Latest news with #DancingonMyOwn
Rhyl Journal
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Britain's Got Talent's most viewed audition that led to over 1bn streams of song
Britain's Got Talent's Calum Scott has shot to fame after appearing on the show in 2015. (Image: ITV) This article is brought to you by our exclusive subscriber partnership with our sister title USA Today, and has been written by our American colleagues. It does not necessarily reflect the view of The Herald. Britain's Got Talent has seen plenty of acts rise to stardom since the ITV talent show first hit our screens back in 2007. From dancing dogs to magicians, dance groups and singers – there's rarely been a dull moment. Many of the acts from the show have gone on to become household names, including the likes of series one winner opera singer Paul Potts and Scottish songstress Susan Boyle – who caused a media frenzy when her first audition aired back in 2009. Who won Britain's Got Talent over Susan Boyle? Susan was pipped to the post as winner of the show that year by street dance troupe Diversity. However, there's one act who has gone on to have an impact around the world since his first audition. Who is the biggest success on Britain's Got Talent? Ten years ago in 2015, singer Calum Scott had one of the most iconic moments in the show with his song choice. His haunting rendition of 'Dancing on My Own', originally released in 2010 by Swedish pop star Robyn, saw Simon press his golden buzzer, winning him a place in the live semi-final and eventually, the final. Calum, from Hull, has gone on to have huge success as an artist, performing with the likes of Ed Sheeran, Leona Lewis and Take That. His recorded version of his audition track now totals more than 1bn streams on Spotify alone. Dancing on My Own reached number two in the UK charts upon its release in 2016 and was Britain's best-selling single that summer. Calum's first Britain's Got Talent audition has now had a staggering 399m views on the official BGT account on YouTube. It's the most watched from the talent show, followed by Susan Boyle with 263 million views. Recommended reading: Did Calum Scott ever win Britain's Got Talent? Calum came in sixth place in the competition in 2015, losing out to winners Jules O'Dwyer and Matisse the dog. What time is the BGT final 2025? The 2025 series is the show's 18th and it comes to an end this weekend. Britain's Got Talent's live final airs on Saturday, May 31 at 7pm on ITV1 and ITVX.
The Irish Sun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Watch moment British pop star surprises Irish couple with tear-jerking performance on wedding day
BRITISH pop star Calum Scott surprised an Irish couple with a tear-jerking performance on their wedding day. The Dancing on My Own singer travelled over to Meath to meet his "massive fans" on their big day on Tuesday, May 27. 3 Calum Scott performed at an Irish couple's wedding this week Credit: Instagram 3 Calum surprised the bride on her big day Credit: Instagram 3 Fans were left in tears after watching the emotional video Credit: Instagram The 36-year-old explained how he was contacted by the groom, Stefan, who requested him to sing his new single Die For You at his wedding. The bride, Sarah, was actually "one of the first people to make her own video using the audio for Die For You" and she had even commented saying she wanted to use it for her first dance. Calum added: "I saw it.. but what she didn't know was that, behind the scenes, we were already working on something special." read more on weddings With the help of Sarah's husband-to-be, Calum showed up at their ceremony at The Village Hotel in Bettystown to surprise her. Calum said: "Moments like this are why I do what I do." At the beginning of the video, Calum is sat in the back of a car saying he's "so excited" to perform the song at a wedding for the first time. After arriving at the venue and popping on his classy suit, Calum said: "This is a bit nerve wracking, [there's] a lot riding on it." read more on the irish sun Calum then sang his heart out as the bride, groom and their baby danced together. Sarah got visibly emotional as she wiped away her tears and embraced her husband. Callum Scott breaks silence after Masked Singer fans were convinced he's secretly on the show as Piranha Calum told the happy couple and their guests: "These guys were the very first to ask for Die For You for their wedding. "So I'm honoured that I can share moments like this whilst I'm still at home playing Call of Duty. "The fact that I can come here and be part of this magical day with your little family, is an absolute honour. So thank you so much for having me." The bride said: "I will never get over this. Thank you so much." FAN FAVE The singer's friends and fans were all left gushing over the incredible moment. Malgorzata wrote: "Omg. You've just stolen my heart completely - to the rest. It's a great story about how much fans mean to an artist. You're wonderful." Christina said: "Wow! What an incredible gesture you made for that couple! You truly have a big heart!" One fan commented: "Here I am crying at 1:36am. Such a beautiful thing you and your team have done for the couple." Another follower added: "Calum that's such a beautiful gesture. You are a kind soul. Bless your wonderful heart."
Wales Online
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
The Britain's Got Talent act with most viewed audition ever and he reached number 2 on the charts
The Britain's Got Talent act with most viewed audition ever and he reached number 2 on the charts His performance even earned him a golden buzzer from hard-to-please judge Simon Cowell You may not know that Calum Scott once competed in Britain's Got Talent. He amassed a massive 399 million views on YouTube on his first BGT audition, and since then things have only gone up for Calum Scott. I know what you are thinking, 'I know that name' and 'doesn't he sing that really famous song'. If you're thinking of Dancing on My Own, you are right he did cover that song on the talent competition in 2015. Most people wouldn't know that Callum Scott who covered Robyn's critically acclaimed song actually rose to fame singing on BGT. His performance even earned him a golden buzzer from hard-to-please judge Simon Cowell. For the latest TV and showbiz gossip sign up to our newsletter . The singer walked on stage after his sister, Jade auditioned and failed to progress to the next stage of the competition. The 26-year-old then sang a slowed down version of the club classic which left the audience crying, before Simon showered the stage in gold confetti. Simon then said: "I've never, ever, in all the years I've done this show, heard a guy with the talent you've got. Seriously... the version was sensational and that shows to me that actually, you're more than a singer, you're an artist, and that's why you got that (the buzzer)." Article continues below Despite finishing in sixth in the competition to dog tricks duo Jules O'Dwyer & Matisse, this didn't hurt Calum's singing career. After the show, he released his own version of Robyn's hit song and sky rocketed to number two on the UK Singles Chart and became Britain's best-selling single of summer 2016. He then release his 2018 debut album Only Human, which reached number 4 on the UK Albums Chart. The album featured the single, You Are The Reaso, which has seen over a billion times on YouTube. Since then, the singer has not only done his own solo tours, but supported acts like Pentatonix, Jason Derulo, The Script, Ed Sheeran and more recently Take That. More recently, at the beginning of May Calum performed at the BBC event which celebrated VE Day 80 which marked eight decades since 'Victory in Europe Day' with music and memories. Content cannot be displayed without consent He was also recently invited as a guest speaker at Buckingham palace, by Prince Edward to celebrate young people who achieved their Gold Duke of Edinburgh awards. Now, the singer has over 1.4 million followers on Instagram and is releasing a new album this year, titled Avenoir, on September 12. He will then be embarking on his fourth world tour starting in Portugal in October, before performing in Manchester and London in November. He said that he was, "Blown away by how many tickets have sold for the Avenoir tour!!", after adding more dates to the tour. Calum added: "Mental!! I cant wait to share these shows with you all, it's going to be the best tour yet!! See you there! X" Content cannot be displayed without consent One fan shared their excitement for the tour, saying: "Looking very much forward to hear you live for the first time." Another added: "SOOOO proud of you!! can't wait to experience 'The Avenoir Tour' it's gonna be so magical!!! i'm so excited" Article continues below
Express Tribune
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Synth-pop's confessional core
Lorde's What Was That taps into a long tradition of heartbreak wired through machines. photo: file Lorde's comeback track What Was That hits like a jolt of electric blue after nearly four years of silence - a shimmering synth-pop burst that takes the heartbreak baton from Melodrama and sprints with it straight onto a twilight dance floor. Created in collaboration with Jim-E Stack and Daniel Nigro, its throbbing synth layers and snappy percussion mark a decisive pivot from the hazy folk-pop of Solar Power toward something edgier, more immediate. Before the track dropped, Lorde teased it with a surprise appearance in Washington Square Park, a DIY pop-up briefly halted by the NYPD for lack of permits, only to reemerge later that day as a small-scale rave beneath the iconic arch. Critics have latched onto how Lorde compresses vulnerability and release into every shimmering beat, blending memory, indulgence, and confessional honesty into a taut, three-and-a-half-minute charge of emotional electricity. As listeners reacquaint themselves with the moody glow of her late-night anthems, here are six pivotal synth-pop confessionals that echo the emotional voltage now coursing through Lorde's latest work. With their celestial nostalgia, these tracks show how electronic pop has always been a vehicle for truth-telling in disguise. Put them on, turn up the volume, and step into a world where every beat feels like it was made for your midnight musings. 'Dancing on My Own' – Robyn Robyn's 2010 landmark track is the quintessential "crying on the dance floor" anthem; a glittering heartbreak grenade cloaked in four-on-the-floor ferocity. The radio version, a straight-up synth-pop gem, fuses punchy beats and wistful synths with lyrics that might've fallen from Lorde's pen: "I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her." Its placement at No 20 in Rolling Stone's 2021 "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" cemented its cultural heft as the gold standard of lonely anthems. Every breath Robyn leaves between lines dares the listener to fill it with their own achea kind of bare-souled intimacy Lorde now reclaims in her own electronic evolution. 'Blue Monday' – New Order Blurring the lines between post-punk edge and club-ready pulse, Blue Monday is the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time for a reason. With its icy drum programming and cascading synth bass, the 1983 track pulses like a heart slowly breaking. Bernard Sumner's flat-toned vocals bleed quiet desperation, weaving an emotional narrative into the robotic structure of the song. It's the archetype of synth-pop soul-baring, emotion delivered with surgical precision, paving the way for artists like Lorde who seek connection through the cool veneer of electronic sound. 'Enjoy the Silence' – Depeche Mode "Words are very unnecessary," croons Martin Gore, floating above a lush synthscape of clipped melodies and enveloping pads. This moody, minimalist classic peaked at No 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and snagged a BRIT Award for Best British Single in 1990, all while channeling a deep weariness with language itself. Its mix of rhythmic energy and lyrical restraint offers a template for emotional understatement, something Lorde taps into when she uses silence and space as instruments in their own right, allowing every pause to echo like a broken chord. 'Heartbeats' – The Knife From the Swedish sibling duo who brought us Silent Shout, Heartbeats is a haunting glitch-pop lullaby. Karin Dreijer's voice trembles through warped synths and jittery percussion, delivering surreal, fragmented lines like "One, two, three, four, lucky..." that feel both cryptic and intimate. Ranked No 15 on Pitchfork's "Top 500 Songs of the 2000s," the 2002 track captures devotion as something disjointed yet sincere. The Knife's commitment to emotional discomfort and eerie tenderness mirrors Lorde's own journey into synth-driven confessions that don't shy away from complexity. 'Midnight City' – M83 With its iconic synth hook and that euphoric, saxophone-drenched climax, Midnight City encapsulates the feeling of chasing something intangible under neon lights. Straddling synth-pop, dream-pop, and new wave, the track remains a flex in sonic yearning. Released in 2011, it's an anthem of escape and fantasy, a widescreen take on longing that turns private ache into public catharsis - exactly the kind of scale Lorde now seems to be embracing as she charts a more expansive emotional territory. 'Computer Love' – Kraftwerk Long before Wi-Fi romances and DMs at dawn, Kraftwerk tapped into the loneliness of digital connection with their 1981 song Computer Love, a delicate, robotic ballad about yearning through a screen. Built on pristine synth lines and a metronomic rhythm, the track's emotion is delivered not through vocal inflection but through eerie restraint. "I call this number / For a data date" sounds sterile on paper, but paired with the track's melancholic melody, it becomes quietly devastating. Kraftwerk's influence on synth-pop is seismic, but Computer Love also reveals the genre's early potential for emotional depth. Unlike Lorde's warm-blooded introspection, Kraftwerk's confessions are filtered through machines - disembodied, precise, and haunting. Yet that distance is the emotion: a yearning made sharper by its clinical delivery, an ache encoded in binary.
The Guardian
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It burrows into your bones': how Dancing on My Own became pop's ultimate sad banger
As the flirtation first begins to build between CEO Romy (Nicole Kidman) and her twentysomething intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) in the recent erotic thriller Babygirl, the two find themselves at opposite ends of a dancefloor. Romy pulls away from her husband and stares – pouting – at Samuel, who embraces another woman, a familiar staccato beat pulsing out around them. 'I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her,' the lyrics narrate. 'I'm right over here, why can't you see me?' It's the perfect needle drop, conveying Romy's desire but also her sense of alienation. Gladly for her, their torrid affair begins nonetheless, and soon the pair are throwing shapes at a sweaty techno rave. The song that plays is, of course, Dancing on My Own by Robyn, from her Body Talk Pt 1 album, a tune so familiar by now that I felt a Pavlovian urge to start caterwauling along in the cinema. Fifteen years on from its original release in April 2010, the track has established itself as pop's great modern 'sad banger', in the vein of classics such as Donna Summer's Last Dance and I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. Like those tracks it is a song that gets you up and moving, while breaking your heart into several tiny pieces. In the years directly after its release, Dancing on My Own was featured on major TV shows such as Lena Dunham's Girls, and grew in popularity thanks to Calum Scott's stripped back, Love Island-worthy cover, which peaked at No 2 in the UK charts. These days you can hear it in films, on arena tours (Robyn joined Charli xcx on stage to perform the song during the latter's Brat tour last year), and on TV (at Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary in February, David Byrne and Robyn shared a stage in matching boxy suits for a rendition). It currently ranks at No 20 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, sandwiched between Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit and Imagine by John Lennon. A lot of songs have staying power but Dancing on My Own stands head and shoulders above so many others from the 2010s (Babygirl would have been a slightly different film had they been dancing to Sexy Bitch by David Guetta). Part of that appeal, says US-based culture podcaster Sam Sanders, is that the song is 'the perfect bait and switch', fusing euphoric music with desolate themes à la disco. 'It's so up-tempo. The percussion is so driving, it sounds like a happy song. And then you hear the lyrics, and it's not happy at all. It's really depressing.' The song's simplicity and repetition, says Sanders, make it 'go down easy … you can memorise it right away. By the end of the song, you're already singing along with the chorus.' Sanders chose Dancing on My Own as his 'American anthem' for a series on NPR back in 2019. As part of his research, he spoke to a musicologist, who informed him that the song's 117 BPM was almost exactly in line with the average human walking speed. '[Robyn] is doing this in a tempo that is pretty close to the human heartbeat,' Sanders explains. 'It's programmed to burrow into your bones, to get into your body and make you move. It's inescapable.' While the song wasn't a smash hit at the time – it didn't dent the US Top 40, and reached No 8 in the UK – it has become a slow-burn word-of-mouth megahit over the months and years since. Last September, it topped a poll of Swedish music industry bods' favourite songs, ahead of tracks by Madonna, Prince and even Abba. Tina Mehrafzoon is a Swedish music journalist who works for P3, the country's equivalent to Radio 1 and the station responsible for that poll. The song comes with a wider context, says Mehrafzoon: it was from the era directly after Robyn's departure from Jive Records to form her own label, Konichiwa (at the outset of her career, she had been marketed as a proto-Britney, working with mega-producers such as Max Martin). By this point, Robyn was no longer looking to 'conform to some of the ideals that were put on a pop star, while still being the ultimate pop star. She was sort of rewriting what you should look like, what you should sound like. She changed the rulebook, just by being.' From Lorde's Melodrama to Taylor Swift's Reputation via xx member Romy's melancholy brand of four-on-the-floor, Charli xcx's direct lyricism, and even Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry lopping their locks into pixie cuts, the charts have seemed impregnated with Robyn's DNA ever since. For her part, Lorde once wrote that Dancing on My Own is 'happy and sad, fiery and independent but vulnerable and small, joyous even when a heart is breaking'. As for the song's popularity, Mehrafzoon thinks it edged ahead of other singles because of the 'credibility' of featuring in US shows such as Girls and Gossip Girl, which have been watched around the world. In Girls, the song plays when Hannah – played by Dunham – finds out that her boyfriend Elijah is gay. The song fits her situation, and his too; Dancing on My Own has become something of a queer anthem in the years since, with Calum Scott telling the BBC in 2020 that he had first fallen in love with the song while figuring out his sexuality. In a list of LGBTQ+ anthems published online by Billboard, the caption for Dancing on My Own (No 16) reads: 'Any gay guy who says he hasn't related to this synthy jam shouldn't be trusted.' There is something about watching from afar – the lack of agency or even visibility – that speaks to the queer experience. 'I mean, who understands the pain of rejection more than queer people?' says Sanders. 'This is all about rejection and dancing through it – that is the queerest reality ever.' He also cites the song's ambiguous pronouns. 'She's playing with gender. It's really subtle, but I think where people get that, we saw it and felt it.' There's also something in the idea of delayed adolescence playing out on a dancefloor; the American academic Jack Halberstam writes that 'queer time is the dark nightclub, the perverse turn away from the narrative coherence of adolescence-early-adulthood-marriage-reproduction-death'. I wondered whether the people who made Dancing on My Own – Robyn, of course, alongside songwriter and producer Patrik Berger, and Niklas Flyckt, who mixed the song – had known they had a hit on their hands at the time. What became clear from speaking to Berger was that this seemingly simple song had, in fact, been a labour of love. 'We took weeks on the lyrics, just to really make sure that we nailed every line,' says Berger, who – as well as working with pop stars such as Robyn, Charli and Taylor Swift, also releases experimental instrumentals as Hög Sjö. 'We would write, digest, and then be like: 'Is this really what it feels like when you're in this situation?' And then we compressed it to have as much impact in every line [as possible].' Berger says his and Robyn's Scandi roots shines through, too. Robyn, he says, has 'a sort of Swedish way of writing lyrics … she's very good at actually saying it as it is. We were talking about the fact that – especially if an American artist is singing about a breakup – most of the time, it's about empowerment: you're worth better and you're strong. We were both like: that's not what it feels like at all! You feel like a loser and an idiot. Maybe that was a little bit new at the time …' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion For Flyckt, he says it stood out instantly when Berger first played it to him. 'It's an amazing song, so it was sounding great as a demo; most of it was pretty much there,' he says. 'I tried to add some kind of boldness, just starting with the bass riff and no melody in the beginning.' There's an irony to Dancing on My Own that is hard to avoid. It's a song about being all by yourself, but it's a communal experience. It's a song that Robyn's fans sing back to her on stage when the music cuts; that fans have gathered to sing on train platforms after shows; that choirs and a cappella groups now cover in epic new arrangements. For Berger, feeling like we're alone 'is probably the most uniting thing that we have as humans: it is something that we all understand, but that we don't really talk about all the time.' Being alone together comforts people, he says, but he still hasn't got used to seeing it at scale. 'When [Robyn] performs live and she strips down the music and the whole arena sings … it's mind-boggling to me. I'm like: wow, everybody can relate to this thing. I feel very emotional.' Perhaps it speaks to the current moment. We're more connected than ever but, in many ways, more distant; a piece published by the Atlantic earlier this year called this 'the antisocial century'. Whatever it is about this song that makes people stop what they're doing and sing along, it doesn't seem as if it's going away any time soon. Berger says he hears the track more and more, stuffed into acoustic open-mic sets in bars next to the likes of the Beatles. Robyn has gone on to release another excellent album, Honey, in the intervening years, but there's something about her 'sad banger' that just won't fade away. Says Sanders: 'You could hear the song on the dancefloor in 2050 and folks would be like: 'I want to dance.''
