Connie Talbot

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Talbot when she first appeared in Britain's Got Talent (left) and later in Britain's Got Talent: The Champions (right)

Connie Victoria Elizabeth Talbot (born 20 November 2000) is an English singer.

She first gained prominence as the runner-up of the first series of Britain's Got Talent, despite initial expectations of being a "joke" act due to her not having formally taken any singing lessons. Initially rejected by Sony BMG who dismissed her for being "too young to be their sort of artist", Talbot was signed to "Rainbow Recording Company", an offshoot of Rhythm Riders made specifically for the then-six-year old singer. Her debut album, Over the Rainbow, was released in 2007 to lacklustre reviews, with critics praising Talbot's vocal abilities but noted the lack of depth and questioned the appropriateness of thrusting a girl of her age into the limelight.

Over the Rainbow was then followed by two Christmas albums—Christmas Album and Holiday Magic, and later by Beautiful World and Matters to Me. She also collaborated with Boyce Avenue covering the Jonas Brothers song "Sucker".

Connie Talbot provides examples of the following tropes:
  • Bowdlerise: Connie covered Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You", albeit singing the censored radio version titled "Forget You" instead of the more risqué original. Given that she was in her teens at the time and wanted to present a more wholesome image, this isn't surprising.
  • Christmas Songs: Christmas Album and Holiday Magic.
  • Cover Version: Most of her initial output was this, if the title track of Over the Rainbow was any indication.
  • Cute but Cacophonic: Subverted in that while her singing voice as a child was more or less what you expect, critics did give her credit for her abilities as "most of the notes (if not all of them) are in the right order and sung to the right pitch; the timing is fine too" according to Sharon Mawer of Allmusic.
  • Licensed Game: A Wii karaoke game was to be published by Data Design Interactive of Ninjabread Man fame (or perhaps infamy). The game, titled Connie Talbot: Over The Rainbow, was quietly canned not long after it was announced at E3 2009, but a final pre-release build surfaced on eBay and was purchased and later dumped by a video game preservationist, the disk image of which was uploaded on the Internet Archive.
Discography:
  • Over the Rainbow (2007)
  • Connie Talbot's Christmas Album (2008)
  • Connie Talbot's Holiday Magic (2009)
  • Beautiful World (2012)
  • Gravity (2014)
  • Matters to Me (2016)