Chelsea and Cameron
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Chelsea and Cameron

Jersey City, New Jersey, United States | SELF

Jersey City, New Jersey, United States | SELF
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"Chelsea and Cameron"

If major label executives decided to start growing pop stars in test tubes – which they’d do in a heartbeat if they only knew how – they couldn’t come up with a product much more universally appealing than the Martinez sisters.
Chelsea, 21, and Cameron, 18, have flowing blonde hair, infallible powerhouse voices, girl-next-door cuteness and the kind of songwriting chops that could put ghostwriters like Linda Perry out of a job. It’s an exceptional, almost too-good-to-be-true phenomenon: a Beyoncé with an equally talented Solange; a Jessica whose sister doesn’t need to lip-synch; a Britney whose sister is good at something other than getting pregnant.
While Chelsea and Cameron didn’t spring from a petrie dish, genetics did play a large part in their development as artists.
“Our mother, Connie Harness, was Miss Pennsylvania, so we get a lot of it from her,” explains Chelsea during a mid-September interview. “We have always been interested in music and performing in front of people, it’s in our blood. … We’re really blessed that it comes naturally to both of us.”
Inspired by everyone from Elvis to the Jonas Brothers, the sisters churn out ear-candy dance-pop they compare to “newer Rihanna.” While the fact that there is now “older Rihanna” is unnerving, the comparison is fitting.
“It’s 50/50,” Chelsea says of the songwriting process. “We sit down together and throw ideas around until we decide on something that we both like. We also write the melodies and harmonies to our songs together.”
While the thought of 18- and 21-year-old sisters working together without clawing each other’s eyes out seems like a bit of a stretch, if not altogether implausible, Chelsea maintains that it’s not nearly as difficult as it sounds.
“Of course we get into fights. We argue about everything from song lyrics to what costumes we’re going to wear for our shows,” she admits. “We get over it really quickly, though. It makes things a lot easier for us because, yes, we’re sisters, but we’re also best friends.”
The York Springs-based sisters have sung and performed in theater productions together for much of their lives, but it wasn’t until they became writing partners about two years ago that a career in music became a viable option. Mom and Dad found the girls a manager, who found a team of producers, who found songwriters to help the girls round out their songs, resulting in a four- or five-song EP that will be available online within the year.
For now, music is the girls’ main concentration. Chelsea is taking a year or two off of college and Cameron has enrolled in cyber-school in order to free up time for writing and recording – necessary steps towards their end goal of signing a major label deal.

“This is something we’ve always wanted to do, and to be able to live our dream is the greatest thing in the world,” Chelsea says. “We know that we’ve been given these opportunities for a reason. Every time one door closes, another one opens, so we must be doing something right.” - Jeff Royer: Fly Magazine


Discography

Cause and Effect

Photos

Bio

Chelsea Martinez and Cameron Martinez have emerged as two uniquely talented pop singers who share the stage and recording studio as naturally as the close bond they share as sisters. Being sisters gives Chelsea and Cameron an unusual blend of vocal sounds unattainable by other singers. You might say their extraordinary talent and beauty are in their genes. Their mother is Connie Harness-Speck, who possesses a beautiful soprano voice, began her career as Miss Pennsylvania and a vocal talent winner at the Miss America Scholarship Pageant. Although Connie has been working tirelessly to manage and champion the dreams of her two very gifted daughters, she is no stage mother. Chelsea and Cameron spend every day perfecting their music and advancing their career with unyielding determination.
Ever since they could remember, Chelsea and Cameron have been writing songs. Their current repertoire includes more than 200 songs from which they’ve selected at least two dozen for the recording studio. Even when they were children, they were clamoring to join their mother onstage and perform. It soon became obvious to everyone that nothing was going to hold them back from a show biz career.
After years of community and professional musical theater, modeling agencies, dance studies, voice lessons, call backs at Disney auditions, performing as soloists and as a duet, plus the accumulating pile of songs they’ve written, the time is finally right for Chelsea and Cameron to take it to a whole new level. The response from music industry pros has been more than encouraging and it led to management impresario Fernando Gibson of New City Entertainment, credited for managing Grammy Award winner India Arie, and producer Warren J. McRae at Black Opal Entertainment in New York City. McRae’s association with pop and R&B artists include Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, and Chaka Khan.
McRae put the Martinez sisters to work, writing, arranging, working the harmonies, rehearsing, and recording. During their first day of work at the studio, he checked on them a few short hours later to see if they’d gotten started writing their first song. McRae could not believe his ears when the sisters gleefully announced, “We’re finished!” Before long, they had recorded five songs designed to capture the infectious beat, a special blend of pop and hip-hop, and a duet unequivocally honest, pure, and unique. Their harmonies are so perfectly blended that the listener may have difficulty knowing where one voice starts and the other ends. After recording four additional original songs at a studio near their home in Central Pennsylvania, they set out to conquer the pop music world and put together a new show featuring professional dancers.
The recordings turned out so well that the A&R departments of Universal and Epic Records contacted Chelsea and Cameron and said they were placing them on a talent watch list. In the meanwhile, Chelsea and Cameron have carefully built their professional team to help prepare them for their first break. In addition to Fernando Gibson and Warren McRae in New York, their father, Randy Martinez, has taken firm control of the business management and has called upon the legal advice of Joel Katz and his associates in Atlanta. Katz represents clients such as Christina Aguilera, Sheryl Crow, B. B. King, Coca Cola, and Clear Channel Entertainment. The excitement that the girls have generated has also brought Fred J. Lauver to the effort to promote their careers. Lauver, a long time family friend, is the personal manager to internationally known actress and recording artist Louise Robey.
The appearance of Chelsea and Cameron as MySpace music artists, introduced their first song, “Cause and Effect,” a hard hitting and lively dance song containing complex melodies and harmonies, a hook to grab the attention of listeners, and lyrics that captures the dilemmas and spirit of today’s youth and young adults. They sent the single out to a select radio test market and successfully received airplay in the U.S. and Canada. In October 2008, visits to their MySpace page exceeded 73,000 hits and the number of people who took the time to sign up as MySpace friends rocketed past 9,000—all before a single album has been released.
When singers and songwriters Chelsea and Cameron burst onto the music scene, it will seem like overnight success to some people, but the pop sisters have been living and breathing music most of their lives. Their family, friends, and fans know that it’s been their hard work and talent that got them this far. They are likely to become the next pop princesses at the top of the music charts, but one reporter declared, “Walt Disney would love their polite congeniality and sweet personalities, qualities that seem to be missing among some pop stars.” And who knows? Disney is just one possibility as record labels and casting agents pursue these two outstanding talents.