Talking of unsigned band competitions sponsored by mobile companies (and there's plenty of them), O2 have announced the winner of their Undiscovered competition - one Emma Rohan. Picked out from some 6000 demos submitted overall, she beat nine other finalists in the bid to impress the O2 Undiscovered industry pundit panel thing, which included Music Week's Ajax Scott, Xfm's Lucio, Vince Power and Polydor A&R top bloke Simon Gavin.
The latter's presence was important, because Rohan will now be working with Gavin and the Polydor team to put out a digital single ahead of a performance at the O2 sponsored Wireless festival next month. On that venture, Gavin told CMU: "I'm really looking forward to working with Emma. The coming weeks and months will be hard graft, but will give her a great platform and stage to shine".
Obviously we are so "in the know" on all things music that despite the fact Ms Rohan was unsigned prior to this weekend we already know that she combines highly distinctive vocals with songs that swing effortlessly from the all bruised heart loveliness of Joni Mitchell to the down and dirty nastiness of PJ Harvey - and with a stage presence that has been compared to a young Chrissie Hynde. Yep, we're CMU and we can cut and paste blurb from a press release as good as anyone. And we fix the dodgy commas too.
Of course Rohan's success means that Coronation Street star Rupert Hill, whose band Shepherds Pi entered the competition, was unsuccessful in his bid for O2 funded pop success. Ah well, as a Coronation Street heartthrob he always has the fallback of a Conservative safe seat to earn a living from.
Press info on O2 Undiscovered from Mission Media - [email protected]