For ten years, Filipina singer Jeramie Sanico’s stage was a kitchen, a bathroom, and a church pew. Then, on a night she’d stopped expecting to happen, all four coaches on The Voice Australia turned around for her at once.
The Decade in Between
Sanico isn’t new to competitive singing. Back in 2016, she was a five-time defending champion on Tawag ng Tanghalan, the singing-competition segment of the Philippine noontime show It’s Showtime, competing under the tag “Student Belter ng Mindanao.” She made it to the final quarter’s semifinals before withdrawing, citing personal commitments she couldn’t set aside. That was the last time she stood on a competition stage.
Sanico moved to Australia, got married, and had two children. By her own account, she didn’t perform again in any real sense. “I have not been on TV since Showtime,” she wrote in a Facebook post after her Voice Australia audition aired. “My last TV competition was 10 years ago. Since I’ve been in Australia, the only time I sang was in our churches, and they weren’t performances but renditions to God. I’ve been singing as well in my kitchen, bathroom and in front of my kids, so I really feel like I’m starting from ground zero.” A decade is a long silence for anyone with a title like hers still attached to their name.
What Happened Onstage
The Voice Australia runs on the same blind-audition format as its Philippine and global counterparts: coaches Melanie C, Ronan Keating, Richard Marx, and Kate Miller-Heidke sit with their backs to the stage and turn their chairs — the show’s signature buzzer-and-swivel moment — only if they want to coach the singer they’re hearing. All four turning for the same performer is the format’s rarest and loudest form of praise.
Sanico earned it singing Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me,” a performance she dedicated to her father, who had flown in from the Philippines to watch her compete. The nerves were audible from the first note, by her own telling, but “I meant every word of that song,” she wrote. Kate Miller-Heidke praised the clarity of her upper register. Melanie C said the performance moved her to tears. Ronan Keating admitted he hadn’t planned on turning for another female vocalist that night and did anyway. Sanico ultimately picked Richard Marx, who had worked with Dion earlier in his own career and told her plainly, “I think you’re going to win this thing.”
The Framing She Chose for Herself
Reading Sanico’s own account, the emphasis sits less on the chair turns and more on what she believed the moment was for. “Coming from a humble life in the Philippines, who would have thought that a little girl born with a big dream will be able to step in The Voice stage,” she wrote. “My goal in joining isn’t just to win, but to let God shine through it all.” She returned to that framing throughout her post: gratitude for the chance to sing at all, after a decade of assuming that chapter was closed.