The Voice – Won’t Do That Again

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Obviously, because I’m writing about it, my audition for “The Voice UK 2016” didn’t yield anything more than a “Thank you” and a boring speech about “not giving up on your dreams.” Had I passed the audition, I’d have had to sign contracts that would make me essentially their property until I’m eliminated from the competition. I would not be able to share anything on social media, and my comedy shows would probably be monitored to make sure I’m not sharing anything there. I also would have to be totally available to them over a substantial period of time, which meant likely no trips to the US. So to me, it’s not that much of a disappointment that they passed on me.

At my “The Voice” auditions, I was surrounded by people who wore their dreams on their sleeves, doing vocal warm-ups at every opportunity, and name-dropping if they could. I refrained from name-dropping, though I was mildly tempted to throw out names of people I’ve done cocaine with. One girl who was in my group had all the diva stuff worked out, as a budding opera singer. Before our group went into the audition room, I could hear her practicing in the toilet, no doubt reveling in the echo chamber effects. It seemed that every audition room I walked by had some young starlet belting out Adele or Jessie J tunes with that “why settle for one note when you can hit 20” attitude. I felt sorry for the judges (no celebrities were present for these auditions) who had to listen to this for an entire week, probably on 10 to 12-hour days, and to have to wean out who among these wannabes had the potential for a future possible 15 minutes of fame.

Our group was called in, and nearly everyone was about a third my age or less, most of whom had no show biz experience to speak of. Most were very nervous, though the one guy I sort of bonded with was in his 30’s and had sung with rock bands, but also knew like myself that he wasn’t what the show was looking for. He had also auditioned for “X Factor” a couple weeks earlier, and sure enough it was the cattle call I would have expected it to be. He sang an Oasis song I’d never heard before, but from his singing, you had a reasonable idea of how the original sounded. Next to myself, I liked his performance best. The resident diva chose to sing “I Will Always Love You” (NO-O-O-O!) in Italian (DOUBLE NO-O-O!) in the style of Katherine Jenkins (TRIPLE NO-O-O!). She actually wasn’t as terrible as I’d expected she’d be, but probably only as good an opera singer as the Mrs. in “Citizen Kane.”

Me, I was the only one to sing an uptempo song, The Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next To You.” I sang all the parts, and if you remember the song, it trades off lead vocals from tenor to bass to falsetto. I figured this would show off my range and be entertaining. I wasn’t perfect, but still interesting enough that I could see the judges (one a producer for the show, the other a voice coach) smile a couple times. There were three that went up after me (11 of us total), to varying degrees of mediocrity. We were then dismissed out into the hall for a few minutes while the judges discussed our fate.

That deliberation only took about five minutes tops before they called us back in. I knew when the one judge began to speak about past winners/finalists on the show who failed their first audition, and how we shouldn’t give up on our dreams, that none of us were going to be put through. Sure enough, that’s what happened. I think the only thing that would have disappointed me was if they’d put Diva through. As we all trudged out together to the lift, we passed by a group of hopefuls who stared at us with sympathetic faces, to whom I said “Our dreams are shattered.” Only a few laughed at that, but I really didn’t care at that point. I had the experience, have now done it twice, and there won’t be a third, but then can anyone name any of the past winners? It’s not the springboard to fame that it thinks it is, but it soldiers on anyway.

July 11th, 2015



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