Martina McBride wowed by trio on ‘AGT’
It’s too early to know whether the music group We Three will win NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” but siblings Bethany, Joshua and Manny Humlie already have a huge prize: praise from country music star Martina McBride.
“You know, I’ve had a really good career with songs that affect people and make a difference in somebody’s life, but …that was one of the best first lines I’ve ever heard,” she tells the trio. “It was just so vulnerable and real, and I think that people need to hear that song and more from you guys.”
McBride’s words made We Three’s night, but the Nashville, Tennessee, singer had fun, too, taking in a cornuco- pia of acts from a front-row seat as a guest judge in the middle round.
“I was just blown away. I was sitting there saying, ‘I got to see a show.’ It’s like I didn’t even have to buy a ticket, and I was entertained for a few hours,” McBride tells USA TODAY.
The broad range of performers makes “AGT” stand out from other competition shows, says the Nashville singer, known for “Independence Day,” “This One’s for the Girls” and “A Broken Wing.”
“What I love is the variety of talent. We saw everything from magicians to tumblers to singing groups to dancers. You never know what’s going to come up next,” she says.
That complicates matters for the judges, who play a big role in winnowing the field on the path to the show’s $1 million grand prize. “I think it would be challenging to judge a tumbling act against a singing act against a magician,” she says.
“There was an older lady who started dancing in her (late 50s) and just discovered her passion and dedicated herself to it,” she said of Quin from the Quin and Misha dance act. “That was inspiring to me. No matter your age, you can find your passion at any stage of your life. She danced like she was 25 years old.”
And McBride, along with her fellow judges, was mesmerized by “a very strange magician,” the Sacred Riana, who head judge Simon Cowell has likened to Linda Blair’s character in “The Exorcist.”
Besides the “AGT” appearance, McBride will be busy touring and performing with symphonies this fall, has a cookbook, “Martina’s Kitchen Mix: My Recipe Playlist for Real Life,” out Oct. 30, and her first Christmas album in 20 years, “It’s the Holiday Season,” due Oct. 19.
While her last Christmas album included hymns and traditional holiday songs, the new one features big-band swing and is “lush and orchestrated, up tempo. We did ‘Frosty the Snowman,’ ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,’ ‘Winter Wonderland.’ It’s more like (Frank) Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald.”
The Kansas native moved to Nashville as a young woman to pursue a singing career, “because that’s where the business was, where you needed to be if you wanted to make something happen. For me, it was singing in clubs, making demos, shopping them to record labels. If there was a show like ‘America’s Got Talent’ around then, I wouldn’t rule out that I might have tried that route.”
She says stardom is a possibility for some of the “AGT” performers..
“I feel definitely they could have success, if they got a shot. There wasn’t anybody who came on that stage that didn’t belong there,” she says. said. “It kind of blows me away that there’s so much talent that doesn’t get discovered and is just out there.”