‘AGT’ season 18 kicks off with first-ever audience Golden Buzzer for Mzansi Youth Choir [WATCH]

John Benutty
·3 min read
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On May 30, “America’s Got Talent” season 18 premiered with the first installment of audition episodes. In this initial stage of the competition, each judge is given one “golden buzzer” decision to make where they can send an act straight through to the live shows. In addition to those individual decisions, there has been in recent seasons an opportunity for a group decision where they all anoint their favorite act of the night together. This week, none of those came to pass. Instead, Simon Cowell surprised Mzansi Youth Choir with the first ever audience Golden Buzzer. Watch the full performance in the video above.

Ahead of their performance, the group explained the start of their choir through the sad story of their founders being carjacked by young people. They saw it as an opportunity to “change young lives” by creating the youth choir. The group continued by saying that AGT is the biggest competition in the world and “it has the power to inspire and give hope to the people,” matching the mission of their founding members.

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For their audition, Mzansi Youth Choir performed “It’s OK,” a song first heard by AGT audiences when it was performed by former contest Nightbirde who passed away in 2022. The group explained that they were so touched by her story on season 16 that they chose to perform it on their own and then it quickly became “a pillar of strength” for them as a choir. They wanted to continue her legacy by performing it in their own audition. Following the performance and holding back emotion, Simon called their tribute “breathtaking,” saying that it brought back a lot of memories for him and that seeing them perform it would have meant a lot to Nightbirde.

Amidst chants from the audience for Simon to hit the Golden Buzzer, Simon said that “we’ve never done this before, but we’ve always discussed one day giving the audience something.” In that moment, the judges all turned around to face a roaring audience who stood to resume their chants of “golden buzzer.” Terry Crews rushed to the dais to join the judges as Simon declared, pointing to the choir and then to the audience,”This is for you. This is for you. This is for Jane,” letting the golden confetti descend on to the stage.

As the first golden buzzer act of the season, Mzansi Youth Choir will be seen next in the live shows beginning August 22.

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