Gigi Yan Emerges as Top Winner in “Stars Academy” Finals
With this year’s singing competition Stars Academy <聲夢傳奇> highlighting fresh new talent in Hong Kong, many viewers tuned in for the finale on July 19. Hot favorite from the very beginning, 16-year-old singing sensation Gigi Yan (炎明熹) beat out four of her competitors to win three awards.
Finale Performances
The final competition was split into two different rounds. After the first round, three out of the five finalists were eliminated, leaving the final two for the grand finale. The seven mentors who sat on the panel during the finals were Gin Lee, Janice Vidal, AGA, Pakho Chau (周柏豪), JW (王灝兒), Vincy Chan (泳兒), and Mag Lam (林欣彤).
Dubbed by viewers as the Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) of Hong Kong, Yumi Chung (鍾柔美) sang and danced to Aaron Kwok’s (郭富城) “Fourth Night Feelings” <第四晚心情>. With Yumi’s vocals and dancing, both Janice and Gin Lee praised her performance. In contrast, Archie Sin (冼靖峰) belted out to Stephanie Sun’s (孫燕姿) hit classic “What I Miss” <我懷念的>. With beautiful and moving vocals, Vincy and Mag praised Archie for becoming more attractive by the day.
Having previously been on the edge of being eliminated, Rock Ho (何晉樂) sang Eason Chan’s (陳奕迅) “Blurted Out” <衝口而出> and was overly excessive with his movement during his performance. Unimpressed by Rock’s performance, only four judges pressed the approval light.
Battle Between Gigi and Chantel
While Gigi emerged as the top winner, the other hot favorite Chantel Yiu (姚焯菲) lost out in all categories. After Chantel’s previous performance, many expected the singer to have a strong performance during the finale. However, Chantel showed extreme nervousness tonight, and was rather rigid with her smile and flat with her singing.
Tallying up the votes, both Gigi and Chantel made it to the final round. Both singers battled it out to two fast songs – “Chotto, Wait” <Chotto, 等等> and “Bad Romance”. During the battle, Gigi’s performance impressed viewers and successfully became the final winner.
In tears during her acceptance speech, Gigi said the honor does not belong to her alone and thanked Gin Lee, Janice Vidal (衛蘭), and AGA for their continuous support and help along the way.
Having won the $100,000 Hong Kong dollars prize money, Gigi said this all seems like a dream. Hoping to save up the money, Gigi’s goal is to buy a home for her family.
Although losing the competition, Chantel said the competition was fair and said she already tried her very best.
Present during the competition, Eric Tsang (曾志偉) praised Gigi for having an Anita Mui (梅艷芳) aura. When asked if Gigi will be heavily promotioned after her win, Eric expressed, “Of course. All 15 competitors will as well.”
He also spilled the cast will film a drama as well. “We’ll be asking Erica Li (李敏) to write the screenplay – the series will be called Our Youth <青春的我>. Besides the Stars Academy contestants, dancers, and students, the mentors will be involved as well. We’re hoping to start filming in August.”
Source: Oriental Daily
This article is written by Su for JayneStars.com.
She has been consistently good from the beginning. Well deserved
Gigi deserves to win, her vocals outshine the rest of the contestants. I’m honestly surprised Chantel made it this far, aside from her “sweetness” her performances have all been the same, she doesn’t bring anything new to the competition
Who do you think could’ve replaced Chantel in being top 2? Chantel had the best song in the entire show – 戀愛預告. I listen to it all the time. It’s different from the original and more modern!
Very well deserved, from the beginning we knew that she had the best vocal talent. Although, I wish they gave trophies for 1st, 2nd and 3rd just to balance things out haha
I agree. The set up for the 3 trophies was based on the fact that they think that the judges vs audience choice would be different…. Nope.
Yeah I thought they would rank all the finalists. Having three awards to cover all the voting bases seem so redundant.
Awww was Felix eliminated before? So sad, he was one of my favorites!
I thought that this was probably one of their best variety shows that they have done in recent years. They did a very good job with finding talent and I liked the format too. I’m so used to watching American Idol and The Voice where there is no criticism at all and there’s no connection to the contestants. I actually root for all of them that competed this year.
Are people really serious that Gigi’s vocals are good? Her vocal technique/skills are extremely poor.
According to that, the abundance of Hong Kong music producers, DJs, and singers who praised her vocal techniques many times must be lying to her face then