As Jack Hughes was planning his wedding to his high-school sweetheart Abi, he thought it might be a good time to audition for The Voice.
“I think there’s an element of turning 30, having the wedding plans… and we are actively in that conversation about children, me and my missus,” he tells TV WEEK. “I thought, ‘Well, I want to do it sooner rather than later.’
“And it did get me out of looking at floral arrangements!”
Jack moved with Abi from Liverpool in the UK to Australia nine years ago, after the band he’d joined as a teenager broke up. Since then, he’s been working as a piling supervisor, “building bridges and stadiums”.
“That’s a job my dad’s done all his life, and my grandad did it as well,” he says.
But his decision to give music one more shot by auditioning for The Voice turned out to be a good one. Melanie C turned her chair when she heard him singing Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive”, and the two of them have bonded over their shared experiences of living in Liverpool.
“There’s a very real level of understanding there because we are from the same place,” he says. “She’s what I’ve been referring to as my Scouse fairy godmother!”
Jack even invited Melanie to his wedding, which took place recently in Liverpool.
“She couldn’t attend,” he adds. “She didn’t want to take the shine off us.”
Jack, who’s competing in the knockouts this week, says while Abi hasn’t exactly enjoyed being in the spotlight with him – “she’s someone who likes to keep herself to herself” – she’s been “totally supportive” of him returning to music, even helping him with song-writing.
“Doing that whilst actively planning a wedding was a bit of extra stress that we probably didn’t need to put on ourselves, but she handled it like a pro. I’m so lucky to have her in my life.”
Catch The Voice on Monday at 7.30pm and Sunday at 7pm on Channel Seven or 7plus.
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