by Danny White
Will defended himself in the Mirror. ‘I’ve just got a different approach. My coaching is, “Hey, let’s talk”,’ he said. He felt that his absence on other business would not harm his acts. ‘I’m not worried. I don’t get nervous about not being here. It all depends on how you coach. If you focus on trying to unlock the magic within you, there’s no coach and no rehearsal which can bring that.’
He also insisted that his travelling was all professionally related, not an act of leisure. He had travelled so extensively, he told the Evening Standard, that it had made him ill. ‘I’m recovering from bronchitis,’ he said. ‘Because I travel upon travel upon travel. If I leave here it’s not like I go home and rest – I literally go to Mexico and work, and Brazil and work, Singapore and work. Since I saw you last I’ve probably been to eight countries.’
With his act Jaz Ellington reportedly becoming ‘unpopular’ backstage for behaving like a ‘diva’, Will was finding that The Voice could spark crisis headlines almost as much as the bloated, hyped X Factor could. In time, the show would also prompt controversy over issues as varied as Jessie J’s use of the world ‘lame’, the perceived softness of the coaches, and Will’s cutting comments about some of his rivals’ acts.
The tweeting row continued re-erupting for some weeks, but Will remained defiant. ‘I’m not going to stop tweeting during live shows ... I think it allows people to live the moment with me as I’m in it ... ,’ he announced on the social-networking site. ‘I told the bbc: “It may seem odd me tweeting ... but trust me ... this will be the norm one day & people are going to copy it”.’
Then came a fresh round of headlines, this time claiming that he was ‘subliminally advertising’ his own fashion range on the show. Will was often featured wearing a blue-and-yellow ‘superhero’-style jacket from his collection. It was unmistakably one of his creations: it even included his beloved slogan ‘Go hard or go home’ just beneath the left breast. In promotional photographs for the series, he is featured wearing another jacket from his range, this time a grey-and-white effort. Then, in footage of him rehearsing with his acts backstage, he was wearing an orange-and-blue jacket.
By the time the series reached its semi-final, just eight acts remained overall. Of Will’s acts, Jaz Ellington impressed again with his performance of The Beatles classic ‘Let It Be’. Tyler James, meanwhile, bravely took on ‘Bohemain Rhapsody’ by Queen. By this stage, viewers had noted Will’s tendency to use the complimentary word ‘dope’ a lot during the shows. When Leanne Mitchell sang, Will was so impressed that he went ‘dope’ crazy, to the amusement of many viewers. Of Will’s acts, James was the one to make it to the final, where he would compete with Bo Bruce, Mitchell and Vince Kidd. James, a former friend of Amy Winehouse, with a self-confessed colourful past of his own, was not the favourite. That honour belonged to Bruce – though there would be a twist in the tale that would send the title elsewhere.
On the night of the final, James sang Michael Jackson’s ‘I’ll Be There’ and then teamed up with his coach Will to perform Usher’s ‘OMG’, with the pair arriving onstage in style, descending from the ceiling with the aid of harnesses. The duet was a strange one due to its bizarre choreography: Tyler seemed not entirely comfortable with the song, nor entirely at ease with the excitable presence of his coach flying and dancing around him. The climax to the song featured a masterpiece from Will, incorporating ‘Vote, vote, for Tyler James’ into the closing chant. Throughout the evening, Will gave his man plenty of support and encouragement, reminding viewers how many issues he had ‘overcome’ and declaring him a ‘superstar’. He also said he had ‘learned from Tyler how to be hungry, to appreciate opportunities’ and that he was ‘proud to have him on my team’. Tyler described Will as not just a ‘coach, but a friend’.
Will and his fellow coaches also performed a ‘mash-up’ of their own. The quartet performed an unlikely medley of their own songs, comprising of Will’s ‘Where is the Love?’, Jones’s ‘It’s Not Unusual’, Jessie J’s ‘Price Tag’, and The Script’s ‘Breakeven’. The final product was not half as ridiculous as one might have thought. It certainly outclassed the unintentionally comedic performance of U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ by the coaches earlier in the series, which had been rightly mocked on the Internet.
Will’s man was not to win the series, however. James finished third, ahead of Kidd but behind the top two of Bruce and Mitchell. The final crown, for which Bruce had been so widely tipped, actually went to Mitchell. ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe it,’ she said. Neither could some of the final’s 8.7 million viewers, though it was ultimately the voting public who had made her the victor.
The following day’s press reported that Will was keen to return to the show for its second series in 2013. Announcing his intention to move to London full-time, Will said: ‘I’ll definitely come back.’ BBC One controller Danny Cohen was said to be keen on bringing all four of the coaches back for the second series.
Will, ever the canny and speedy operator, also revealed that he had already taken three of his finalists into the studio to record. ‘The annoying thing for me is people go on these shows but it takes for ever for their albums to come out,’ he told the Sunday Mirror. ‘I wanted to do The Voice because I want to speed up the process. I just want to come live in London and do that.’
The first significant and official release in the wake of the show put one of Will’s contestants at the top of the ‘chart’. A compilation featuring performances by the final eight contestants was released, and Tyler James’s cover of Steve Winwood’s ‘Higher Love’ quickly became the most downloaded track on iTunes, giving James, and his coach, a retrospective victory of sorts.
Having had concerns about what might be ahead when he first signed up to The Voice, Will had learned to love the show. Perhaps it was only after the series had ended that he began to grasp what an experience it had been. ‘I felt very strange not doing #thevoiceuk this weekend,’ he confessed on Twitter, a week after the final. ‘I felt as if it was all a lovely dream and it never really happened ... #imisslondon.’
Whether the show had been a success overall became a point of debate. A tour had been arranged in the wake of the show, in which the final eight contestants of the series were scheduled to perform at venues across Britain, including London’s O2 Arena, and in other major cities, including Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Cardiff. This mimicked the annual X Factor tour, in which the finalists follow the same route. However, in the case of The Voice the plan went awry when poor sales meant that the entire tour had to be called off.
Andrew Lloyd Webber criticized the series, saying that most of the finalists sang ‘out of tune’, while BBC Radio 2’s Paul Gambaccini described the overall experience of the show as ‘karaoke’. There was also embarrassment when two BBC executives, speaking at the Edinburgh Festival, failed to recall the name of the show’s winner just two months after she was crowned.
A glance through the history of reality television paints a more realistic and promising picture. All of the genre’s shows have had their critics and teething problems. The X Factor, which in terms of cold numbers remains a benchmark of success, endured a rocky opening series in which critics slammed it. The final of the first series descended into farce when Sharon Osbourne denounced its winner, Steve Brookstein, as a ‘fake’. Brookstein then spectacularly fell out with all concerned before experiencing an astonishing flop.
A fact about The Voice that no critic can dispute is that the BBC felt sufficiently impressed with its performance to commission a second series, which will be broadcast in 2013. Putting aside the inevitable ‘paper talk’ surrounding which celebrities will, won’t or might be coaches in series two, Will would certainly be a popular choice to return to those famous rotating chairs. While he had not won the debut series he had, more than any other person taking part, won the hearts of viewers. Will, for so long an Anglophile, was now feeling the love coming the other way more than ever.
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nbsp; In the week after he had lost Frances Wood and Joelle Moses from his team on The Voice, Will was thrilled to be part of the London 2012 Olympic torch procession. This satisfied a longstanding ambition on his part. In 1984, as a child, Will had sat in front of the television and watched the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The tournament captured his imagination and made him wish he could one day have a part to play in one. His turn with the torch transported him back to 1984. ‘I had that flashback when they handed me the torch to run in Taunton,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s like a blast moment and a surreal moment and a can’t believe it moment all at the same time.’
Will, who has appeared on primetime television, played to huge sold-out stadiums and participated in no end of other potentially nerve-wracking events, said he felt more anxious taking part in this activity than he had in anything before. The reason for his intense nerves on the day was the potential for pyrotechnic calamity. ‘I got a little more nervous this time than all the things I have done,’ he said. ‘I am not holding a flame when I am performing in front of people and the last thing you want to do is make a mistake with fire in your hands.’ He avoided such perils but managed to create a minor controversy all the same.
It all started when the torch reached Taunton in Somerset. Will was the 109th runner to take part in the seventy-day relay that covered 80,000 miles in total. It was an exciting moment for him as he set off with the torch. In keeping with his self-confessed addiction to Twitter, he tweeted about his torch-run, even as it was going on. It was with this fact, and the tweets themselves, that the controversy started. One of his tweets read: ‘Thank you coca.cola for this once in a life time experience to come to taunton and #runthetorch ... Crazy energy in the uk’.
This seems innocuous enough in itself. However, while some onlookers were ambivalent about his tweeting, others were offended, feeling he was disrespecting or even desecrating the moment. To an extent, this reflected a sense of negativity about the Olympic Games that some in Britain were determined to air. It is easy, in the wake of the gloriously successful tournament, to forget how many people were convinced it would be a disaster in the weeks beforehand. Will was unfortunate just to have walked into this atmosphere of negativity.
However, his position was not helped by the fact that in some of the tweets he spelled the name of the area incorrectly. For instance, one message read: ‘Its nuts here in taurton ... so much excitement ... #runningthetorch’. This unintentional spelling error only served as grist to the mill of those who were questioning why an American was even taking part in the torch procession. As he ended his part in the procession, Will felt almost euphoric. He explained why he had performed a short ‘moonwalk’ during a part of the run. ‘I was thinking “me and Michael” ... I don’t want to Tom Jones it right now,’ he said afterwards. ‘Me and Mike were really close and he would have been proud that I ran the torch, so I thought why not moonwalk it a couple of steps while running with the torch.’
In the days that followed, several newspapers whipped up negative headlines about Will. Judith Woods, of the Daily Telegraph, asked: ‘Why is Will.i.Am all over us like a rash?’ Complaining that Will was ‘fast-tracked to National Treasure status’, she entered slightly uncomfortable territory when she stated that he ‘came over here on a visa for The Voice but, rather like the programme, overstayed his welcome’. She concluded her piece with a jokey speculation that Will might have been considering applying for the BBC Director General’s job. The Daily Mail, as is its wont, joined in the outrage, asking: ‘He’s not an athlete, he’s not British so why is Will.i.am carrying the Olympic flame?’
It caused much shock when he was suddenly revealed as one of the participants. One wonders how much angrier some commentators might have been had they been aware that Will had known that he was going to take part in the procession, for a year – a fact he only revealed after the run. Some writers still managed to see the lighter side of the story. A somewhat tongue-in-cheek – but still indirectly admiring – article was posted on the Guardian’s website. It argued: ‘Will.I.Am has become a beacon of hope to us dreary Brits, with our punctuation-free names. So what a flash of genius to get him there in Taunton.’
Meanwhile, Will was too busy getting excited about the forthcoming Games themselves to lose much sleep over criticism. He declared himself a ‘huge Olympics fan’. He added: ‘I want to see the swimming match, I want to see Usain Bolt. I want to see if he’s really that fast because I want to race him one day. I wouldn’t win but I want to see how close I would come.’
Were he to take part in an Olympics, it would be track running that he would choose. ‘I’m very fast,’ he boasted in the Guardian, adding that he has been nicknamed ‘Willie Zoom’ due to his speed. ‘I take pride in how fast I am, still to this day. I was in the studio the other day and me and Chris Brown were talking. I don’t know how it came up, but I was like: “I’m fast”. And he was like: “You ain’t fast, man”. So I said: “Let’s go race!” His trainer gets in on it too, who was supposedly an ex-NFL footballer, so we’re standing in the middle of the street and I asked if I could take my shoes off because I had dress shoes on – at least let me run barefoot! But they made me run in my Christian Louboutin shoes!’ In his telling of the story, he was comfortably victorious in this impromptu R&B race. ‘Man let me tell you they were so upset because I not only smoked them once but smoked them twice,’ he boasted. ‘And now people know not to mess with me. I beat Ne-Yo too! And his trainer!’
His humorous remarks certainly deflected some of the sting surrounding his interest in the Games. In the weeks after his time with the torch, other runners came in for criticism. For instance, Paloma Faith’s red high heels prompted questioning headlines about how ‘ridiculous’ her ‘unsuitable’ footwear was for her stint on the torch relay. It was all part of the pre-Olympics pantomime. Will was just pleased to have taken part in the Olympic experience. His love of Britain was deepening the more embedded in and recognized by the public he became.
The ever-adoring Cheryl Cole spoke in his defence. ‘I heard a couple of people say, “He’s not British”, but it’s not about that,’ she told Capital Radio. ‘We’re inviting people from all over the world to come and race or do whatever their part is in the Olympics in our country, everybody is welcome, so [the criticism’s] not right.’ She continued: ‘He thoroughly enjoyed it. He carried that torch everywhere – he had it on The Voice. He’s obsessed with it. I think he’s an honorary Brit.’
An honorary Brit, indeed. As he told an interviewer for Radio Times, he really had fallen for Britain and the rich creative state it is currently in. ‘I don’t know what’s brewing here, but you guys have so many great singers, from Adele to Jaz to freaking Marina and the Diamonds, to freaking Everything Everything,’ he said. ‘Great talent coming out of this country. Get out of here.’
Recognition of his place in the hearts of an increasingly mainstream audience came when he was invited to appear on BBC One’s primetime chat show The Graham Norton Show. Alongside him was the actress Miriam Margolyes, and some of her remarks to Will during the broadcast took the programme to the front pages of the newspapers.
At one point, turning to Will, Margolyes said: ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know many black people. We don’t get to meet across the colour line much except in show business and that’s what’s so nice.’ Will, in common with much of the audience, was rather flabbergasted by what Margolyes had said. At first, he seemed unable to work out to what extent she was joking – if at all. His normally loquacious manner was nowhere to be seen.
Their fellow guest on the couch, the actor and comedian Greg Davies, tried to cut through the awkward atmosphere with the quip: ‘It’s exotic’. While host Norton also tried to lighten the mood, saying: ‘It’s lovely, Miriam, you’re right.’
When Margoyles learned that Will had made a major donation to the Prince’s Trust and of his other charitable works, she continued to make the atmosphere awkward. On learning he had donated
nearly half a million pounds to the charity, she told Will: ‘You’re fabulous! How unexpected that a rapper would do this. I don’t have a very positive attitude towards rappers. I don’t really know any, you’re the first one I’ve actually talked to.’
Again, for a moment, Will could hardly believe his ears, but he recovered his poise long enough to say: ‘I’m the first rapper and black guy you’ve kicked it with!’ The audience was loving the exchange and continued to do so as Will humorously taught Margolyes the meaning of the phrases: ‘home boys’ and ‘old school’. It was a conversation that made the front pages of some of the following morning’s press.
Will’s new stature in Britain was symbolically reaffirmed when he was invited to play a significant part in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. It was to be a night in which Will’s role sparked considerable debate among viewers. Wearing a military-style outfit of red, white and blue, he certainly looked the part for the occasion. He was one of the first performers onstage at the London concert, performing his band’s hit ‘I Gotta Feeling’ with his fellow Voice coach Jessie J. Some newspapers claimed that he had used Auto-Tune for his performance. He made a second appearance onstage to accompany soul legend Stevie Wonder in his rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. It was a strange turn for the evening to take. It was not The Queen’s birthday that was being celebrated, after all. Also, as Will first reappeared on the stage in response to Wonder’s beckoning, some wondered what he could add to the performance.
The answer was not much of worth. Will looked uncomfortable as he stood next to Stevie Wonder. He sang some weak backing vocals on the chorus, and added a few spontaneous ad lib comments such as ‘Happy birthday, your highness’, ‘Put your hands up, y’all’ and ‘Yo’. As the song ended, and Wonder’s band launched quickly into the next track, ‘Superstition’, Will left with no acclaim, awkwardly shuffling off the stage as the show went on without him.
