Blue Mountains teenager ANJA NISSEN is on her way to potential global superstardom after being crowned the winner of Channel Nine’s hit reality TV show The Voice Australia.
Saved by a public vote via the show’s Homecoach app last week to be an extra finalist, the obvious support for Anja carried on through to Monday’s grand finale as she scored herself a recording contract with Universal Music, $100,000 and a new car from show sponsors Ford.
There must be something very lucky about sitting in the first coach’s chair on The Voice Australia. After Seal mentored previous winners Karise Eden and Harrison Craig in the first two seasons of the show, his replacement will.i.am guided Anja to victory this year.
Nissen prevailed over Team Ricky’s Jackson Thomas and bookies’ favourite Johnny Rollins (Team Kylie) to take out the title. Team Joel’s rocker Frank Lakoudis and will.i.am’s other contender — duo ZK — were eliminated two thirds of the way through the finale.
The finale kicked off with the coaches and all 16 live show performers doing an… ahem, let’s say unique performance of Russell Morris’s The Real Thing. We then endured close to two and a half hours of recap packages and performances before finally hearing the results.
Each of the finalists did a duet with their coaches, with Johnny and Anja + ZK helping them re-work some of their coach’s biggest hits (Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and The Black Eyed Peas’ Where Is The Love?). Meanwhile, Jackson and Ricky Martin did a rather average cover of The Police’s Every Step You Take, and Joel Madden and Frank could’ve picked a far-more-rockin’ number than Imagine Dragons’ Radioactive.
After Frank and ZK got their marching orders, the three remaining finalists returned for another solo performance — replicating one of their standout performances from the series as voted by the fans. Jackson did Matt Corby’s Resolution, Anja revisited Kelly Rowland’s When Love Takes Over (showered in love hearts), and Johnny went back to his original audition song — Labrinth’s Beneath You’re Beautiful.
Brisbane’s band-of-the-moment Sheppard also performed during the show, doing an energetic take on their smash hit single Geronimo.
Nissen was pretty short on words after she was declared the winner — simply uttering ‘Thankyou Australia so, so, so much!” while being showered in confetti (ahh, the confetti; I’ll miss the confetti).
Coach will.i.am, who had earlier premiered his new single It’s My Birthday in a bizarre performance featuring clones of himself, offered to sign Nissen to his record label immediately after her win. Considering a Universal Music record deal is part of her prize, there may be a few hoops to go through there!
All was not lost for runner-up Jackson Thomas — along with getting his share of $70,000 in prize money with the other unsuccessful finalists; coach Ricky Martin invited him to join him on his Australian tour in 2015.
Nissen will release her debut single to local radio this Friday, July 26. The Top 8 will also kick off their national tour around Australia in Perth on Sunday.
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Each week, KIEL EGGING disected the best and worst of The Voice Australia 2014 for readers at home and abroad with THE VOICEbox, exclusively on AustralianTimes.co.uk
Re-live all the highs, lows and bum notes of The Voice Australia 2014 with Kiel Egging’s complete series of ‘The VoiceBox’, here.
Images courtesy Channel 9.
