‘Britain’s Got Talent’ review: Maia Gough, Old Men Grooving, Jonathan Lutwyche, and The Neales stand out
We love “Britain’s Got Talent,” and sometimes, we’re not even entirely sure why. The show is obviously heavily edited, sometimes incredibly cheesy, and it is so easy to be cynical. Yet, there are occasions where you see an audition that blows us away, and it is like nothing else on television. There’s just something about this show that gives you moments that you don’t even see on the American version.
We’re going to focus today mostly on the acts we find particularly stunning, and we admit that there were a few that were so good, we expected a golden buzzer to come now long into them.
Aaron Marshall – Completely ridiculous, since it was mostly just listening to him scream “Let It Go” at us. Yet, we somehow enjoyed this in a bizarre sort of way. He is one of the current frontrunners to make it to the live show only to get a series of buzzers.
Misstasia – Pleasant enough if you are a little girl. Probably not for everyone else. We really don’t think their vocals are necessarily all that great, but we get the appeal here as a girl group that is really out to appeal to the whimsy in all of us.
Peter Lambert – He has a character of being this hot mess, and we were completely terrified the entire time that he was going to mess up either juggling or balancing. He was actually rather great.
Jonathan Lutwyche – The most moving audition perhaps of the entire season. A stellar contemporary routine with powerful music, and in all honesty, we would have pushed the golden buzzer for him. Given Alesha Dixon’s history, we thought she would have pressed it.
The Neales – This was almost Misstasia-sweet, as it was a group of brothers and their father singing doo-wop music to make the latter’s dream of singing come true. They were extremely good in their short audition, and brought us back to a different era in music.
Old Men Grooving – This was the surprise of the night. Completely silly, but also the group version of Jimmy Fallon’s “evolution of dad dancing” videos. Personality sometimes is more important than technique, and they brought that.
Maia Gough – If you are a longtime CarterMatt reader, you know that Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” is our least-favorite song to ever hear on a singing show. We’re just so tired of it. Maia at least a is brilliant singer. We would want to hear her do something different and a little easier for a 12-year old to connect with. Our biggest critique of the act is that we didn’t really get the full emotional connection to the lyrics.
The biggest surprise of the night? There was no golden buzzer at all.