Idols Season Ten reaches its peak

Sunday night’s performance of the two finalists of this 10th edition of SA Idols was a smashing affair indeed, especially for our homegrown girl, Bongi Silinda who has sung her way to the very top – she’s a finalist at last.

She’s facing Gauteng-based Vincent Bones of Eldorado Park, who himself has been consistent since the first audition.

Our girl from Driekoppies in the Nkomazi local municipality proved she had the courage of her convictions when she was turned down after the first audition – when she, not convinced by the judges’ decision, made a second attempt during the auditions in Pretoria and predictably, she was in and has never turned back!

One remarkable thing about Bongi is, whenever she receives a negative nod from the judges, it hasn’t bogged her down, but instead, has spurred her on to perform even better than before!

The Top 2 Idols Season 10 finalists each performed three songs: the brand-new hit that was written especially for them; a song that the judges, Randall Abrahams, Unathi Msengana and Gareth Cliff chose for them, and then a new and hopefully much improved interpretation of the song with which they originally auditioned. The new track written especially for Bongi was called “If I got you”.

The judges’ choice for her was the Mary J Blige song “A night to remember”, and the audition song that she improved on was the Destiny’s Child hit “Stand up for love”.

The title of Vincent Bone’s original new song is “Let me love”. The judges picked Ringo Madlingozi’s “Sondela” for him and his audition song was a mash-up of Eminem’s classic “Lose yourself” and Adele’s Oscar-winning Bond theme, “Skyfall”.

The most interesting aspect of the evening was that the two finalists were equally talented and confident in their own individual manner – Sunday’s performances were five-star par excellence. In the build-up to the finals Bongi splendidly demonstrated that she was capable of handling anything musical under the sun.

Vincent, on the one hand, is stiff competition for her – he even convincingly sang Ringo Madlingozi’s “Sondela” in his presence and was commended for making it his own. All that stands between them now is your vote.

All in all, if Mpumalanga lads are bent on having our Bongi Silinda win, they must send those SMSes – send 01 to 37400 and then we will crown the second consecutive Mpumalanga winner of Idols. The ball is in your court, make it happen for Bongi.

Voting closes on Friday at 22:00