Judith Hill on The Voice

Now this is very curious indeed.

Shortly after I blogged about how Josh should notice Judith Hill more, suddenly she's everywhere.  She's doing a movie "Twenty Feet from Stardom."  She's on "The Voice."  And, curiously, some of her big YouTube videos seem to have disappeared, like the one where she sang "Heal the World" on Chinese TV and the one where she sang a duet with a Japanese funk performer about sisterhood on Japanese TV and the one where she sang "Man in the Mirror" with Michael Jackson's band on  US TV.

On the one hand, I've been critical of Judith that she doesn't blow her own horn enough.  That she could have been much bigger if she did.

On the other hand, somehow, now things are arranged so that no one realizes that this is the international celebrity who sang "Heal the World" for an estimated audience of 1 billion people at Michael Jackson's memorial service at the Staples Center.  

So now she is on The Voice and no one seems to recognize her.  How is that possible?  How can they not recognize her?

I just don't get it.

Michael Jackson chose 3 female vocalists to be featured in his "This is It" stationary tour at the O2 in the UK.  These were Lady Gaga, Charice, and Judith Hill. The others now have substantial international followings. 

Somehow Travis Payne threw all of Michael Jackson's grieving fans to Lady Gaga, when he explained in a TV interview how enthusiastically MJ had described her.  She got a lot of MJ's people, too, like Payne himself and MJ's clothing designer (Zaldy?).  Though she was a good performer before that, the quality of her videos and choreography suddenly went through the roof when MJ's people went over to her.  It was as if MJ had left her his fortune, not the money, but the market position.

David Foster picked up Charice a bit the way MJ had, through Oprah -- though Oprah had consciously directed her to Foster, not, perhaps, realizing that MJ had also seen her and planned to take her to the O2.  She talked about this on stage a bit in a YouTube video I saw.  While Charice has few US appearances, she has a huge following in her native Philippines and also quite a bit in Japan and Korea.  She's definitely a star in some quarters, at least.

David Foster knew about Judith Hill, too. He had her as a backup singer on the Foster & Friends DVD.  Josh Groban had her as a backup singer as well.  You can see her in the Brave video.

Yet, it was Judith Hill who sang a duet with MJ the day that he died.  He was so taken with her performance that he broke into full voice, something that he was trying to avoid during rehearsals, because it hurt his throat.  That duet appears in the "This is It" movie, where you can clearly see how beautiful and talented Judith is.  This means that he thought she was a worthy performer, worthy of duetting with him.

She went on to write "I'll Always be MIssing You Michael," which was distributed to millions of people.

Everyone, seeing Judith Hill, at the Staples Center said "A Star is Born."   She was flown to a number of foreign countries, like Japan, China, and Brazil.  

She seems to have remained obscure.   It does not seem that any of the celebrity judges recognized her on The Voice.  How is that?

I suppose in part she chose not to promote herself.  She had that whole guilt thing about not making money off MJ's death.  She certainly did not tweet photos of her trips abroad to her new fans.

Now she's learned that she has to keep us in the loop, so suddenly she's tweeting up a storm.  I guess she must have gotten an agent or a manager or something, who is putting her in line.

Still the whole thing is so mysterious.  Was the disappearance of the youtube videos of the foreign appearances engineered to make her look more obscure before she appeared on The Voice, or was that a coincidence?  

Could Usher really not have recognized her?  He had performed with MJ, in the past.  He must have seen "This is It," probably numerous times.  He also performed at the Staples Center at MJ's memorial service.  Could he possibly have forgotten her? Is he pretending not to know who she is?   Or does he in fact recognize her and just feel surprised to see her on the show?

I love Judith Hill and I want her to do well, but this all seems so odd.   

I don't know what the rules for The Voice are.  Maybe this is normal, for someone who has some professional credentials to appear on there along with real amateurs?  Are they going to reveal that she has professional credentials?

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OK, I see that they do explain this.

http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/reality-rocks/voice-season-4-premiere-shakira-usher-come-compete-020127146.html

She refused the recording contracts she was offered back then, because she didn't want to make money off Michael's death.  Hmm.

This reminds me of Josh, you know?