‘X Factor’ winner Sam Bailey has revealed her advice for this year’s champion.
She tells HuffPost UK that it’s important for whoever wins that they keep their feet firmly on the ground, explaining: “ If they’re going to put you on a pedestal, make sure you can get off that pedestal if you need to. That’s all I’m gonna say.
"Because there are so many people who get caught on that pedestal, and they think they’re big, but then they get pushed off the pedestal, and they’re nobody with nobody to help them. I never once wanted to go up on the pedestal, I just wanted to be normal, and just sing.”
Sam discovers she's won 'The X Factor', back in 2013
Sam insists that retaining her normality, rather than being sucked in by the world of fame and celebrity that ‘The X Factor’ can offer, was important to her when she was named winner.
She reveals: “As soon as I won the show, and I came back home, I went Christmas shopping with my husband in the supermarket, and granted it took us about two hours to get round, but I still did that, because I wanted to maintain that normality.
“Look at One Direction. They can’t even go to the toilet without someone standing outside the door making sure they’re alright. Someone’s always got to be with them. They can’t go out on their own, they’ve always got to have someone with them, and I find that quite sad. I really do. They’re never going to have that normality again, whereas I’ve always maintained it.”
Despite commercial success with both her debut single and her album, Sam’s time with Simon Cowell’s label was a short one, and just one year after she had been crowned winner, it was reported that the music mogul had decided not to renew her contract.
Simon Cowell
However, Sam harbours no bad feelings towards either ‘The X Factor’ or Simon, even claiming that she feels more free to pursue projects she’s passionate about now she’s no longer with his record label, such as her forthcoming live show, ‘Sam Bailey: Live In The West End’.
She admits: “I wouldn’t have been able to have done this show when had I still been signed to Simon, because there’s only so many things you can do when you’re signed to a label, so I was quite relieved when I ended up not being with Simon anymore.
“When you’re with a record label, you’re basically working for them, so they decide what you do. If they don’t want you to go and open a Tesco’s in Grimsby, then you can’t, because it’s not going to go with the ‘image’.
“If someone rang up and said, ‘right, we wanna pay 20 grand for Cheryl Fernandez-Versini to come and open a Tesco’s in Durham’, they wouldn’t let her do it, because it wouldn’t be good for her profile. Whereas I would go, ‘yeah! I’ll do that, I shop at Tesco’s occasionally’.
“They don’t like it, because they want the people they sign to be unattainable. But I’m completely different - I want to be able to walk down the street and have people come up to me and say, ‘oh, it’s so nice to see you walking down the street, holding a Primark bag’, because I’m proud of it, you know? I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud of being normal.”
Sam has admitted that she hopes her West End show, which will consist entirely of songs from musical theatre, will show people that she’s no one-trick pony.
Sam Bailey
She says: “I don’t want the critics to go down and go, ‘oh well that was really shit’, I want people to come out and go, ‘do you know what? She’s not a bad little crooner her. She could do well in the West End’.
“I am better known for doing ballads, and that’s why I wanted to do this show, to prove that I can change it up a bit. With this show I wanted to show that I can get to grips with something that’s a bit more out there, and even with a bit of choreography chucked in.
“There’s going to be a lot of critics in the audience, so it’s going to feel like an audition. I am putting my neck on the line, and it’ll either go one way or the other."
Sam also tells us that musical theatre is one of her biggest passions, explaining: “The first proper musical West End show I went to see was ‘Les Mis’ - and I was virtually dragged along because at the time I thought, ‘err, French revolution, boooring’ - but I left sobbing and wanting to see it again.
“I’ve seen it 18 times now, and I’ve seen most West End shows. It’s good that I don’t live in London because I’d be absolutely skint - I’d be going to see West End shows all the time!”
Sam Bailey will be performing her ‘Live In The West End’ show at London’s Lyric Theatre on Monday, 12 October.
She’ll be joined by several special guests, including last year’s ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ winners Collabro, Union J singer Jaymi Hensley and West End leading lady, Caroline Sheen.
