{"id":822026,"date":"2026-11-02T19:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T19:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/822026\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T19:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T19:52:10","slug":"the-voice-uk-winner-cate-mchugh-says-she-wanted-to-be-taylor-swift-growing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/822026\/","title":{"rendered":"The Voice UK winner Cate McHugh says she wanted to be Taylor Swift growing up"},"content":{"rendered":"

McHugh said that navigating losing her sight aged 22 due to degenerative macular condition Stargardt disease, external<\/a> had made her more determined to succeed.<\/p>\n

She said music had “always been an outlet, emotionally, as so many musicians will say, but for me, when I’m on a stage singing and the lights are down on the audience, it’s the one place that I don’t think about my sight loss”.<\/p>\n

McHugh said that “as long as I know the words and I’m not trying to read them off an iPad then I’m absolutely there in that moment”.<\/p>\n

She described her sight loss as “just a small part of me, it’s not who I am”.<\/p>\n

McHugh added that while many people with differences and disabilities sometimes felt they had to make themselves smaller “so that you don’t become a nuisance to people”, she chose “to find a way to take up space and be bigger and that’s where music took me”.<\/p>\n

She is now working on her first original song in a studio which should be released “relatively soon, hopefully, fingers crossed”.<\/p>\n

Footage shared by McHugh on social media after her win showed her laughing and smiling with family and friends screaming in delight as they celebrated her victory at a watch party in Cardiff.<\/p>\n

She has won a \u00a350,000 cash prize and a recording contract, with her first ever single, a cover of The Beatles classic Blackbird, now released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McHugh said that navigating losing her sight aged 22 due to degenerative macular condition Stargardt disease, external had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-822026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}