All four judges then stood, utterly agog, as Henderson belted out the big clincher \u2013 \u201cI toooold yooou ssooooOOOOOOooooOOO\u201d \u2013 sealing the deal with an expertly-timed hairflip. \u201cThaaaat\u2019s coooooool,\u201d Keating slurred in ecstasy to his chair mate Marx. As Henderson finished the song, beaming and breathless, a giant \u201c4\u201d flashed up on the LED floor to show that all four judges were fizzing to have her on their team. \u201cYes!\u201d exclaimed Keating from the depths of his powder blue suit. \u201cThat\u2019s what it\u2019s about!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Can I just say, on behalf of Aotearoa: yeah, no shit Sherlock? It was just two months ago that we all watched Henderson win Best Pop Artist of the year at the Aotearoa Music Awards<\/a>, after her own Roan-esque single \u2018Seconds to Midnight\u2019 celebrated a whopping 15 weeks at number one in the radio play charts and one thousand weeks rattling around my noggin. Go even further back, before her tour, an equally catchy 2023 single<\/a>, and two EPs, and many will remember the Taylor Swift-obsessed teenager<\/a> who made it to the quarterfinals on X Factor NZ in 2013.\u00a0<\/p>\n So what does it mean that an award-winning, industry-recognised local artist is blind auditioning for a singing competition across the ditch? Isn\u2019t that a bit like\u2026 Karen Walker going on Project Runway? Have singing competitions quietly abandoned their amateur roots? Or is this just the natural step for any artist from our deck furniture piss country<\/a>, where the top 50 singles of 2024 only included one local song<\/a> (from 2023), and discovering local artists is only getting harder and harder in the streaming age<\/a>?<\/p>\n Dr Rebecca Trelease, senior media studies lecturer at AUT, wrote a whole PhD chapter about the endurance of American Idol, and has kept a close eye on the evolution of singing competitions ever since. For her, Henderson auditioning on The Voice in 2025 makes perfect sense. Firstly, there\u2019s the \u201cauthenticity\u201d of the format: \u201cThe Voice is really trying to capture the idea that they are the ones who take singing really seriously. They don\u2019t want gimmicks, they don\u2019t want sad origin stories, this is purely about your voice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the enormous audience to consider \u2013 The Voice Australia premiere was watched by around 948,000 people<\/a> on Sunday night. \u201cThat is a huge step up when you are an artist in New Zealand in terms of global reach,\u201d Trelease says. \u201cSo she\u2019s already opened herself up to a million more fans than she would have had last week, which is really awesome. Especially when you consider that a reality show was how she entered the music industry in the first place, it\u2019s kind of perfect.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This is also not the first time a New Zealand musician has wowed on The Voice. Local artist Jaeyden Randell, who was the voice behind the te reo M\u0101ori version of Moana and Frozen, made it to the grand final<\/a> of The Voice Australia just last year. In 2022, country superstar Kaylee Bell auditioned with her own song \u2018Keith\u2019, written about then-judge Keith Urban. The song went to #12 in the US charts, became a certified gold record in Australia and New Zealand, and she credits her time on The Voice as changing her life<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trelease says the casting of more experienced, sometimes even professional singers, shows that the singing competition genre has evolved past the Susan Boyle myth \u2013 the idea that a supremely talented singer might just wander in off the streets having never performed onstage in their lives. \u201cThere\u2019s a big part of the setup of singing shows which has traditionally been hidden from the audience, which is the investment of time, labour and money from the contestants into developing their talent,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cSo with someone like Cassie Henderson entering the show, we actually know for a fact that she\u2019s been doing this for the last 10 years, which is actually exposing that element of the production to the audience,\u201d says Trelease. \u201cThat\u2019s good in a way, especially compared to the reality shows from 20 years ago that we were just supposed to accept as totally real, and not think or talk about them being produced in any way. The audience understands now that there are bigger things at play.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And in a topsy-turvy world where AI artists are bringing in huge numbers<\/a> and even famous popstars can\u2019t release a record without a viral TikTok sound<\/a>, Trelease says the traditional career trajectories in the music industry have crumbled and nobody really knows what to do. \u201cIt\u2019s not as simple as performing heaps, getting noticed and getting famous anymore \u2013 you have to have something that pushes you out there,\u201d she says. And in Henderson\u2019s case, that special something could come from returning to where it all began.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s fabulous that someone can get their first big exposure as an artist on a reality show, continue with their art for over 10 years, and then return to reality to get to that next level of their career,\u201d says Trelease. \u201cEveryone loves a comeback story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two months after winning best pop artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards, Cassie Henderson has popped up as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,53522,6212,134,53523,2332,11252,53524,427,53525],"class_list":{"0":"post-67319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cassie-henderson","11":"tag-comments-enabled","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-nz-music","14":"tag-pop-culture","15":"tag-reality-tv","16":"tag-the-voice-australia","17":"tag-tv","18":"tag-x-factor-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cassie Henderson at the 2025 AMAs. (Photo credit: Stijl)<\/p>\n