Contrary to the bombastic voiceover at the start of reality TV music competitions, we know that finding that one-in-a-million star is… rare. Most talent show alumni get a couple of money-making years if they’re lucky, or eke out a C-list existence. Then a tiny act surprises us by rising to incredible heights. Enter American singer and actor Amber Riley. She performs as if she was born on stage.
I didn’t even know Riley, 31, had tried her luck on American Idol (at 17, she didn’t get past the audition stages), butI remember seeing her on musical TV comedy-drama Glee. Riley played talented-but-overlooked Mercedes for six years, covering all the greats, from Whitney Houston to Aretha Franklin. I loved Mercedes, especially because she got relatively little affection from the Glee fans.
Sure, Riley has screen presence, but it’s her voice that is truly arresting: warm like honey and ginger tea, joyful like babies’ laughter. Whisper it, but her cover of Aretha’s Ain’t No Way has kinda usurped the original for me.
In 2013, she took part in the US version of Strictly, Dancing With The Stars, and won (the first black woman to do so) with a samba and a quickstep. A couple of years later she charmed on TV as Addaperle, the good witch of the north, in the classic musical The Wiz. Her voice sounded better than ever.
In 2016, she came to the London stage, playing Effie White in Dreamgirls (she’d sung Effie’s signature song, And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going, years ago, on Glee). Naturally, and excitingly, she’s just won her first Olivier. I imagine it won’t be her last.
