Sergio Calderon

Sergio Calderon was born on October 6, 2000, in Redwood City, California to Sergio Calderon Sr. and Josefina Calderon. He has a twin brother named Joseph and two older sisters, Sabrina Calderon and Yeni Jimenez.

His parents migrated from Mexico to the United States in order to give their children a better chance in life. Sergio attends Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley, California, where he is a senior. Since he was a child, he has been performing at his church and participating in Redwood City’s Fourth of July parade as a singer. Music has always been a part of his life. He was also interested in soccer. He was a good enough player to catch the attention of several college scouts. However, in 2016, he made the decision to set aside soccer so he could completely focus on music. In an interview with San Mateo Daily Journal, he stated, “I just decided to let that all go and start from scratch.”

The subsequent conversation with his parents proved to be difficult. They initially expected him to proceed in the athletic path. Eventually, they came to fully support him, as did his siblings.

Sergio Calderon had been experimenting with YouTube for a while. He set up one YouTube channel back on November 4, 2014. It received a lacklustre response. Despite this, he was undaunted and set up a second channel on March 21, 2016, and began uploading videos four days later. It accumulated a modest following, with a few members having connections in the music industry. During this period, Calderon was also regularly performing on Theatre Way in downtown Redwood City.

He then participated in ABC’s music competition series ‘Boy Band’ which pitted 30 young male vocalists against each other to find five eventual winners who would form a new band and get a record deal with Hollywood Records. Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter, the Spice Girls' Emma Bunton and Timbaland made up the panel of judges. The first season aired from June 22, 2017, to August 24, 2017. On the final episode, the winners were declared. They were Calderon, Brady Tutton, Chance Perez, Drew Ramos, and Michael Conor. The group was named In Real Life and they performed their first single, ‘Eyes Closed’, on the live episode.

The group has since released five more singles, ‘Eyes Closed Acoustic’ (2017), ‘Feel This Christmas’ (2017), ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ (2017), ‘Tattoo’ (How Bout’ You) (2018), and ‘How Badly’ (2018).

After the final episode aired, ‘Boy Band’ drew a considerable amount of criticism for the lack of diversity in ‘In Real Life.’ Several Twitter users complained about the fact that no African American contestant was selected among the final five.