Bailey May
A few months ago, Simon Fuller announced that he was looking for 14 teenage performers all over the world to become part of his fave new group, Now United.
Four Pinoy teen comers were shortlisted for consideration—Bailey May, Ylona Garcia, Jane de Leon and AC Bonifacio. They flew to the United States to join a boot camp to further hone their talents, as their respective platoons of fans waited with bated breath for the results.
Last week, the long wait was over, and the good news was that “our” Bailey May had made it to the teen performing group, reportedly the 11th member to be named.
Ten other members from all over the world have already been revealed—Lamar from the United Kingdom, Sofya from Russia, Josh from Canada, Amy from Brazil, Heyoon from South Korea, Hira from Japan, Noah from the US, Dianna from Senegal and Joalin from Finland.
Ever since his “Pinoy Big Brother” stint, Bailey has stood out, in our view, due to his winning combination of fresh-faced good looks, natural and lively performing style, charisma and versatility. That’s why we’ve been singling him out from time to time as one of the teen newcomers most likely to succeed in local show biz.
Now that he’s been tapped to join the international performing group, the world will now be his oyster, and we’ll probably be seeing less of him on local screens and stages.
But, he’s wise to grab the unusual opportunity to share his talents with a much wider and bigger audience on TV and on the live performance scene—which could in turn lead to other big breaks that would make it possible for him to eventually match the popularity of other Pinoys and Fil-Ams, like Bruno Mars.—We should all be so lucky—and plucky!
As for Simon Fuller’s Now United group itself, we can expect it to benefit from his extensive experience in discovering, building up and managing big singing stars and groups, like the Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.
He has also managed David and Victoria Beckham, Annie Lennox, Steven Tyler, Emma Bunton and Lisa Marie Presley, and is in partnership with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.—Bailey May is obviously in very good “mentoring” hands.
Incidentally, related reports intimate that Fuller may have plans to eventually form a local version of Now United, perhaps with the three other Pinoy talents on his original short list, plus other still to be discovered teen standouts.
We trust that the local group will also benefit from his tutelage and mentoring and turn out to be more successful than groups like Boyband PH, which had a big, bright start, but hasn’t sustained its initial impact for the longer term.