No one gave Fifth Harmony a second look, but it's possible they could be declared the winners tonight. Here's why.
Will Fifth Harmony win the The X Factor? Throughout the show's often rocky, unpredictable second U.S. season, the girl group has been the competition's perennial afterthought. Each week their doom was considered imminent. But each week the favored contestants fell, and somehow the quintet survived. And still they were given no respect, their chances of winning put at something lower than a volcano erupting under the stage floor.
But survive they did, and now, the cobbled-together team of teenage warblers may be on the brink of — to the astonishment of all — actually winning the entire competition, along with the recording contract and the $5 million prize that accompanies the championship. Last night, the Fifthers genuinely astonished the judges by delivering three performances that in energy, spunk, and catchiness outshone the two favored contestants, 35-year-old country singer Tate Stevens and 13-year-old mini-diva Carly Rose Sonenclar.
Six months ago, Fifth Harmony did not even exist. The group was created at the end of the auditions by the judges out of five singers not deemed good enough to make it on their own. Judge L.A. Reid remarked one week that Fifth Harmony — noted for pleasant but boring voices heard in a falsetto monotone — should be renamed "Fifth Unison." They seemed to survive almost as a second thought; pleasant but unnoticed, it was as though the audiences had forgotten to vote against them. As recently as last week, judge Britney Spears could not contain herself from openly goggling in disbelief that the group had made it through to the finals.
But after last night, no one is counting the girls out any more. So how did they do it? If indeed they take the prize in tonight's finale, what fueled the group's rise? Whether brilliantly savvy or just lucky, Fifth Harmony stumbled onto a well-worn path of singing-contest success.
Step One: Surge Late
Three weeks before the finale of American Idol's first season, Justin Guarini was considered a lock to win it all, with Kelly Clarkson's chances barely noticed. But ever since Kelly came out of nowhere to sweep the competition in the final week and went on to megastardom, an underdog upset has been the rule rather than the exception, occurring in almost every season of Idol. If there is anyone who knows and understands the power of that narrative, it is X Factor's creator and Fifth Harmony mentor Simon Cowell.
It's possible that never before in world singing-contest history has an act surged this late, coming into the finals almost unnoticed. This is perhaps due to X Factor's particular quirk of the three-way last round that kept attention focused elsewhere right up until the group took the stage.
