By Charles Hutchinson
CLEO Higgins, a semi-finalist under the mentorship of Will I Am in the 2013 series of BBC1 talent contest The Voice, has been pushing her voice to the max in Thriller Live, the Michael Jacksontribute concert show.
“I’ve never done a show like this before, and I’ve killed every show every night, so I got to the point where I had to take five days off,” says the fully recovered York-bound soul singer, who first found teen fame in the 1990s fronting Cleopatra, three R&B-singing sisters from Moss Side, Manchester.
“I was in tears when I couldn’t sing because singing is what I do, and I couldn’t even speak. Doing this show is different from when you’re on tour with your own group doing your own material. With Thriller Live it’s a long tour and you’re on stage for two hours night after night. It’s eight shows a week, two days with matinees, and it’s a high-energy performance with lots of kicks.”
After her exploits in The Voice, the producers of Thriller Live offered her the female lead role in a show that has sold more than 2,500,000 tickets worldwide. Yes, and she really is the female lead vocalist in a Michael Jackson show.
“It was alarming to get the call. I said, ‘But I’m a girl!’, and they said ‘That’s fine, we usually have a girl in the show and the singers don’t have to dance like Michael’. So I went down to London, did the auditions and I got the role. Yes!”
In doing so, it brought her career full circle because, like Michael, Cleo was a child star, signing to Madonna’s label Maverick with sisters Zainam and Yonah at only 13 after winning a talent contest.
Named after their lead singer – born Cleopatra Madonna Higgins on April 30 1982 in Birmingham, before moving north aged six – Cleopatra had three Top Five hits in 1998 with Cleopatra’s Theme, Life Ain’t Easy and a cover of The Jackson 5’s I Want You Back.
Source: yorkpress / MJ-Upbeat.com
• Thriller Live runs at Grand Opera House, York, from Monday to Saturday; performances at 7.30pm, Monday to Thursday; 5pm and 8pm, Friday; 3pm and 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york. Please note, The X Factor finalist Rachel Adedeji will take over Cleo Higgins’s role for the Saturday shows.
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