SPEECHLESS - Opera Singer /Voice Teacher FIRST TIME reaction to REN'S --'FOR JOE'

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If we have not met before, Hi I am Nikoletta. A professional opera singer and voice teacher with degrees in Voice Performance from Indiana University and another top university in the United States. During the day I teach people how to sing and during other parts of the day I do reaction videos! I have performed on prestigious stages worldwide, including in Germany, Austria, Greece, and across the US. While I do specialize in classical opera technique, I am also comfortable coaching and teaching all genres and styles of singing. Join my online communitty for FREE where I can help you become the singere who have always dreamet fo becomming! — click this like to join now!
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[Hexenkind]

Ren wrote this here at the release of this song on june 29th 2023:

"After Joe died the visits I paid to North Wales were fleeting. By being somewhere new I could be someone new. Brighton didn't just offer me a new chapter, it offered me a new book, and a whole new character.

On Monday I would make the difficult journey home because of music and the fund raising efforts of my incredible following. We managed to raise an incredible £21, 000 for the RNLI, an incredible team of volunteers, who risk their lives without pay to aid calls of distress from British shores. The night Joe went missing they were out on the choppy stretch of water between Anglesey and the Mainland, until 5am, looking for Joe, without pay, from the goodness of their hearts. They continued the search efforts for the entire following week until hope dwindled. They owed us nothing, and gave us everything.

Yesterday I decided to pay a visit to Joe's mum and dad. I was asked to play them the new live session I recorded in Calgary. It was probably the most nervous I've been playing someone a video that I'd made. The topic isn't an easy one, especially for parents who have lost an incredible son. I nervously hit play, and the gravity of what I was showing sunk in and I began to cry. In the end we sat in silence, silently sobbing. Joes mum turned to me and smiled and we hugged, and I felt much lighter.

It made me really realise I guess what I've always known. Music is far more than music. It's a channel of communication for the things that are impossible to say. It's a bridge between the living and the dead. It's a way to stay immortal. It's a way to resurrect the dead. It's a universal language. It cuts down barriers of the parts of you which are encapsulated in steel cast iron. It allows frozen rivers to thaw and become un-stagnant. I owe myself, my life, everything I am to music. Music is the closest thing to god I know. I am so grateful to be doing what I do and to tap into this mystic force. My life, my energy, myself, I eternally devote to it."

[jacks]

Yeah, Ren said in an interview that he'd had a lot of therapy and does know that it was a situation he had no control over... but... accepting it with your mind, does not necessarily mean accepting it with your heart, so - who knows. Also, I kinda think Ren was never supposed to save Joe, but Joe did save Ren

[sharis]

What I love is that because of Ren, Joe is being remembered. In a way he now belongs to all of us. For Joe's family and friends, for Ren, I hope there's a small comfort in that.

[piwaka]

The "Freckled Angel" reference is simply that Joe was covered in freckles from head to toe. Ren made his first album from his bedroom while very ill, dedicating it to Joe by calling it Freckled Angel. There is also a restaurant called Freckled Angel on Dale Street, Menai Bridge (where Joe went missing from). If you are brave enough, Ren's Chapters 1 - 8 are narrated live by Ren outlining his journey through his illness. In chapter one he talks about how Joe's death kept him (Ren) from taking his own life. Ren opens himself up like no other artist does and leaves it all out there with honesty.

[davidfoster]

He did a donation to the local search and rescue team, crossed the amount of the cheque and doubled it and expressed how much he appreciated what they did, they are all volunteers in the UK

[Lo-gains]

It is impossible to not tear up watching this. Every single time I watch I end up a sobbing mess. Thanks for another great reaction.

[DandelionCollab]

I think Ren doesn't perform these pieces. He IS it. He creates himself fully and we have been given a gift more than we deserve when Ren shares his bare soul.

[IanJones-hurn]

Sat at work watching tears flowing from my eyes, does me every time that dammed Ren

[T_Witti]

He started raising money for the RNLI on June 1st (Joes birthday) 2023 saying that he'll also donate 50 % of the profit on all copies of the Freckled Angels album that will go directly to Joes family. Initially there was a 5k target for the RNLI but he raised 14.500 but he made it 15k to satisfy his inner OCD. 2 days later (probably due to more donations, not 100 % sure) there were 21k for the RNLI and 8, 5k for Joes parents. They've been saving up for a camper van and this would cover it. They named the van Joe. He also showed them For Joe and they all cried together and he said it was a beautiful moment he was avoiding for a long time ("the distance is my plastercast"). For Joe premiered a day after that.

This is what Ren wrote on Joes birthday, I know it's long but it's so .. Ren <3

"Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write.
Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday.

I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again.

This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary.

Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe.

Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then.
On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left.

Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late.

Joe’s body was never found.

Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe.

As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.

My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew.

Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release. You can turn on notifications by following the link in the comments below

During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised.


Raising money for RNLI :

[seth]

The lament at the start is so touching
Also the Callum he mentions in his list of friends, accidentally drowns 6 months later. Ren wrote an instrumental piece in tribute to him
'Mackay'

[duncanpaton]

Ren was sent from a higher being and for that i am truely thankful🎉

[raisnaix]

you NEED to react to his song "McKay" - the most painfully beautiful song ever.

[horsnpony]

PS. Your kitty is adorable. I have his twin. 🐈‍⬛Cats are stress sponges. They’re so sensitive to our pain. It’s interesting to see the two moments when your cat decided you needed attention. Your “special surprise” was absolutely gorgeous and filled with waves of emotion. Thank you!

[Thomas.Saunders]

Thanks for doing this one. You're very brave to watch this song on cam.

[madsquishy]

God, this song just GUTS me every single time. Ugh. It just rips my heart out and somehow also puts it back together. To go through something like that and then be able to turn it into such a beautiful piece of music? It's just insane. And I love him for it. He plays that piano like it's part of his own body and the same with his guitar. The talent is just off the charts with him. That's why he'll never be a main stream artist. He's better than that. He's special and his music is just a reflection of that. He speaks for a lot of people that can't or feel like they can't. It's cathartic.
Edit to add: WOW!! That was so beautiful hearing your oohs and ahhs in the background. Made it so much more haunting. Your voice is stunning ma'am!

[LasseStaldMadsen]

Losing someone at that age changes you.
My friend Chris - 23yo - part of the crew. We'd hang every day after work, the weekends. Made music Did stupid young boys stuff, got in a bit of trouble, all the usual, sneaking backstage at concert you name it, we were invincible...

Testicular cancer.
Out of no where.
I was visiting my family when I heard. 5 days before I would be home.
He died the day before I got home. He was too weak to even answer his phone so I never got to say goodbye or even tell him I was on my way.
15 years and I am balling like a f*cking toddler, life became real that day - a little too real.

[veronicaleontin]

Not me crying at Freckled angels for the thousand time. When he beats himself in the chest....

And I get you with his heart rate and breath, at the beginning, plus the crying. ❤

I am also glad you did this one!

[Pacomotto]

I’d love to see you react to Precious by The Big Push. Further down the Ren rabbit hole we go

[sonicfear]

I knew of all the reactors, you would feel this down your the very soul. Ren rarely exposes such tenderness in his music, but this truly captures the very essence of his soul.

[chucknorris]

The way you close your eyes and feel the music is how everyone should hear music. Ren makes it so easy to do that. Just phenomenal.