British teen Courtney Hadwin is most definitely on her way to becoming a star, thanks to her
jaw-dropping audition on Season 13 of America's Got Talent.
She was sent straight to the live shows by Howie Mandel, and her version of "Hard to
Handle" has already been watched more than 48 million times on YouTube.
Part of the attraction is that Hadwin seems to transform from an awkward teen into a seasoned
singer as the music kicks in.
But is she really that shy off-stage?
And where has she been hiding all this time?
Let's take a look at the singer's surprising rise to fame.
"Welcome to AGT, and what's your name?"
"Courtney."
"And what's your talent?"
"Singin"
Humble beginnings
Hadwin hails from a former mining village in northeast England.
Her mother Ann-Marie told The Sun,
"Hesleden is small.
[…] There isn't really much in the village.
You have to travel out to do things."
According to her grandfather, Tom Storey, the teen started busking in 2016, to pay for
a vocal coach, often traveling the entire length of the country in search of prime locations.
Storey told the Daily Mail,
"The shopkeepers […] love Courtney but the other buskers don't.
They keep asking her to move away because she is always the big attraction.
[…] It doesn't go down well with them."
"People don't really expect me to perform the way I do"
Local talent
Hadwin started gaining buzz in June 2016 when a video of the then-11-year-old was uploaded
to her school's Facebook page.
She told Chronicle Live at the time,
"I haven't been able to walk down the corridor at school without someone stopping me and
saying 'well done.'"
The Brit had already made the finals of TeenStar UK 2015, and the following year she was a
grand finalist in the Open Mic UK contest.
She didn't win, but she didn't give up.
Her mom told the Hartlepool Mail in 2016,
"She comes in from school, does her homework and then she practices singing every night."
"I don't know how I've become the characters, but it's just so much fun"
Taking on the haters
In 2017, Hadwin brought the house down with her blind audition for The Voice Kids U.K.,
and even made it to the finals.
But sadly, she was targeted by online trolls after the show aired.
Storey told the Daily Mail,
"Online, people were quite cruel, saying she was not a singer but a shouter.
[…] She came through it, but it was upsetting."
The aspiring singer took it all in stride, telling The Sun,
"I tried to focus on the positives.
It didn't surprise me, really, because I seem different to other people."
But angry viewers struck back again after Hadwin advanced to the semi-finals of America's
Got Talent.
"Bloody hell, Courtney.
You're like this shy little thing when you first came out and then you sing and you're
like a lion."
One user tweeted:
"Courtney Hadwin said she'd never performed [before] an audience that big and she and
her dad acted like they didn't know if she could perform cuz she's so shy.
But she was a finalist in The Voice UK!
So act is fake!
[You shouldn't be] allowed to compete if you've been on other shows!"
"I'm just scared to go on stage because it's a really big experience"
Others took issue with the fact that she had a lot of experience even without The Voice
Kids.
"She's really shy.
She can't really seem to communicate with other children as well as she can with her
siblings."
Another user tweeted:
"Stop with the shy kid act.
It's just that… an act."
The U.K. 'doesn't get her'
You might be wondering why Hadwin didn't go straight from The Voice Kids UK to Britain's
Got Talent.
According to the singer, she chose to audition for the American version because all of her
musical heroes hail from the States.
She said, via The Express,
"I remember singing and then getting to a certain point in the song and seeing people
enjoy it, which made me really happy.
I must've been doing something right."
"I remembered that people like Janis Joplin, they didn't listen to anybody and they got
what they wanted in the end"
Looking to the future
After her big audition, Howie Mandel compared Hadwin to one of the most influential acts
in history, telling Access Hollywood,
"It harkens back to [when] I was a little boy and I was sitting at home on Sunday night
watching The Ed Sullivan Show, and I saw the Beatles"
"I feel it's the same thing with this little girl."
And Mandel's not the only one who's all about Hadwin's talent.
Julie Miles, Hadwin's vocal coach, told Hexham TV,
"She's already just won the hearts of just so many people, worldwide"
"She's something very different."