If your week is ever in need of a random assortment of generally feel good entertainment that makes you feel slightly disappointed in your own strengths as a person, then watching America's Got Talent is the perfect solution. Tuesday night's episode introduced a bigger chunk of the world to Christian Guardino, a 16-year-old New York native with a voice that's bigger than his home state. Check out the adorably humble and wildly skilled teen belting out a Jackson 5 classic.
Have you picked yourself up off the floor yet? Wasn't that amazing? Isn't he awesome? Less than one minute old. Wait, that's Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely."
Performing the 1969 track "Who's Lovin You" from the Jackson 5's debut album, Christian Guardino puts on a vocal show that makes him easily worthy of handling any Michael Jackson song. (And probably anything from Percy Sledge and Otis Redding and Stevie Wonder, too, while we're at it.) Though his initial behavior was of the shy and mousy variety, it was another matter altogether once he opened his vocal cords up. With the crowd cheering him on throughout, Guardino nailed it from end to end, and there was little doubt that one of the four slack-jawed judges would send him beyond the auditions.
But who knew it would be so touching? (Everyone, probably.) When Howie Mandel asked him to name his biggest wish at the moment it was even more obvious what would happen, but when it did, all the emotions still bubbled up as if they were all unassuming. And then boom, the Golden Buzzer was hit, the confetti fell, and everyone cried. Everyone.
Of course, anyone who watched the whole episode -- or who might already be familiar with Christian Guardino from his performances at the Apollo Theater in Harlem -- know that the aspiring singer hasn't exactly had the easiest life so far. At an early age, he was diagnosed with the retinal disease called Leber congenital amaurosis, but in 2016, the tirelessly talented folks at the University of Pennsylvania's Scheie Eye Institute performed a gene therapy treatment that helped to remedy the mutation that had kept him partially blinded for so many years. So he could definitely see all those smiling faces whenever that Golden Buzzer was pressed, and we'll be smiling with him as he attempts to join past winners.
America's Got Talent airs Tuesday nights on NBC at 8:00 p.m. ET, and if there is any justice in the world, we will see a duet between Christian Guardino and the singing ventriloquist from a couple of weeks ago. To see what talented folks will be popping up on your TVs in the coming months, head to our summer premiere schedule.
