User:Monsterofain/Arthur Horeanu

Arthur Horeanu (born October 10, 2004) is a Romanian singer-songwriter. He started his career by uploading Covers in the Attic to YouTube as a tween before serving as the lead vocalist and main songwriter of the alternative metal band Fantazia from its 2014 inception until late 2017, making them the youngest band in Romania at the time.

After venturing into national television, he created the self-described "academia rock" music project Arthur in Neverland. While it initially functioned as a conventional band, the project has since transformed into his official stage name.

2004–2013: Early life and career beginnings
Arthur was born on October 10, 2004, in Arad, Romania. From an early age, he would often yearn to assume the role of the "man on stage" and would desperately tell his parents that if he didn't sing, he would "suffocate". Starting at the age of 5, his parents began taking him along to the ARTmaИ!a Festival, where they had accreditation for a local television station. This afforded him the opportunity to meet bands and artists such as Kamelot (in 2010), Lacuna Coil, Sonata Arctica, Tarja (in 2011), Delain, Edguy, Epica, My Dying Bride, Poets of the Fall (in 2012), Amaranthe, Haggard, and Xandria (in 2013), who would go on to become his music idols.

In 2011, after enrolling at the "Children's Palace" of Arad, Arthur made his stage debut performing HIM's "Join Me in Death". Attempting to study vocal music at the institution, he quickly realized that music deemed "age-appropriate" didn't quite align with his taste. This revelation became even more evident after he participated in a few singing competitions where he was repeatedly advised to sing well-known Romanian children's tunes like "Țestoasa Lulu" ("Lulu The Turtle") or "Melc, melc, codobelc" ("Snail, snail, codosnail") as alternatives to his preferred Delain, Nightwish, or even Maroon 5 songs. Thus, he became locally known as the child singer with a rather odd, yet eye-catching artistry. Stage collaborations with local bands like Charisma, Breathless, Corso and a spot on Ricardo Caria's "Cântându-mi visul" ("Singing My Dream") national tour soon followed. At the 2013 edition of the "Muzritm" national youth vocal-instrumental competition-festival in Vatra Dornei, he won first place in the vocal category. Arthur's first acting experience consisted of a series of commercials for the ARED real estate company, where he played the role of a nonchalant 8-year-old who initiates a group of business grown-ups into the world of "profitable and intelligent investments".

2013–2017: Covers in the Attic and Fantazia
On October 13, 2013, when he decided that YouTube would be the best way to promote himself and "reach a different audience than just parents, grandparents, friends, and... people at scholastic ceremonies", he uploaded a cover of Kamelot's "Center of the Universe" to his channel. Wanting to see "how people who didn't know him would react" to his singing, the project soon turned into a series titled Covers in the Attic, gathering over 880 thousand views in total and consisting of 68 covers (as of May 2024), even though the initial recordings were made in GarageBand, using an USB microphone. Several of them would soon receive exposure and praise: Deutsche Welle broadcast his cover of Helloween's "Power" on their PopXport show, both Thomas Youngblood and Tommy Karevik of Kamelot shared his cover of "Insomnia" on their Facebook pages — with Youngblood adding the phrase "Watch out for this kid!", Disturbed reposted his "Land of Confusion" collaboration video, Epica his "Storm the Sorrow" cover, and his take on Nightwish's "Nemo" was featured in the MetalSucks reaction video titled "Tarja Watches Fan YouTube Vocal Covers!".

In February 2014, after months of chatting in the hallways of the "Children's Palace" and a handful of jam sessions, 9-year-old Arthur, alongside 11-year-olds: guitarist Andrei Jipa (who would go on to join Dragoș Moldovan's backing band in 2020), bassist Robert Urban, and drummer Radu Ungur, founded the band Fantazia, which, at the time of its inception, was the youngest band in Romania. Arthur's childhood fascination with Michael Ende's The Neverending Story and other fantasy novels inspired the band's name, drawn from the Romanian spelling of the "magical land" Fantasia. Initially assuming the sole role of lead singer, he later became the band's keyboardist as well. The group's pivotal moment came at the 2014 edition of the "Muzritm" competition-festival: there, the band achieved a remarkable feat by winning 5 first places: one for the band as a whole and individual prizes for each of its members, as well as the only popularity prize of the festival. The group achieved genuine fame following their participation in the television show Next Star, receiving numerous praises from the judges and the public, hailed as "Romania's marvellous youngsters".

Thanks to a dedicated feature on Whiplash.net, the leading Portuguese-language rock and heavy-metal website in Brazil, the metal band Navighator reached out to Arthur with a collaboration proposal. He recorded the child voice on the track "Waves" in early 2016, which would eventually be released on their self-titled debut album in 2020. Another international collaboration that came about during that same period was "Catch Me If You Can", a duet with fellow "Children's Palace" alum Patricia Rus, written by German drummer and frequent Covers in the Attic collaborator Sina Doering for her debut album Chi Might (2016).

Fantazia went on to secure the coveted trophies at both the 2015 "Muzritm" and the 2016 "Cununa petrolului" ("The Crown of Oil") competition-festivals, the latter being held in Moreni. As a result of their participation in the Sibiu and Timișoara semifinals of the 2016 Global Battle of the Bands, the group earned the opportunity of playing at renowned music festivals such as ARTmaИ!a in 2016 (the very festival where Arthur first met his music idols and watched them perform live years before founding the band) and rEVOLution in 2017. Despite the band repeatedly teasing an album consisting of at least ten tracks, it never materialized. The songs potentially intended for the album, in the order they were written, include: "Bazar bizar" ("Bizarre Bazaar"), "Erou necunoscut" ("Unsung Hero") — released as a lyric video, "Labirint" ("Labyrinth") — whose music video won the Metalhead Award for Best Romanian Metal Video of 2016, "Timp întors" ("Time Turned Back"), and "Vise compromise" ("Compromised Dreams"). A 2017 New Year's Eve concert in front of the Arad Administrative Palace would ultimately be Arthur's final performance with Fantazia. He publicly announced his departure five days later on his Facebook page, saying: "After 4 years, more than 100 gigs, tens of awards and prizes and thousands of dreams, my part in Fantazia has come to an end."

2017–present: National television, Arthur in Neverland and hiatus
After commencing his studies at the Arad Folk School of Arts, Arthur launched the second season of the television talent show Vocea României Junior (The Voice Kids Romania) with his "Tainted Love" blind audition, prompting all three judges (Andra, Inna and Marius Moga) to hit their "I Want You" button; the audition would go on to be added to The Voice Global "Outstanding Rock Auditions in The Voice Kids" video. Following praises like "Tonight, you were a king!" (Inna) and "You sang like a king, a king of rock!" (Andra), along with intense battles of persuasion with heartfelt comments such as "Please join my team! You'd be the challenge of my life, I've never worked with a rocker before" (Andra), "Arthur is so good that I prefer to be a bit shameless [in this argument]", "[The people at home] are going to say that Arthur is fantastic, [these judges] are fighting like blind men over him" and "I'm glad you came to Vocea României Junior, and whoever you choose, know that you're an asset [to the show]" (Moga), he ultimately chose to be part of Team Moga. In the Battle Round, he was grouped with Ștefania Hotca and Dan Ioan Bultoc. Together, they performed Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and and were praised for being "the most energetic moment of the evening"; the performance later found its place in the Best of The Voice Kids "Top 10 Greatest Songs of All Time in The Voice Kids" video, gathering over 1 million views. Arthur was advanced to the semifinals, in which he performed Rag'n'Bone Man's "Human". Despite being hailed as Andra's favourite and "undoubtedly destined for greatness" by Moga, he was ultimately eliminated from the show by the latter.

Shortly after the show's broadcast, Arthur established the music project Arthur in Neverland (which would often be stylised as ARTHUR in NEVƎRLAИD and abbreviated as AiN), which initially symbolized the merging of his own artistic identity with that of the fellow "Children's Palace" alumni band Neverland, that dissolved around the same time as his departure from Fantazia. He served as its vocalist and keyboardist, leading a lineup that consisted of guitarist Rareș Bretfelean (who would go on to join The Motans' backing band in 2023), bassist David Stana, and drummer Luca Dumitru (who would go on to form Nonconformist Anthology in 2023). The group developed an "eclectic niche" of melodramatic rock, reminiscent of Finnish acts such as The Rasmus and Poets of the Fall, self-dubbing it "academia rock". They made their debut with the song "Legacy", which received national radio airplay and depicted a dystopian universe eerily similar to the contemporary world. Arthur in Neverland got to perform at the 2019 Neckarfest in Rottenburg, Germany, thus marking their first-ever show abroad, and spun-off the Poets of the Fall tribute segment called Fall of the Poets on that year's late-summer/autumn show cycle.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Arthur embarked on two television ventures due to the constraints on live audience performances. The first one involved a participation in the ninth season of the Romanian X Factor, where he auditioned with the One Tree Hill  theme song, "I Don't Want to Be". He was advanced to the next stage after securing an unanimous YES vote, with Loredana Groza, his mentor on the show, adding: "I had Mick Jagger in front of me, with a touch of Kurt Cobain. Arthur came in with a completely surreal vibe. He's one of my aces, maybe even the joker! When you have a joker, you can win any hand." He was ultimately eliminated in the Bootcamp after a performance of Ozzy Osbourne's "Mama, I'm Coming Home" that was seen as "pitchy at times", with Arthur later criticizing its editing, but was acclaimed by Loredana for being "an artist, a role model for young people, with [his] tenacity, ambition and craziness", for artists like Arthur inspire her. The following year, he auditioned for the short-lived programme SuperStar with "Blow" and a yet unreleased original song called "27". The process of evaluation appeared contradictory, with the judges genuinely enjoying the performance, but upon delivering the verdict, expressing comments such as "You're a child rushing to grow up" and "Why do you insist on being someone else?", leading to his elimination. In a later interview, he humorously remarked: "I was just a kid eager to visit the Buftea Studios, thinking Tim Burton would be shooting Wednesday while we were filming SuperStar, all leading to the hopeful prospect of meeting my idol. Was I in a hurry to grow up? Not really!"

He later announced that the "[Arthur in Neverland] story is currently on indefinite hiatus" by clearing out his main social media accounts and updating its profile pictures to a "blank canvas", choosing to focus on his education at the Babeș-Bolyai University.