Playing piano on a stage saturated in pink and lavender, YouTube personality and crowd favorite Madilyn Bailey brought a rock-and-roll vibe to the America's Got Talent live show.
The performance hearkens back to classic performances delivered by giants Elton John and Freddie Mercury in their heydays. She even had the fashion to pull off the comparison.
The crowd seemed to feel it, screaming in enthusiasm throughout the act.
If her performance suffered for lacking the movement and energy of some of the other acts, her masterful vocals went a long way to make the difference.
Madilyn hails from Boyceville, Wisconsin, which she calls "a tiny town with more cows than human beings." Tiny or not, she managed to build a YouTube empire of over 13.5 million subscribers—no small feat.
That's before the new wave she's bound to pick up after her multiple appearances on America's Got Talent.
Madilyn's audition song was an original piece she wrote about the trolls that plagued her videos. How? She took some of the most hateful comments from her YouTube videos and turned them into a song.
That prompted Howie to say, "So tonight, you're gonna take ugliness and make it beautiful," adding that he couldn't wait to hear it.
He wasn't disappointed, as she delivered a rousing performance that turned hateful comments like "you suck," "leave Earth," and "quit YouTube" into fuel for audience acclaim.
You can't deny the power of a performance that takes a line like "this sucks big sweaty [deleted] with a side of nachos" and turns it into a ticket to the live shows.
When it was over, Howie made it clear he wasn't disappointed, saying, "I don't care if you have four followers or four million followers. Everyone gets those mean tweets. I love what you stand for, and you're a good singer. A really good singer."
