Janet Devlin

Janet Maureen Aoife Devlin (born 12 November 1994) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter who competed in the eighth series of The X Factor in 2011, where she finished in fifth place.

Janet Maureen Aoife Devlin was born on 12 November 1994.

She is the youngest of four children to Aquinas and Patricia Devlin and has three elder brothers: Jason, Gavin and Aaron.

Prior to entering The X Factor, she lived with her parents and brothers in Gortin, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

She attended an Irish language pre-school, and later attended Drumragh Integrated College where she completed her GCSEs.

Courtney Love has stated in interviews that she believes Janet and her family to be distant relatives of Kurt Cobain, though Devlin has stated that she is unaware of any connection.

Devlin's only performing experience before auditioning for The X Factor was singing in her school, pubs and local talent shows.

She had uploaded a number of videos of her singing to her official channel on YouTube.

In 2011, Devlin auditioned for the eighth series of The X Factor.

Her audition was screened on 20 August 2011, where she performed Elton John's "Your Song" in front of judges Louis Walsh, Gary Barlow, Kelly Rowland and Tulisa.

Her audition was successful as all four judges put her through to bootcamp.

After passing the bootcamp stages, Devlin then progressed to the judges' houses round and was later put through to the live shows by Rowland in her Girls category (solo females aged 16–24) alongside Misha B, Amelia Lily and Sophie Habibis.

She performed Coldplay's "Fix You" in week 1 of the live shows and was put through to the next round by Rowland, as there was no public vote in the first week.

Devlin topped the public vote more times than any other act, receiving the most public votes for the first four weeks of voting (weeks 2, 3, 4 and 5) and reached the quarter-final (week 8) before ending up in the bottom two with Misha B.

She was voted off by Walsh and Tulisa with Rowland refusing to vote between her own acts and Barlow not being given the chance to vote.

However voting statistics revealed that Devlin received more votes than Misha B meaning if the result went to deadlock, Devlin would have advanced to the semi-final and Misha B would have been eliminated.

Devlin's song in the sing off was "Chasing Cars".

During the live shows, Courtney Love tweeted Simon Cowell to offer to give Devlin one of Nirvana's tracks for the show, which ultimately did not occur.

Soon after being eliminated from The X Factor, Devlin performed some gigs at various venues throughout the UK.

One of these was the renowned G-A-Y venue on Saturday, 3 December 2011.

Finishing fifth, she was one of nine acts to perform on the X Factor Live Tour 2012, which took place in cities throughout the UK and Ireland.

She performed fan favourite cover songs, 'Fix You' and 'Sweet Child o' Mine'.

It was reported that Devlin had received at least three offers of a recording contract.

Within hours of leaving the show Devlin had been offered a recording contract by RKA Records, a record company partly owned by Dragons' Den star and entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne.

Following the X Factor Live Tour, Devlin began work on her debut album at Steelworks Recording Studios, Sheffield.

She was first in the recording studio on 28 May 2012, where she wrote and recorded three songs ('Crown of Thorns', 'Thinking Back Yesterday' and 'Who Am I Today?' ) with Grammy Award and Ivor Novella Award-winning producer Eliot Kennedy and his team.

The song "Crown of Thorns", which was one of the first she wrote, with Jim Jayawardena and Philippa Hanna (of Kennedy's Steelworks team), quickly became an addition to her live sets at gigs.

Devlin has written all of her songs, usually with one co-writer, for inclusion on her debut album.

She has written with songwriters Joe Janiak, Helen Boulding and Ethan Ash.

She has also written potential tracks for her debut release with songwriters including the Faulkner brothers, Toby and Newton Faulkner, Joshua Radin and Jack Savoretti.

On 26 October 2012, she debuted two new, live edition, songs on her YouTube channel.

They were "Wonderful" which was co-written with Newton Faulkner and the aforementioned "Crown of Thorns".

Devlin's debut album was launched on PledgeMusic, including a chance to record backing vocals with her, although this did not happen.

In December 2012, it was stated that the album would be released in 2013, having reached 45% of the pledge target within the first two weeks.

Having reached 100% on New Year's Eve 2012, Devlin began the recording of her album in early 2013.

Her debut album Hide & Seek was released in 2013.

In 2013, Devlin stated in interviews that she had written around 25 songs and would continue to write more songs to have the best possible finished album.

On 26 June 2013, she finished recording the limited release version of her debut album.

Hide & Seek was released to pledgers on 1 July 2013.

After a string of EPs and singles, her second studio album Confessional was released in 2020.