Stereo Kicks

Stereo Kicks were an English-Irish boy band who were formed and were the twelfth contestant eliminated on the eleventh series of The X Factor in 2014.

Stereo Kicks consisted of; James Graham, Jake Sims, Chris Leonard, Charlie Jones, Casey Johnson, Barclay Beales, Reece Bibby, and Tom Mann.

All eight members of Stereo Kicks originally auditioned as soloists for series 11 of The X Factor in front of judges Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and Mel B, but were all rejected at the bootcamp stage.

[5][6] Stereo Kicks' reception has been very favourable with Cowell saying they were "one of the best [groups] ever [to feature on the show]" and the public comparing them to be "as good as One Direction"[7] and their performance of "Run" reached 1 million views on The X Factor's YouTube channel a week after its upload on 28 September.

[8] Initially called the "New Boy Band", they later held a poll on the website to determine a new name and "Stereo Kicks" was chosen.

With Walsh and Mel B opting to save them, the result went to deadlock and Saunders was eliminated as the contestant with fewest public votes.

On 18 July 2015, after just eleven months together, the band announced via their Facebook page that, having failed to land a major record deal, they would be disbanding.

[15] He came back for series 11, performing Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" in his Room Audition and Robbie Williams's "Angels" at the Arena.

[1] He also auditioned for the tenth series of The X Factor and got eliminated in the Bootcamp stage by Gary Barlow, but as part of the boyband Out of the Blue; because they forgot their lyrics.

He sang an original song at the arena that he wrote the day after Walsh eliminated him, but Simon Cowell stopped him (then getting a good reaction by the audience) and said: "I think if you were ugly you never would have got that reaction", Walsh himself and Cheryl told Cowell to give him a second chance and then Mann performed an acoustic version of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" and got three yeses.

[1] He sang One Direction's "Little Things" in his Room Audition,[29] and the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" at the Arena, stunning the judges and the audience.