‘America’s Got Talent’ review: Calysta Bevier (Simon Cowell’s Golden Buzzer), Julia Scotti, Jayna Brown perform
Tonight, “America’s Got Talent” is airing its fourth audition show, and it is one featuring a wide array of different talent! There’s a lot to like here yet again, and we love that the show started off this week with one of the most dangerous acts that we’ve seen in years.
As with all of our other “AGT” audition-show reviews, we’re going to have more updates on the acts over the course of the night. Therefore, be sure to refresh the page!
Alfredo and Anna Silva – Knife-throwing is such a tricky, dangerous skill, but this was on another level in between Anna dancing around and the knives being set on fire. It was more challenging, and we hope that this sort of creativity is also injected into future performances that the two of them give.
Elias and Zion Phoenix – These two twins were skilled at the piano, but we almost feel like their biggest talent is as personalities. We see them over time being a little bit like a Smothers Brothers act if they can write some good material and mix some of their musical talents with humor and creativity.
Jayna Brown – Sure, in many ways you could say that Jayna was the prototypical young singer for the show: She has a great voice, a moving story, and despite having a lot on her shoulders, seems to handle the pressure really well. She seems to be a lock for the live shows already.
Sos and Victoria – Yes, this was very reminiscent of the “Quick Change” act from the early seasons of the show, but remember for a minute here that the judges weren’t around for that then. This is still really cool for what it is, but we hope these two have some more tricks up their sleeve, given that the original iteration was formulaic.
Jon Dorenbos – This was really cool — a Philadelphia Eagles player clearly positioning into another post-football career as a magician. Sure, we’ve seen a ton of card tricks before, but we really liked his presence and charisma through this. We suppose after getting hit on the field so many times, maybe there isn’t that fear performing in front of an audience that other people have.
Vello Vaher – The “acrobatic Borat,” as coined by Simon Cowell, was really entertaining. There was a great element of danger here as he contorted his body in all sorts of weird, wonderful ways. The fact that the show gave us a solid 70 minutes at this point in the episode with very few singers was certainly impressive.
Ronee Martin -Ronee’s a good singer. We only wish that she had a little bit of a different edit beyond the “your first song didn’t work, so sing another one” routine that we’ve seen time and time again from Simon Cowell on “Britain’s Got Talent.”
The Baron – This is a really messed-up freakshow act. He is really good at what he does, and there is something that must be said for this! We do think that the first freakshow act this season was better, though, when it comes to the presentation and the personality.
Julia Scotti – She’s like the “America’s Got Talent” answer to Larry David, and she was extraordinarily funny, interesting, and edgy. We really like that the show didn’t try to exploit her story as transgender, either, and allowed her the opportunity to speak about that candidly after her act.
Calysta Bevier – There’s no question that Calysta is both a great singer and also an inspiration to many young people out there to always keep fighting on through what you’re going through. She did that as a cancer survivor, and we understand the desire from Simon Cowell to give her the golden buzzer. We do wish that a judge gave their buzzer to someone who wasn’t a singer for the sake of variety, but we gotta say that in his position, we’d probably do the same thing.
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