A young adult female child in a denim jacket over a pink shirt at an indoor carnival or fair with red curtains and yellow lights.

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Ansley, 12, sings Aretha with no music

Name: Ansley, 12, sings Aretha with no music
Uploaded: 2019-06-19T00:00:00Z
Duration: 4 min 57 s
Description: Ansley Burns walks onto the America's Got Talent stage with a South Carolina accent that earns a compliment before she sings a note. Asked if she's a comedian or a dancer, she sets them straight.

Ansley Burns walks onto the America's Got Talent stage with a South Carolina accent that earns a compliment before she sings a note. Asked if she's a comedian or a dancer, she sets them straight. more

"Well, I'm a singer," she says. She's 12 and from Easley, and she's here to sing Aretha Franklin. That gets a laugh. "At 12?" one judge asks. "You sure?"

The stage is hers. The backing track is another story. It's loud and it fights her, and before long Simon Cowell stops the whole thing.

What he says next is the part people keep coming back to. "Sorry, babe. I don't think this backing track was working with you." It was, in his words, a horrible, horrible backing track, and he doesn't think they can judge her properly on it. "We really like you," he says. If you're going to sing Aretha, you need a great track.

So he offers a new plan, just a verse and a chorus, maybe a cappella. Then he hands over his own water. "This will help," he tells her. "It's like magic water." Ansley takes it and gives the best line of the night. "Well, that just happened."

The room is on her side now. "You could do this, Ansley," someone calls out. "You got this, girl." She starts again, and this time it's only her voice.

A young adult female child in a denim jacket over a pink shirt at an indoor carnival or fair with red curtains and yellow lights. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Ansley Burns walks onto the America's Got Talent stage with a South Carolina accent that earns a compliment before she sings a note.

The judges have plenty to say. One points to her professionalism at 12. "I work with people three, four or five times your age who don't have the talent that you have in your little finger," the judge says. "You are really something special."

"You've just proved the point," a judge tells her. "Personality to me is as important as technical ability. It's the person I always remember." Coming out on that stage at 12 is scary, the judge adds, and the whole panel is going to remember her.

Then the vote. Howie says yes. Gabrielle says, "Oh yeah." The last judge tries the accent on her name, stretching out "Ansley, Ansley, Ansley Burns," and tells her she has four yeses. The magic water seems to have done its job.

#singing