Shaneka George Wins Richard Stoute Over-21 Contest: An Inspiring Success Story

It’s almost a week since Shaneka George won the Richard Stoute Over-21 Contest and she’s still heady about it.

The 22-year-old bested the other nine finalists to capture the title along with the trophy, the cash prize, and the BIMAP scholarship that comes along with it.

However, this victory became a testimony since it came the day after her dad was in an accident and couldn’t attend.

“I’m a Christian and I believe that if I had a gift, my voice, I would like to give it back to God so anything that I did, and do, I like to give it back to Him,” said Shaneka.

She gave two effortless performances of He’ll Do It Again and No More Night, a result of her Way to Calvary Seventh-Day Adventist Church and home church Goodland Seventh- Day Adventist background.

Mother Leonette George wanted her to enter the competition, which has been the launchpad for some of Barbados’ entertainment stalwarts, in her younger years, but for reasons unknown to her, it didn’t work out. Later, it was her father Gustin Forde and a friend who introduced her to it in 2022. That friend also entered the same time unknown to her but dropped out.

Singing is triumph for Shaneka, who started talking at five and singing in church around eight or nine.

“The problem was that because I had started to talk so late, a lot of times I didn’t know how to pronounce the words properly in the songs so yes, I would sound good, but people couldn’t understand anything I was singing. It was a lot of work to overcome this. I trained myself to learn how to speak properly. For singing, I had to look at the songs to understand exactly what the lyrics said,” Shaneka recounted.

The St Michael resident said her choices throughout the three years of competing were Alabaster Box, His Life For Mine, I See Red, Mercy Said No and No More Night.

“The band usually likes more hyped-up songs and anything with drums I like. When I heard He’ll Do It Again, a lot of people were telling me they didn’t like the song for my voice because it was very toned down and I said, what if I changed it to my speed, to a point where it sounds so rich. I changed it to how I wanted it. My boyfriend Nathaniel Moore didn’t like the original version either, but I asked him to hear me sing it. Afterwards, he was really impressed so I stuck with it.

“No More Night was actually a crowd favourite from the first preliminary and I said I would keep it. I was very indecisive about He’ll Do It Again or whether to sing His Life For Mine. I chose a more toned down song – No More Night – because the night before the finals I was told I had voice fatigue, which is a very bad thing before a competition.