance, California and heard piano salesman Justin playing 1970s hit “Killing Me Softly with His Song”. The pair decided to jam on some Adele while Costco Piano Girl’s boyfriend filmed. Justin picked the key on the spot and the pair ripped into it!
The completely unrehearsed performance has since attracted tens of thousands of views on a daily basis as well as nearly 4000 comments.
Costco Piano Girl is a classical-trained pianist and she shows off a variety of performances on her YouTube channel of the same name.
She’s quite a versatile performer, as seen in her electronic music cover of the main theme of cult Korean survival horror series Squid Game. She also shows off her classical chops, as you can hear on her third most popular video, which is a virtuoso piano performance of the third movement from Maurice Ravel’s Sonatine at a professional venue. Undoubtedly her most popular video will remain her Costco duet of “Someone like You” though.
The song also remains Adele’s biggest hit, having gone 6x Platinum on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as being the third most downloaded single of all time in the UK. Adele wrote the downtempo piano ballad with US producer Dan Wilson and drew on the experience of a boyfriend breaking up with her for the lyrics.
“Someone like You” was the second single from Adele’s second album 21 (2011). Both “Someone like You” and first single “Rolling in the Deep” were massive international crossover hits for Adele. Adele’s record label initially had only modest sales expectations for 21. The album nonetheless became a sleeper hit and eventually topped the charts in more than 30 countries as well as becoming the best selling album worldwide for both 2011 and 2012.
If you would like to see more from Costco Piano Girl, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel.