L'iL Champs contestants have judges singing and arguing

After airing the auditions of hundreds of wannabe singers in the age group 7 to 15, leading to 22 lucky kids being selected last week, L'iL Champs gets down to serious business. The episode to be aired at 10 pm tonight has a contestant requesting each of the three judges to sing his favourite songs, apart from the judges selecting their top 5 from eleven contestants. The theme in today's episode is songs of the participant's choice. The participants Tonaya, Proteek, Shraddha, Sameer, Ankita, Anubhav, Karishma, Armaan,Viral , Neha and P.Bhavni sing a variety of songs like 'Din Dhal Jaaye' to 'Megha chaaye aadhi raat'. Their performances evoke strong reactions from the three judges, Bappi Lahiri, Abhijeet and Alka Yagnik. The kid from Mumbai with attitude, Sameer is the one who had his way with the judges. After giving an excellent performance singing "O majhi re" and getting the approval of the judges to include him in the top 10 list, Sameer turns the tables on the judges. He requests all the 3 judges to sing a song for him of his choice. His first song is 'Sawariya ….' for Alka Yagnik, then 'Bambai nagariya....' for Bappi and Chaand tare...' for Abhijeet. That the judges play along and sing makes for interesting viewing. The very next participant's voice has Abhijeet and Yagnik arguing over the popular demand of such modern voices in the music industry today. Ankita's rendition of "Duniya mein logon ko" had both judges taking different stands on what kind of voice is appealing and has a future. Abhijeet opined that such "offbeat voices were the trend today", whereas Yagnik disagreed and conveyed her scant regard for such voices. "Offbeat, folk based voices have a short life and its only voices that sing keeping sur and taal intact will go on to see long term success," says Yagnik. Another commendable performance came from Mumbai's Armaan Mallick who sang "Tere naam". Abhijeet was almost moved to tears by the sentiments and expression in Armaan's singing. "Are you a born majnu?,' he asks Armaan. Yagnik also says, "Bahut emotional hoke gaaya. Despite being so young, you were very soulful". Shraddha singing 'Solah baras ki' also got full marks from the judges who said she had a perfect voice for playback singing. Proteek's rendition of 'Din Dhal Jaaye' also got approval from the judges. Anchor Shaan handles the kids with sensitivity and is there to encourage and guide them as they perform. And, from among the eleven participants, the five chosen are Shraddha Das, Proteek, Sameer, Neha and Armaan Malik. This musical talent hunt has all the ingredients that would make it get noticed by viewers--kids who obviously have loads of talent, their accompaning childishness with the pretence to be all grown up, mischief, the attitude that they know it all, three very vocal judges and all the drama between them. "This set of GenNext kids is going to have viewers engrossed with their singing talents till the finale in October," says director Gajendrra Siingh.