He rose to national attention in 2010 as a child singer, after his performance of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" went viral on YouTube and gained over 72 million views.

Chance independently released his second studio album, Portraits (2019), which explored synth-pop and was preceded by the singles "Shut Up" and "Timekeeper".

[citation needed] Chance's cover of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" was posted to YouTube on April 28, 2010, and for almost two weeks, the video generated low views.

The next morning, it was embedded on ryanseacrest.com, which reported finding the video via BuzzFeed, a website that attempts to track and predict emerging viral internet memes.

That afternoon, Ryan Seacrest and Ellen DeGeneres linked the video on their Twitter accounts,[11][12] as did celebrity Ashton Kutcher[13] later that evening.

[16]  The Wall Street Journal[17] and Los Angeles Times,[18] among other mainstream media, posted articles embedding the video and announcing the forthcoming appearance.

That morning, Ryan Seacrest posted another link on Twitter, this time to the video of Chance appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

[28] Chance made a second appearance on Ellen, airing May 26, 2010, on which he performed his original song "Broken Hearts", received a $10,000 award for winning Ellen's Wonderful Web of Wonderment contest, a brand new Yamaha piano, and was announced as DeGeneres's first signed artist to her new recording label eleveneleven.

The single also contained a remix featuring Filipino singer Jake Zyrus (then Charice), as well as studio versions of his covers of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" and "Fire" by Augustana.

[38][39] On February 5, 2011, Chance entered the National spotlight again with a performance of "Waiting Outside the Lines" on CBS's Early Show, while stopping through New York on Miranda Cosgrove's Dancing Crazy Tour.

[42] On September 15, he again appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk about his album, and also revealed that he had taken his first steps into acting, portraying a younger version of Jimmy Chance, the protagonist of Fox's comedy Raising Hope, in the series' second-season premiere.

In early July, he was back in the region for promotional and TV appearances in Hong Kong and Changsha (Hunan, China).

[58] Before the release of Somewhere Over My Head, from January 27 to February 1, 2016, Chance performed three shows in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.

During promotion of the EP, Chance was also featured on an electronic dance track by tyDi and Jack Novak titled "Oceans", which was released on February 19, 2016.

[61] In February 2016, he was picked as Elvis Duran's Artist of the Month and was featured on NBC's Today show hosted by Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb and broadcast nationally where he performed live his single "Hit & Run".

In June 2016, one month after releasing his new EP, Somewhere Over My Head, Chance returned to Asia for a short promo tour starting in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Penang in Malaysia, and Manila, Philippines.

On May 12, 2017, Chance's cover of "Hungry Eyes" was released as part of the soundtrack album for the television film remake of Dirty Dancing.

[74] In 2022, in an interview with Rolling Stone, he accused DeGeneres of being manipulative and felt "completely abandoned" by her by the time his second album was released.