Let It Shine: Five to Five sweep to victory
It wasn’t a foregone conclusion by any means, but Five to Five’s combination of Sario Solomon, AJ Bentley, Nick Carsberg, Yazdan Qafouri and Curtis T Johns proved irresistible – and my hastily thrown together Twitter poll correct – as they were announced winners of Gary Barlow’s hunt for a boy band in the Let It Shine finale.
It’s a little bittersweet, as I think it’s fair to say that individually, Nightfall’s Jason Brock would probably have been the first name down on anyone’s list; he’s been the one who set the bar from his very first audition.
Collectively though, Five to Five were the strongest, with Jason, Danny (Nightfall) and Mark (Drive) also standing out on the night for me.
Moving from a musical stonker to a pop ballad, Five to Five delivered high-powered individual performances while remaining a tight, cohesive and charismatic unit in their performances of Hairspray’s You Can’t Stop the Beat and Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball.
For a band so young, in age and length of time together, it was an impressive start to their year on the road.
Strangely enough, they won’t be the main stars of the show – The Band is the story of five 16 year old girls, and their journey; Five to Five will be supplying the soundtrack. Which might sound bizarre after all the effort, but does explain why the Let It Shine contestants weren’t tested on their acting skills.
Being a regular visitor to my local theatre, I’m always impressed by the musical direction and how shows seamlessly incorporate live music on stage. The ‘soundtrack’ band will add a whole new dimension to the overall effect.
The boys will be straight into rehearsals today, with co-director of The Band, Jack Ryder (formerly Jamie Mitchell in Eastenders), learning the 14 songs they’ll be performing per show.
Good luck also to the boys from Nightfall, who performed Footloose and Boyz II Men’s End of the Road and Drive (Grease and Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud), all of whom deserve a chance to move forward in their musical careers.
Their performances complete, all three finalists were able to sit back and learn from the masters, as the majestic Alfie Boe and Michael Ball induced goosebumps with a medley from Les Miserables.
Next up, the moment Take That fans have been salivating over for weeks – Robbie Williams joined Gary, Mark and Howard on stage for The Flood. Thankfully, you could still hear them above all the screaming, though they weren’t quite as energetic as the contestants – a fist bump to Gary was pretty much Robbie’s limit, a back problem preventing him from much more.
The back problem had also prevented Robbie from taking his seat at the the judges’ table and he was hastily replaced by Peter Kay, in the guise of ‘Honey P’. Dependant on whether you like Kay’s humour or not, it was either a masterstroke or dreadful. I personally found myself laughing at everyone else’s reaction to him, so for me, it worked.
For those of us who enjoy a Saturday night full of music and dance, Let It Shine was perfect, good natured tea time fare with some cracking performances. If Gary wants to do it all again next year, I’ll be watching.
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