Alabama teenager Jaycob Curlee won't be on stage for the finale of "America's Got Talent." But he will be watching – and voting – as someone claims the $1 million prize he once hoped would be his.
Curlee came out of nowhere at the beginning of the season, a young singer with little experience performing for the public who impressed the show's celebrity judges and the viewing audience. Out of the hundreds who auditioned, he made it to the show's round of 24 semifinalists, only to have his run end there, on Sept. 3.
Curlee, a recent graduate of Daphne High School whose family has since moved from the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay to Prattville, has maintained a relatively low profile since then, soaking up some "me time" that hadn't been possible while he was in competition. But as it turns out, he still has positive feelings about the show and what it did to give him a shot at a career as an entertainer.
"I watch. We watch, still, and support people," he said, speaking of his family. "I mean, we have friends who are still on the show. I hope the best for everyone. We're pulling for Emily and Miguel (singers Emily West and Miguel Dakota, two of the six finalists) and just everybody. And Sons of Serendip, they're just amazing. I'm this kid who sings, but they are just so musically inclined it's unbelievable. And they're just the most genuine people."
Curlee's too diplomatic to single out one act he thinks will claim the big prize in the finale airing Wednesday. But he's certain that he's a winner too. He's not the first to observe that there's an advantage to being a runner-up on a major reality show: The winner gets the glory, but also a big helping of contractual obligations. Other acts don't take home the cash, but they do get priceless exposure, and more freedom to call their own shots.
"I would love to be able to pursue music for the rest of my life," he said. "And I've gotten opportunities. I mean, as soon as I was off the show, people were calling me, wanting me to play here, play there."
"This is winning the show, for me," he said. "This is what people want to get from the show. They want to get their name out, they want to get people to know them so that they can have opportunities afterward. I guess that's why I wasn't upset when I got voted off. I was upset because I wouldn't be able to see my friends anymore, but at the same time I knew that this was not the end, that there were other things out there."
Curlee concedes that his last night on the show was an emotional one. The night before, he'd given a performance that acerbic judge Howard Stern had called his "personal best." The fan base he'd nurtured via social media had gotten him this far, and he thought voters would carry him one more time.
"Going into it, I was very confident. I was very comfortable on the stage," he said of the results broadcast. "I was always nervous before, onstage. I was very comfortable and I thought I was going to make it to the next round. But when it got down to about the final four, on the stage, I knew I was going home then."
In the results shows, competitors are called forward two or three acts at a time, and one is announced as the winner. This sometimes creates an illusion that the pairings are in direct competition. That's not exactly the case, but when a pairing contains an obvious fan favorite, the result can feel like a foregone conclusion. On Sept. 3, Curlee was called up with Quintavious Johnson, a cute 12-year-old kid with bookworm looks and an amazing ability to belt out classic R&B. Johnson was the pick to advance to the finals.
"So it was okay, no hard feelings at all," Curlee said. "I didn't expect to make it that far in the show to begin with. And to be able to say that I was a semifinalist is just unbelievable."
"I didn't get emotional when I left the show until I saw Sons of Serendip," Curlee said. "They came in and they were like, 'Sorry you got voted off,' and they gave me a hug. They have a way with words. They were saying 'This isn't the end. You're going places. You have star quality.' And I just started crying. And we just kind of hugged, this big group hug. It was really nice."
It took a couple of days just to get back home, and then the priority was just to take a little time to chill out.
"The past year of my life has been taken up with the show and stuff," he said. "I wasn't allowed to be a kid, I wasn't allowed to go and hang out and stuff, because I had to focus on music."
If that's an exaggeration, it's not a huge one. In a previous interview, Curlee has said that he first auditioned for "AGT" in November 2013. It was a game night in Daphne, senior night, but Curlee had to play the pregame with the band and then head for Atlanta.
Since his departure from the show, Curlee has been mostly dormant on social media. He's postponed college, though he still plans to pursue a degree. He's considering a management contract, and processing lessons from the experience.
In the whirlwind later stages of the show, the show's producers help the acts ramp up their performances into major production numbers. It can make the acts look like stars and it can give them their first taste of performing at a major level, but it doesn't necessarily create the truest possible impression of their artistic goals.
"I learned a lot in the sense of, you have to speak up for yourself, you have to say what you want and what you think would be best," Curlee said. "But then again, you have to take criticism positively. You have to understand that they're there to help you."
Former winner Terry Fator said in a recent interview that singers don't even necessarily get to pick their songs, because the show doesn't have the legal rights to perform every song.
"There's a lot of changing," Curlee said. "A lot of you coming in and you're like, 'Oh, I have this ready, this song, I think it sounds great,' and they're like, 'Nope. Scratch that. Do a different one.' Because it's all about appearances. It's all about singing this song this way."
"All my songs were slow and sad and intimate and stuff, I guess it never really clicked with the judges, but that's what the producers wanted me to do, so I had to do it," he said. "It's hard, but it's not always what you want sometimes."
In the season premiere, Curlee drew attention for his backstory. He and his younger sister Josie bounced around in foster care as children before being adopted by Kathy and Stephen Curlee and finding the stable home that allowed him to pursue his talents. He thinks the show milked that a little more than he would have liked.
America's Got Talent contestant Jaycob Curlee, 18, hugs his mother Katherine Curlee on June 2, 2014 in his home in Daphne, Ala. Curlee wowed the judges and audience with a rendition of John Mayer's "Waiting for the World to Change" during the Season Nine premiere of "America's Got Talent." (Sharon Steinmann/ssteinmann@al.com)
"I'm not a sad person," he said. "I'm not someone who is down about my situation at all. Like I said in the last performance, that's my past. I don't want people to judge me or vote for me off of just my story. I don't think about it and I don't want people to think about it. I think that the show kind of ran it a little long, the story, just dragging it out, dragging it out. And that wasn't my doing, that was the producers, I had no say in that."
Still, he said, he'd encourage anybody else to take a shot at the show.
"I think that everybody should try auditioning," he said. "If you want to try out, try out. It's not going to hurt you. I just wanted to make it past the audition rounds. I wanted to be on TV, at first, that's all I wanted to do. I wanted to be on television. And look where I am now, it's unbelievable."
On Sunday, Curlee let the world know via Twitter that he was ready to get back in the game.
"I'm open to playing anywhere," he said. (For the time being, Facebook is probably the best way to reach him, he said.)
Life is all about new beginnings, including the family's relocation to the Montgomery area. Curlee said his dad got a promotion, and the move was related to the new job. As for himself, he's still got one foot on the Eastern Shore.
"Daphne is something special to me," he said. "I mean, no matter where I am or how big I am, it was where I got my start. Daphne High School, it was where I was playing guitar trying to impress girls." And playing music at church "was where I learned to get over stage fright."
When will fans in the Mobile area get their first chance to see him perform live and in person? There's not a date on the books yet, but he's eager to play. No doubt there will be possibilities – because if there's one thing the "America's Got Talent" experience has given him, it's a sense of possibility.
"It's probably the best thing that could have happened," Curlee said of his experience. "Winning the show, that would have been the dream, but this is a very close second."