The judges on The Voice Senior weren’t playing when Jimi Bellmartin took the stage. He sang just five words before all five judges slammed on their buzzers and swung around in their chairs.
He was that freakin’ good! And he should be, the Dutch sing of Indonesian decent has been performing since the 70s, according to Wikipedia.
Bellmartin released his very first single This Is My Lovesong/ The Winter Of My Life in 1970. He was also the singer of funk band The Soul Snatchers in 2007.
The four words that wowed the judges was “This Is A Man’s World.” He was singing James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s Word” as his audition song. According to Wikipedia, the song was written by James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome.
Brown recorded the song in 1966 and released it as a sing a year later. The song’s title is a play on the 1963 comedy It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
The song ended up reaching number one on the Billboard R&B chart and number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. Many have said that the song is chauvinistic since promotes stereotypes about men being the breadwinners and movers and shakers of the world.
But despite this, a man’s life is meaningless without woman, the song says. However, Newsome claimed that she actually wrote all of the lyrics based on her observations of the sexes and that Brown didn’t write any of the song and would sometimes forget to pay her royalties.
Clamike Records actually sued for copyright infringement of Newsome’s song “It’s A Man’s World (But What Would He Do Without A Woman.”
Brown’s version of the song ended up becoming a staple of his live shows throughout his career. Rolling Stone listed the song as 123 out of the 500 greatest songs of all time. They also called the song “biblically chauvinistic.”
When Bellmartin sang the song, he completely blew the audience and judges away.
I’ve never ever seen judges flip around so quickly in any version of The Voice.
“Professionally done, you actually always see it immediately when a real artist is on stage. Jimi is going to go very far, it simply cannot be otherwise, or he must go for the wrong numbers in the coming weeks. I would like to see him sing a Ballad later, I am curious how his voice would fit in with that,” said one YouTuber.
Bellmartin ended up opting for coaches Gordon and Gerard Joling.
He was so good that he ended up winning the 2018 Dutch TV show.
But it all started with that amazing audition. More than 6.3 million people watch that video of Bellmartin’s audition. You can watch it below.
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