America’s Got Talent: Angelica Hale gets Chris Hardwick’s Golden Buzzer

Who is Chris Hardwick’s Golden Buzzer act on America’s Got Talent tonight? He had that responsibility in the Judge Cuts, and for most of the episode, we weren’t sure what he would do. Would he follow the other judges in rewarding a singer, or go with something completely different?

In the end, Hardwick decided to give the honor to one Angelica Hale, a young singer with a huge voice and a cover of “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys that set the entire room ablaze. The moment that she stopped singing, it was pretty clear that Chris was going to press it. The entire audience was pretty much begging for him to as she hit some of her big notes. There are some performances where you can just feel the Golden Buzzer coming at almost every single moment of the performance. This was clearly one of those.

What this means for Angelica mostly is that she can bypass some of the deliberation and just start preparing for the live shows. She’s not going to be performing any less, however, as a result of this.

Can Angelina win the show? We do think that she’s got a great chance to do that, but one of the biggest threats she has is all of the other singers out there. There are so many talented people out there, and so many of them fall into this category. We have certainly said in the past that we don’t love seeing singers dominate the golden buzzers, but we absolutely understand why it happens thanks the energy and emotion of that moment; also, you got to capture the enthusiasm of a very young performer through this moment who is still wide-eyed and excited about the whole process.

Beyond the Golden Buzzer moment, let’s continue to give some praise for Hardwick, who did a really great job as a judge on the show this time. His goal wasn’t to be there to provide a whole lot of negative feedback, but instead, provide a lot of fun. We’re an avid Nerdist Podcast listener, so it was great to see the same Chris on this show who we’ve actively listened to on that for so many years. We’d love to see him come back in this position in the future, even though there hasn’t been a single repeat judge in the Judge Cuts round in the history of the AGT series and this round of the competition.

Do you think that Hardwick made the right choice with the Golden Buzzer on America’s Got Talent? Share in the comments below!

Check out our full review

You can see that, and some other coverage on the show, over at the link here. (Photo: NBC.)