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13-year-old's unique 'Bohemian Rhapsody' rendition was so impressive it even wowed Queen

Angelina Jordan's "America's Got Talent" audition earned her an instant Golden Buzzer.

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Angelina Jordan blew everyone away with her version of 'Bohemian Rhapsody."

We've shared a lot of memorable "America's Got Talent" auditions over the years here at Upworthy, from physics-defying dance performances to jaw-dropping magic acts to heart-wrenching singer-songwriter stories. And after watching Angelina Jordan's "AGT: The Champions" audition, we've added it to the list because wow.

Jordan came to "AGT: The Champions" in 2020 as the winner of Norway's Got Talent, which she won in 2014 at the mere age of 7 with her impressive ability to seemingly channel Billie Holiday. For the 2020 audition, she sang Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," but a version that no one had ever heard before.

With just a guitar, a piano, and her Amy Winehouse-esque voice, Jordan brought the fan-favorite Queen anthem down to a smooth, melancholy ballad that's simply riveting to listen to—especially considering that Jordan was only 13 years old when she did this.

Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

What this video doesn't show is Heidi Klum hitting the Golden Buzzer faster than you can sing, "Nothing really matters to meeee." The judges were blown away by Jordan's performance, as were the people in the comments.

"That's a ONE in A BILLION voice right there. Just amazing," wrote one commenter.

"I am typically not a fan of songs being redone particular to such a magnitude," shared another. "They almost always fall short of the original. But to completely rearrange a song in the manner that she has, from a legend, and then make you forget about how the original even sounded because her rendition is so good is utterly amazing."

"As Freddie once said, 'Do whatever you want with my music as long as you don't make it boring.' I think he'd really like this," shared another.

Though Queen's beloved lead vocalist Freddie Mercury is no longer with us, the band did offer words of praise for Jordan's performance, retweeting her audition video with the comment, "Wow! What a rendition of #BohemianRhapsody."

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is such an iconic song, it's hard for anyone to do a cover of it justice. But 13-year-old Angelina Jordan managed it masterfully. In bare feet, no less, which she explained in a thank you video to Heidi Klum for the Golden Buzzer honor.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"When I was around 6 years old, I see this little girl around my age," Jordan shared. "I gave my shoes to her because she had scars on her feet and it was really cold. So whenever I'm on the stage, I was reminded about all the children that don't have any parents, clothes, and shoes. She's always in my heart." Jordan has shared that she "made a promise many years ago to a beautiful soul" to not wear shoes on stage—a promise she has kept.

Jordan would move on to the Top 10 in "AGT: The Champions," and though she didn't take home the top prize, she did impress the audience with another classic rock tune, Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

- YouTubeyoutu.be


Since her time on AGT, Angelina has been singing her heart out, covering other Queen songs and even performing the official FIFA anthem in 2023. You can follow her on YouTube and TikTok and find her singles (including "Bohemian Rhapsody") on Spotify.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Experts explain how those certain songs get stuck in our heads and how to get them out

Can't Get You Out of My Head, literally.

Photo Credit: Canva

A musical earworm gets stuck in an ear.

We've all had an earworm—or one hundred of them. Sometimes it's the full chorus of a song, like Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," (but seriously, hold on to that feeeeeyeealeeealin.) Or for a while, it was just one line of a Huggies commercial, "I'm a big kid now." (I dare you not to get that jammed into the folds of your mind. Sorry.)

On a thread specifically designed to share current earworms, Redditors report songs from Hamilton (particularly those sung by King George III), the "Monster Mash," and their iPhone ringtone as the ones most likely to get stuck in their heads.

- Huggies commercial in 1991. www.youtube.com, The TV Madman

The first question is why does this happen? In journalist Elle Hunt's piece "Tortured by an earworm? How to get it out of your head" for The Guardian, she gives the example of last year's release of Wicked (the movie) and notes how easily the song "Defying Gravity" seemed to nestle itself into many people's heads.

She claims "more than 90% of people experience such an 'earworm' at least once a week…usually 20 seconds long." She cites Kelly Jakubowski, associate professor of music psychology, who shares the main cause of earworms is exposure to the music. This tracks. For years, it seemed impossible to shop in a Banana Republic in December without walking out with "Last Christmas" buzzing between your ears.

- An explanation of why and how music gets stuck in our head. www.youtube.com, TED ED

Hunt also shares Jakubowski's studies that certain tempos and lyrics tend to stick more than others. "Songs with faster tempos and 'memorable but distinctive' melodies were more likely to be 'musically sticky,'" she adds. Jakubowski gives examples including Deep Purple’s "Smoke on the Water," the chorus of Lady Gaga’s "Bad Romance," and of course, Kylie Minogue’s "Can’t Get You Out of My Head."

But once these tunes make themselves at home, how do we get them out? Fittingly, having just mentioned "Last Christmas" (and with the holidays around the corner), Culture Desk correspondent for NPR, Chloe Veltman's article, "All I want for Christmas is help getting this song out of my head," is timely. She wrote just last year, "The holidays are upon us. 'Tis the season for chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose—and getting songs like Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' hopelessly stuck in our heads."

Not to worry, she assures us. There are ways to fix it. One such remedy was co-written by the aforementioned Kelly Jakubowski herself. "The Earworm Eraser is a 40-second audio track designed specifically to squash earworms—a song on repeat circling around and around in your brain that can't easily be shaken off."

- YouTube www.youtube.com, Atlassian

Veltman claims that it even works for "Baby Shark," the insanely catchy children's song/torture device. Oops, there's another earworm you might have just caught. If one doesn't have access to this link, merely listening to a different song is advised. Jakubowski insists, “It’s nearly impossible to have two songs in your head at once: you just don’t have the cognitive resources to do that."

But some have different theories as to what is actually happening. In the subreddit, r/todayilearned, someone posts "TIL the 'earworm' phenomenon (having a song stuck in your head in a loop) can occur due to the brain’s attempt to fill a gap in the auditory cortex."

Upon further investigation, this is seemingly true. The Kennedy Center explains, "The auditory cortex is where earworms do most of their karaoke routine. This is a part of the brain that does a lot of the processing of sounds, including music. It is also where musical memories are stored."

Researchers at Dartmouth scanned brains while asking the subjects to simply "imagine" listening to certain songs. Lead researcher David Kraemer shares, "We found that the auditory cortex that is active when you’re actually listening to a song was reactivated when you just imagine hearing the song."

Earworms, like common colds, aren't going anywhere anytime soon. The best we can do is understand why they happen, treat them the best we can, and know that most likely, they will go away with time and rest. And if not, well then perhaps learn to love "Baby Shark" while it lives rent free in your head. It is pretty catchy.

Official music video for Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head." www.youtube.com, Kylie Minogue




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That song you love may have been written by AI. But how can you tell?

It's frustrating not knowing if what you're listening to is real.

Photo Credit: Canva

A woman listens to music, while a robot looks on.

There you are scrolling the Internet, when a catchy song comes on to accompany a reel. Before you know it, it becomes a gentle little earworm you can't escape. All the elements of "good music" seem there: a soulful lead singer, nice melody, rockin' (okay, competent) drum beat, and maybe even relevant lyrics?

You're vibing with it, so you do some research. Who is this band? How long have they been around? When did this song come out? But then—plot twist!—you learn there were actually no humans involved in the making of this folk song (other than coders who created the software). And yet, that didn't stop it from climbing to number one on the UK charts.

- A song by The Velvet Sundown www.youtube.com, Bangers Only

The comments under this YouTube clip are genius. One person writes, "You can hear the pain in his motherboard." Another quips, "Loved this song since I was 8-bit old, now at 64GB this brings back a lot of memories." Maybe the best? "My wife used to love this song, we (would) just listen to it while driving on the highway. She passed in 1998. She was a toaster, I'm a calculator."

And while people are making these jokes with hindsight, a lot of folks didn't realize it was a super deep fake until after the fact. The song, entitled "Dust on the Wind" (you read that right—they merely changed a preposition), comes from the band The Velvet Sundown. The only problem is...there is no such band.

Self-described musician and teacher David Hartley asks on his YouTube channel, "How did this totally generic-sounding band gain over a million listeners and trick everyone along the way?"

-David Hartley explains The Velvet Sundown phenomenon www.youtube.com, David Hartley

Hartley explains, "The Velvet Sundown first appeared on Spotify in June 2025, releasing two full albums just weeks apart." (The albums are called Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence.) He notes that the music is reminiscent of soft '70s rock, which he admits is "pleasant."

What's even more mind-boggling is Spotify lists the band members' names in a bio section. But when people began to look up these listed artists, there is no trace of them online. "They have no photos. No social media presence. Nor do they ever appear to have played a live gig before."

This would definitely not be the first AI band invented. Pablo G. Bejerano who writes for Spanish-language newspaper El PaÍs, gives another example: "The description of the album Rumba Congo (1973), uploaded to YouTube, tells the entire story of the musicians that recorded it. The band is called Concubanas. Founded in Havana in 1971, the group played a unique fusion of Cuban and Congolese music. They disbanded in 1992, but not before leaving behind countless musical gems. At the very bottom of the description beneath the YouTube video, there’s a note that the content is 'altered or synthetic.' This phrase is a euphemism to indicate that the music in the video was generated using AI. The band isn’t real."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Recently, The Guardian reported that, "Up to seven out of ten streams of artificial intelligence-generated music on the Deezer platform are fraudulent, according to the French streaming platform." They further assess, "AI-generated music is a growing problem on streaming platforms. Fraudsters typically generate revenue on platforms such as Deezer by using bots to 'listen' to AI-generated songs – and take the subsequent royalty payments, which become sizeable once spread across multiple tracks."

But Hartley asks, "Why did THIS band make it to the top, eventually passing real artists?" He points to a tweet on X, where the band (which, remember, is not real) put out a statement that read: "Many news outlets are falsely reporting that we are an AI-generated band. Nothing could be further from the truth. #VelvetSundown #NeverAI"

He claims Spotify is well aware of these "ghost artists" and that it turns a profit for them. "The Velvet Sundown was strategically placed into a number of popular user-curated playlists."

In essence, the algorithm got tricked. Because the songs were being placed onto playlists (not unlike that morning when a new U2 album showed up in our iTunes music folders), the albums were getting hundreds of thousands of listens. The more listens, the more popularity, creating a never-ending feeding loop, like a snake eating its tail.

A man eventually came forward, and in an interview with Rolling Stone, claimed the whole thing was an "art hoax." But ultimately, this AI band has taken on a life of its own and has countered this claim. The guy himself admits that the hoax claim itself was a hoax and that he was ultimately tricking the media.

music, records, bands, vinyl, AI music A record player plays a record. Giphy

On the subreddit r/Let'sTalkMusic, someone asks in part, "What's the best way to verify if an artist is real or not?"

This received over one hundred comments. One person states, "The only guaranteed way to never hear AI-generated music is to stop letting algorithms pick what you listen to." This fan of punk music adds, "Bands play live, bands are made of people with lives and experiences. An AI band is not going to have a real presence or history. I know Rancid is a real band, I’ve seen them. I follow Matt Freeman on Instagram and it’s actually him because he likes to talk about playing bass and will often play some of his favorite riffs. I don’t think it’s hard to figure out if a band is real."

Many highly suggest simply unsubscribing from algorithms, reading music reviews, and buying vinyl again. AI will probably find a way around it, but it's a start.


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They said there's no English rhyme for "silver." Eminem just obliterated the challenge.

Don't ever let them tell you anything is impossible.

By Scott Kinmartin - CC BY 2.0

Someone challenged Eminem to rhyme "silver," and he crushed the challenge without breaking a sweat.

It started with an innocuous Tweet from a popular account called UberFacts.

"There's no word in English that rhymes with 'silver'" the post read. For long-time English speakers, this isn't exactly news. We've been hearing about random words that seemingly have no rhymes for as long as we've been talking.

A user then decided to call in an expert to confirm whether this was actually true. So, they tagged rapper Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, in a post issuing a challenge: "You have 24 hours!" the user joked. If anyone could disprove the so-called fact, it would be him, the wordplay master himself who once rhymed "calm and ready" with "Mom's spaghetti."

eminem, marshall mathers, rap, hip hop, rhymes, english language, rhyming words, rhyme challenge, silver, purple, orange Slim Shady to the rescue. Giphy

Eminem himself responded a day later and completely obliterated the challenge:

"Silver

pilfer

kill fer

Gilbert's

still hurts

steel shirts

Bill Burr

milf word

off kilter

no filter

chill brrrr

feel burn

still slur

will stir

Trent dilfer

Val kilmer

Still third

shield her

he'll squirt

Steven Spielberg

Lil twerp

Wilshire

She'll purr

Kill birds

milk curd

feel worth

Real nerd

Stans documentary I liked your film sir," he wrote in his own post.

If you're familiar with his music, you can almost hear the post in his voice. You can imagine him ripping this off as a verse in one of his songs. You also immediately get the sense that he could have easily kept going, but chose to stop the list there. Point proved.

Oh, sure, you can come up with a list of more words with no rhymes: Purple, month, ninth, opus. Pretty sure Eminem will have no problem tearing the list to shreds.

Eminem's post went viral and was reposted nearly ten thousand times. Thousands of people commented to share their admiration for the hip-hop legend:

"And that's why he's the GOAT" one user wrote.

"He took silver and did a verse of Gold!" another added.

"Eminem can make any word rhyme with any other word," said another.

(Oh, and "pilfer" was right there in front of us this whole time, if you can believe it! Merriam-Webster even chimed in to suggest the little-known "chilver.")

Eminem is known as probably one of the best rappers of all time specifically when it comes to wordplay, rhymes, and clever lyricism.

In a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper from 2011, Eminem shared a little bit of his approach. Cooper offered up the notion that nothing in English rhymes with "orange," and Eminem was actually almost offended.

"If you're taking the word at face value... nothing is going to rhyme with it exactly," he said, noting that the art is in twisting and contorting words and phrases. Thinking outside the box. Then, off the top of his head, he ripped off a short rhyme:

"I put my orange four-inch door hinge in storage and ate porridge with George."

Cooper asks him if he walks around all day thinking about rhyming words. "Yeah. All day. I actually drive myself insane with it," Eminem said.

A young Marshall Mathers would read the dictionary even though he wasn't a "good student" academically. "I just thought, I want to have all these words at my disposal, in my vocabulary, at all times, whenever I need to pull them out."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Why are we so fascinated with a good rhyme?

You have to admit that reading or listening to Eminem's creative rhymes for "orange" and "silver" is oddly satisfying.

That's because rhymes, or even just rhythmic poetry, does something different to our brain than other forms of speech or prose.

"The brain's reaction to poetry indicates a deep, intuitive connection to verse, suggesting that appreciation of poetry is within our neurological structure," according to How Stuff Works.

We also perceive things that rhyme as 22% more true than statements that don't, which is why so many slogans and catchphrases utilize rhyming words. That also plays a big role in why music and song are so emotionally powerful, even when the lyrics are relatively simple.

Finally, it's really pleasing to our brains when we're able to predict words and identify patterns. That's a lot easier and more fun to do in rhyming forms like rap, song, and poetry versus prose and regular speech.

It's awesome to see an artist and master at work in Eminem's post and interview. It should inspire you to think outside the box and remember that, whenever someone tells you that something is impossible, the real art is in proving them wrong.

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