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It's Dalton Harris! Jamaican singer wins X Factor
December 02, 2018
The expected happened in the X Factor 2018 today, as Jamaica’s Dalton Harris emerged winner of the UK talent competition.
Having been crowned winner, Dalton will get a £1 million (approximately J$162,632,400) recording contract with Syco Music, in association with Sony Music.
While the Jamaican singer was left speechless following the announcement, the entire Wembley Stadium was in an emotional frenzy as the audience called out Dalton’s name. The X Factor host, Dermot O’Leary, had the task of repeating "you are the X Factor winner" until the singer snapped out of the phase of bewilderment.
Dalton is from Sanguinetti in North West Clarendon, the same district in which Jamaican sprint hurdler Omar McLoud was raised.
“I grew up in a small community where we never had a lot, but I wouldn't’t trade it for the world,” Harris, 24, said recently.
In Saturday’s finals Harris performed A Song For You by Donna Hathaway, which was met with rapturous screams and applause from the audience. The judges also gave him a standing ovation.
“I'm baffled that you haven't already got six albums under your belt, or that you're not sat here on this side judging me and telling me how to be better, because you could do that!,” judge Robbie Williams remarked.
Louis Tomlinson said Dalton was “ probably the best singer in this competition, if not the best singer the X Factor has ever seen.”
“I'm very excited about your career after this Dalton,” he said.
The judges’ remarks were typically the same for Sunday’s finale performance where Harris sang The Power of Love by James Arthur (who also joined the singer onstage). While Simon Cowell expressed that Dalton’s performance was spectacular, Ayda Fields emphasised to Dalton the deafening screams of the audience, saying “that’s the sound of your future.”
Dalton won the Digicel Rising Stars competition in 2010, when he was not yet 17 years old. He has mentioned previously that he was preparing to take on the international challenge for the past seven years.
