KAISER Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson has forged a Yorkshire alliance with a teenage singer-songwriter from York as they team up on singing shoot-out The Voice.
Beth McCarthy, 16, from Rawcliffe, had to choose between the Leeds band’s leader and Australian pop queen Kylie Minogue as her coach when her guitar-driven rendition of LMFAO’s Sexy And I Know It saw them swivel their chairs round on Saturday night’s opening blind-audition show of the new BBC One series.
The former Mount School pupil, who has been songwriting and performing since she was 13, eventually picked Wilson, who welcomed her to Team Ricky by telling Beth her song “blew me away". He later tweeted “She’s awesome”.
Beth – whose twitter fanbase has grown by about 2,000 since her audition – made an extra mark on Saturday’s show by getting the judges, also including Sir Tom Jones and Will.i.am, into a conversation about the best way to flush a toilet, following a recent tweet by Wilson about his knack for the task. She also told Sir Tom that he “sounds a lot like God”.
The teenager, currently on a two-year course at York music college Access to Music, has regularly busked in the city centre and performed at venues around York, and her bid for stardom was revealed in The Press on Saturday.
Following the show, she tweeted: “Immense reaction to my audition, thank you all so much. Come on, Team Ricky, let’s do it for Yorkshire.”
Encouraging Beth to choose him, Wilson told her: “It was amazing. I’m not going to make a big deal about the fact you’re from York, which I can relate to, because that’s just cheating.
“I feel I’m the closest to you artistically, and I’m looking forward to hearing you sing again when we’ve chosen a song together.”
Kylie and Will.i.am were stunned at Beth’s age, and Sir Tom told her: “You have everything you need to become a star.”
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