Melanie Amaro Takes the X-Factor Crown + Plans to Buy Life-Time Supply of Chicken

Thursday, ballad singer Melanie Amaro won the first U.S season of the X–Factor. For those who are unfamiliar, X–Factor is a singing competition show that was first introduced in Britain by superstar judge Simon Cowell. For the first time, this year Cowell brought the show to American televisions via Fox. More than 100,000 people auditioned to compete and once the show began running, it attracted about 12million viewers (slim numbers compared to American Idol, which attracts about double that amount, but that’s beside the point).

Nevertheless, Melanie got a sweet deal out of her win. The 19-year-old is from the British Virgin Islands, but currently lives in Florida. Since a very young age, she’s been singing gospel, R&B, pop, and soul music, with inspiration from singers like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige. She started off singing in church events, at Sweet Sixteens, and in weddings, before auditioning for X-Factor. After standing in line with thousands of other people, Simon Cowell denied her in the first round. He, later, decided he’d been wrong and then brought her back. Now she has a $5,000,000 recording contract with Cowell’s record label, SyCo, which is owned by Sony. And she also gets to star in a Pepsi commercial. After her win, she tweeted:

And what are her plans, after securing that big check? Melanie told People that she plans to buy her mother a home, get a foot massage, and a life-supply of chicken.

“I can’t live without it…It’s my favorite food…”

She continued,

“Life will change a lot….The most I have ever had before was $200, if I was lucky.”

Sweet! Here’s footage of Melanie’s finale performance.

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Here’s Melanie performing “I Believe I Can Fly” with R.Kelly.

[Reuters, TheXFactorUSA]

-@Kami2Kute