Coach of this season’s runner-up on BBC 1’s The Voice, will-i-am has congratulated winner Stevie McCrorie and winning coach Ricky Wilson, while insisting his own act, operatic soprano and my own favourite Lucy O’Byrne was the “real winner” of the talent show.
The former Black-Eyed Peas front man took to Twitter to tell followers that Lucy would have won on Twitter votes and blamed them for not telephoning in to vote for the Irish theatre usherette.
McCrorie, a Scottish fireman and audience favourite, immediately scored a number 1 on iTunes following his win, though whether anyone will remember him 18 months from now is open to question. Lucy, on the other hand, may enjoy a lucrative career in musicals and light opera (Susan Boyle seems to have done okay for herself, hasn’t she?), but it would probably take more than a talent show podium with a Cinderella back story to infiltrate the market for Grand Opera divas.
Sadly, Saturday evening’s other finalists, Sasha Simone and Emmanuel Nwamadi, whose progress might be being monitored by African Voice readers, both fell at the first hurdle. Simone’s performances in particular were nevertheless probably her best of the competition, while Emmanuel, in my view, flogged his falsetto gimmick to death and possibly suffered because of it.
Next up for talent show aficionados is Britain’s Got Talent, which benefits from not taking itself too seriously versus The Voice, which is altogether too ‘worthy’ and loses out in the entertainment stakes once the ‘blind’ auditions phase is completed, in my opinion.
