Viewers held all the power for the America’s Got Talent Season 20 semifinals round, with Terry Crews announcing during Monday’s performance show that the audience vote alone would send six acts through to the finals. That’s right — no more Golden Buzzers from the judges for their favorite acts. Tuesday’s results show also featured the return of Season 19’s quick-change artist Solange Kardinaly for an encore performance on the AGT stage.
The 11 acts that performed Monday night for America’s vote were: chorale group Birmingham Youth Fellowship Choir, singer Jessica Sanchez, singer Jourdan Blue, multimedia dance group Light Wire, dance group Unreal, singer-guitarist Bay Melnick Virgolino, freestyle rapper Chris Turner, chorale group Leo High School Choir, trapeze duo Sirca Marea, acrobatic duo TT Boys, and magician Zak Mirz.
The six acts advancing from the semifinals will join the four acts that received a live Golden Buzzer during their quarterfinals performances in the “Finale,” airing Sept. 23 and 24. They are: singer & musician Steve Ray Ladson, rapper Mama Duke, rapper Micah Palace, and dance group Team Recycled.
Terry Crews, ‘AGT’Trae Patton/NBC
Read on for our America’s Got Talent 20 results recap for the “Semifinals” live show.
What You Didn’t See on TV
In the performance night recap including behind the scenes tidbits not aired in the main telecast, Mel B thanked Birmingham Youth Fellowship Choir personally for bringing her to tears after they sang her wedding song on stage, but was less moved and looking for “more grit” from singer Jourdan Blue. Simon Cowell reiterated his boredom and “slightly on the fence” response to acts like Zak Mirz and Unreal to Howie Mandel during commercial breaks and Sofia Vergara pointed out that the producers had an ambulance on site just in case pregnant singer Jessica Sanchez were to go into labor.
Terry thought the moment of the night was Simon hysterically laughing at the freestyle rap from Chris Turner that ended with a line about a tampon “stopping the flow.” When prompted, Sofia singled out Jessica’s performance and Sirca Marea as the standout acts of the semifinals. Despite being underwhelmed by some of the performances, Howie declared that American had a tough decision this week and that the finals will have the “highest level of competition” they’ve ever seen.
Solange Kardinaly
Solange’s return to the AGT stage used the shopping motif and the hit song “APT.” to display her iconic quick-change tricks from dress to dress, but she also introduced an up close card trick to Simon before raising to the rafters again for a confetti-dropping final costume change.
Trivia in IKEA
Terry brought the judges to the IKEA lounge backstage for a friendly game of AGT trivia. The teams were Howie and Sofia vs. Mel and Simon. Through the game we learned that there’s 15lbs of confetti in the average Golden Buzzer push, the original intention of the Golden Buzzer was to be a tie-breaking save, Kodi Lee is the most viewed Golden Buzzer recipient, Ben Lapidus is the only contestant to ever get four red X buzzers to have three of them reversed for his parmesan song, Mel has the quickest memory, and Sethward was lurking backstage in a pink octopus costume. In the end, Mel and Simon won and were named the “Titans of Trivia.”
Finalizing the Finalists
Terry brought both Birmingham Youth Fellowship Choir and Jessica Sanchez to the stage first to reveal that the first finalist decided by the overnight vote is Jessica. Last night she mentioned that she asked her child to stay in her belly a little longer so that she can see the competition through – so far, so good!
In the second pairing between Unreal and Chris Turner, it was revealed that Simon might experience more belly laughs next week when Chris performs once again. The body-bending dance group from India will unfortunately be going home.
Light Wire, Zak Mirz and Sirca Marea were all brought out for the next set of results. The third spot in the finals belongs to Light Wire! But from the three acts on stage, only Zak is going home because Sirca Marea is also advancing to the finals, taking a coveted fourth spot.
Between Bay Melnick Virgolino and Jourdan Blue, the fifth act that America voted through to the finals is Jourdan! Let’s hope he continues to avoid all seafood for the next week so that he’s in good health for his final performance that he promised will follow Simon and Mel’s advice to take a risk with the song choice.
With only one more spot in the finals, Terry informed Leo High School Choir that they’ll be performing again while TT Boys have been eliminated from the competition.
Next Week
The finale performances will air on Tuesday night beginning at 9 pm with the next AGT champion crowned Wednesday night after the public’s vote.