Ian Axel — American Musician born on March 28, 1985,

Ian Axel is an American singer and songwriter. After becoming well-known with his song "This Is the New Year", he developed a solo career, eventually joining forces with long-time writing partner, Chad King, to form the duo band A Great Big World in 2012... (wikipedia)

We met because Chad was in one of my classes, and I was looking for someone to write music with. I knew that he wrote his own music, and he seemed nice, so I found out he was going to be in a practice room, practicing his trumpet. He'd already said he was too busy to hang out or hear any new people or work on any music, so I stalked him.
Producers on Broadway approached us with an original script after relaunching ourselves as 'A Great Big World,' and wanted us to write the music. They asked us to make the music we would sing if we could, and so we can go a little crazier. We refer to it as 'our music on steroids.'
I started writing songs when I was real young, when I was 3 years old. The piano spoke to me - I don't remember when I wasn't playing piano. My second grade talent show was the first time I performed my own thing. I dressed up as Dracula and played a song called 'Monster Rock' that I wrote. And I won.
It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song.
I'm a big fan of piano-based rock music like Elton John, Ben Folds, and even Queen.