A 7-year-old belted out the national anthem to a stunned crowd at the LA Galaxy game against the Seattle Sounders on Sunday night.
Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” to more than 25,000 Major League Soccer fans at LA’s StubHub Center. She appeared as the winner of the Galaxy’s first ever #GalaxySocial national anthem contest.
The MLS team’s public address announcer introduced the 3-foot-9 prodigy as “tiny but mighty,” before she delivered a soulful rendition with chops to rival Christina Aguilera.
“I was thinking that I cannot do anything wrong because it’s a really special song to America,” she told ABC News.
Following her knockout performance, social media erupted with praise and disbelief over the second-grader’s natural talent. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Galaxy’s famed forward, called her the “MVP of the game!” in a tweet to his more than 5 million followers.
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But this is not Malea Emma’s first brush with viral stardom. The LA native has been singing since she was 1 and was entering talent competitions in downtown LA by the time she was 3. She played Carnegie Hall as the winner of the American Protégé International Vocal Competition when she was only 5.
“She’s been singing forever, basically before she could speak,” her dad, Arman Tjandrawidjaja, told USA Today. “Sometimes we have to tell her to be quiet.”
The second-grader also has her own YouTube channel and an Instagram with over 16,000 followers. She said she practices with her dad every night and told CBS News that when she grows up, she hopes to be a “singer, doctor, actress and violinist.”
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