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Do yourselves a favor and remember the name: Cyrus Villanueva.
After seeing and getting floored by his performance on X-Factor Australia’s Five Chair Challenge, our fearless prediction is that this guy is going to get huge.
What Cyrus did earlier in the week is this: He put a soulful, Sam Smith-spin into Swedish singer Robyn’s gay anthem “Dancing on my Own”.
And just as his performance sent people swooning, their reaction is making Cyrus super excited.
“That’s my favorite experience so far,” the 19-year-old Filipino-Australian tells Coconuts Manila over email. “I have never gotten that type of response from a crowd [before], and I am still so humbled to have been blessed with that opportunity,” he adds.
Cyrus tells us he’s something of a rookie, having just started performing “upon leaving high school and beginning university. I decided to give X-Factor a shot after realizing how much I love performing,” the Graphic Design student writes.
Music, Cyrus says, has always been his passion. While a huge fan of hip-hop and R&B, he credits his Filipino gigging musician of a dad as his single biggest direct influence. “If one person was responsible for my inclination toward music, is has to be my dad,” he says.
The hip-hop and R&B fan also says says he absolutely loves jazz. “A huge influence on me is Nat King Cole,” he adds.
Cyrus, who is attending the University of Wollongong, a seaside city south of Sydney, describes his X-Factor audition as nerve-wracking but “the moment I got on that stage and began playing, my nerves brushed off and I just had fun.”
In a plain white shirt and skinny jeans, and armed with only his acoustic guitar, Cyrus performed a stripped down version of The Weeknd’s “Earned It” for his audition. He hit all the high notes, showed off a sexy kind of groove, demonstrated quite an impressive sort of restraint and looked extra comfortable.
And very early on, the judges were shown looking excited, as though they had just discovered the next big thing. His parents — his Australian mother and Filipino father — were present, looking mighty proud.
It’s hard to believe he is a rookie. His Sound Cloud page presents an adept musician who knows exactly how to give songs a refreshing and unexpected twist. There are 15 uploaded tracks and they all sound unlike themselves. Never would we have guessed, for instance, that Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” or Corinne Bailey Ray’s “Put Your Record On” could drip of so much sex. But that’s exactly what Cyrus did, and continues to do on the talent show.
Immediately after his heartbreaking rendition of “Dancing on my Own,” Cyrus, along with the 19 other contestants flew to London, where he put that now-famous sexy angle to Bob Marley’s reggae hit “Is This Love.” It wasn’t Simon Cowell’s favorite — the honor goes to a woman named Louis Adams — but unsurprisingly, the Fil-Aussie made it to the Top 12.
X-Factor Australia might not be screening on Philippine TV but you can bet a kangaroo’s ass we’re following and rooting for Cyrus through and through. Watch some of his performances below:
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