Following his triumphant X Factor win last night, Beau Monga is feeling hungry. Before our interview starts, he's putting in an order for teriyaki chicken on rice with extra mayo on the side. Then he tells me about his favourite culinary treat - sushi dipped in butter chicken sauce. Vision: TV3
We’re looking back at our columnists most popular pieces from 2015. Today, Duncan Greive how X Factor turned into such a dull mess.
Last night X Factor NZ put us out of our misery, crowning the phenomenally talented but appallingly coached beatboxing singer Beau Monga its second and likely final winner. In a show whose whittling away process is driven by the popular vote, he was the only contestant to have never facedelimination, so in some ways the result was fitting.
In others it was the final steaming insult of a season which delivered them by the wheelbarrow, fresh to your lounge on multiple nights a week for months on end. Monga was the most naturally gifted performer, the son of members of funk band Ardijah, able to dance, sing, rap, compose and create drums and instrumentation with his voice alone. I picked him as the winner from the outset, as did most who'd watched his performances at auditions.
The 12 weeks of live shows should have provided a steady blossoming and refining of the man's talent. Instead we witnessed a descent into chaotic incoherence, with Monga forced to do songs with which he had no relationship, in styles which rendered him a sad caricature. This culminated in disastrous performance of Finnish dance-rap single Freestyler, during which he fell over while dressed as a bumblebee.
Opposing him in the final were Brendon Thomas and the Vibes, a '60s covers band, and Nyssa Collins, a regal Samoan singer from Mangere who came in with a magical voice and left with the confidence to harness and project it. The Vibes were rightly eliminated early in the final, leaving Collins and Monga to battle it out ...
