If you watch or work on a reality competition show for long enough, you’re bound to see just about everything.
On the one end, you have some truly misguided performers who think they are absolutely incredible… until they find out from the judges that they’re not. In the middle, you have people who are promising and definitely have talent, but aren’t quite good enough for the show yet because they need to practice more. On the other end, you have the people who are incredibly skilled and poised who go on to compete in, and sometimes win, the show.
Still, you’ve probably never seen an audition quite like this one.
This audition came from The X Factor Ukraine, one of many of the franchise’s various shows.
Just like the other shows in the franchise, The X Factor Ukraine has performers walk out on stage, introduce themselves to the judges, do their audition and then get voted forward or eliminated. Much like other reality singing competition shows, the game of the show is direct competition between the contestants themselves. In this episode, a young woman walked out to the middle of the stage and introduced herself as Aida.
From the very beginning of the audition, she looks very confident.
As she speaks to the judges, she explains that she has picked a song by Polina Gagarina.
Although she’s not a household name in America, Gagarina is a famous Russian pop singer who is recognized and loved the world over. The song she is singing is “Lullaby,” one of Gagarina’s more popular pop tunes. As the song begins, Aida smiles at the audience and the music behind her swells.
Before long, she’s belting out the lyrics with pitch perfect accuracy!
The audience is caught by surprise because her voice sounds absolutely perfect!
Even the judges sit up in their chairs, some of them taking their earpieces out because they can’t believe what they’re hearing. As the song progresses, Aida keeps belting out the song but the judges’ faces and the faces of the audience begin to fall a little as she continues.
After a few minutes, the judges start talking amongst themselves. “Is this some kind of joke?” one of them asks. “Is she lip synching? Is this a recording?”
After a few more moments of doubt, the judges ask the producers to cut the music off.
For her part, Aida is a little confused as to what is going on.
As soon as the music turns off, the audience claps loudly for her performance and the judges talk amongst themselves again. After a minute, they decide what they’re going to do. “Could you sing a song a cappella?” they ask. After a moment, they ask her to do the same song she was just doing without the accompaniment.
Needless to say, Aida is a little bit nervous.
After a few more moments, the time has come for her to prove if she can sing on her own or if she was cheating the whole time.
First she takes a deep breath, then she sets into the song… and her voice is just as perfect as it was before with the music!
The crowd claps along with her and the judges’ tension all melts away as she continues a perfect rendition of Gagarina’s song! At the end of the performance this time, the entire crowd gets on their feet and gives her a round of applause.
No matter how many of these auditions you’ve seen, few of them go quite like this!
When it’s all over, the judges explain what happened initially—they stopped her because her voice was so good, they thought it was fake!
No matter what language these shows are presented in, the drama and the emotions always remain the same. It’s obviously a performer’s greatest fear to be stopped mid-audition, thinking you’ve done something wrong. For our part, we really thought she was lip synching too! Hearing her real voice ring out so beautifully at the end is the perfect payoff.
Congratulations to Aida on a truly memorable performance! Check out the full video below:
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