Robert Gold heaved a sigh. Last Note Standing had just finished audition processes for its twelfth season. The past ten years had been filled with the same slew of somewhat decent contestants, petty banter, and mediocre records.
How far he had fallen.
In the not so distant past, he had been one of the few remaining moguls of the music industry. He still owned Spinner Records, a play on the now ancient technology of a needle used to play a record, but it wasn't as successful as it once had been.
When he and his wife of five years, Milah, had split up, the company had been the only thing keeping him going. His son hadn't wanted anything to do with his workaholic, oft absent father.
As the digital music pirating became more and more popular, as well as people being able to mass produce music on their own, his company had taken another hit. The industry was changing around him and so he's signed on to do this damned show. And then they had hired his son.
Irony of ironies, Robert now saw his son more than he had his entire childhood but still very rarely talked to him. It was a wonder Neal ever had anything good to say about his contestants.
Gold looked up at the tap on his door, it was his makeup artist informing him that it was only 10 min to filming and did he need more powder?
He dismissed the girl with a wave of his hand. He'd gotten to see footage of the singers' auditions that had made it to this round. It gave him the opportunity to see if there was anyone he was really excited about.
He wasn't.
It was the same as always, good looking guys, better looking girls, stereotypical voices. Well, all except one. There was one girl, he grudgingly admitted who seemed to have a voice straight from heaven itself, but she'd been the final wild card pick, so she hadn't been able to wow the judges the first time around.
He dragged himself out of his chair, grabbing his sheet of notes and an extra water bottle and headed out the door. Following the path to the main stage area, he saw that most of the other judges, coaches, and contestants were already present. Good. He could just take his place and avoid talking to anyone else.
The judges had already taken their seats and were being touched over by the makeup people one last time. He saw David wave at him from his seat, which was next to the empty one that was his own. The contestants were huddled in a clump on stage. This was their first live performance and if they weren't already nervous, Gold would make sure to do his part to help those nerves along.
A crew member flittered around from group to group making sure everything was sitting correctly in the lights and camera angles. It was time to do his job. If he was being honest with himself, and he rarely was, this was the most stressful part of any season. Whichever three of the nine remaining contestants he ended up with, he'd be stuck with until the season ended or they got voted off. Gold's pride was too great to wish his own contestants to be voted off, which meant he'd put effort into training them, help them wow the judges and America, and be stuck with them until the end of the season. Almost three months with these people.
He had to make sure he got the ones he'd determined were the least annoying.
He heard the directors call for warm ups and the live audience simultaneously. Most people didn't realize that the judges actually heard parts of a contestant's performance even though this was a "live" show. They were singers and singers were allowed to warm up, right?
Gold quickly crossed the stage and took his seat. This was when he always made his best decisions.
You can learn a lot about a performer when they're in the middle of a performance. How that person deals with stress, with the spotlight, with everyone's eyes on them, but their actions during a warm up were much more indicative of their character as an artist and a person.
Last Note Standing filmed in front of a live studio audience to heighten the stakes for the singer and to give feedback, noise wise, and they were allowed to file in while the singers were warming up. Basically, it was noisy. The judges the singers would come to fear, if they didn't already, along with the coaches they were so desperate to please, were already present but not fully paying attention to them. This combination had been the most heady that Gold had come across in his decade as a coach. Most singers were egotistical artists, if the eyes weren't on them, they got unhappy.
Those were the people Gold did not want to work with.
One by one, the singers stepped forward allowing the crew member next to the mic stand to adjust it as needed. They were allowed ten to fifteen seconds of their chosen song and as long as the speakers didn't throw up feedback, they were dismissed. Gaston Le'Fou was the first to step forward and Gold crossed his name off his list before he even opened his mouth. The boy had been raised thinking the greatest gift to the singing world was his voice. He'd been raised adjacent to a Broadway stage and the pretentiousness of his changed name matched his vocal inflections perfectly.
Gold wanted nothing to do with him.
Minutes passed and Gold made more strikethroughs than actual comments next to a name. This year was going to be rough. Ruby Lucas showed a little talent albeit packaged distastefully and Jefferson March could actually sing. Gold tapped the pen against his pad lightly...he still needed one more vocalist.
The final singer of the warm up stepped up to the mike, pausing as the crew member had to lower the mic quite substantially so the tiny woman could sing into it. She was strikingly beautiful, that much was apparent from all the way across the stage. Her tiny frame was swathed in a flowing, floor length dress in a lovely coral. The overall look was classic and not too flashy.
Gold consulted his notes, ah, this was the wildcard pick, the one that had literally snuck in at the wire. Gold snorted to himself. If she hadn't been good enough to gain entry to the competition right off the bat, why would she be worth his time. He raised his pen, prepared to cross off her name, Belle French, off the paper before the first note of her song had even blared through the speakers, then, he heard her voice.
Amplified by the extremely live mic sitting not six inches from her mouth, her voice, a most lovely warm tone, tinted with an Australian accent that lilted pleasingly, echoed through the room as she thanked the crew member for his help. That was interesting. Her speaking voice was incredibly pleasant to the ear. The smooth notes of a power ballad blasted through the speakers as the singer swallowed noticeably. Good. She was nervous.
The woman took a breath and began the first couple notes of her song. As soon as the sound reached his ears, Gold had to physically stop his mouth from dropping open. On the tape the woman had been good but nothing to write home about, in person, she was astonishing. He glanced around, looking at David and Emma sitting beside him, they couldn't be allowed anywhere near this girl. He had to coach her, had to have her on his team.
There was something special about her.
She finished her soundcheck and smiled brightly at the judges and in his direction, Coaches Corner he knew the contestants had dubbed it, before walking jauntily off the stage. Gold glanced down at his notebook. He had little check marks next to Lucas and March's names. They were important, they'd round out his team, but Belle, Belle was the one that had the best chance of winning. He smiled to himself, this was definitely going to be his year.