Maria Lawson
Maria Lawson was a contestant on the highly popular show The X Factor. She auditioned for the first series and made it through to boot camp before being sent home by Simon Cowell. She then came back for the second series, greatly impressing the judges with her rendition of Stop.
Maria made it into Sharon Osbourne's group, wowing the judges with a performance of "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me", and was eventually picked for the final four of Sharon's group.
Live shows
Maria was hotly tipped to win the competition, and was the favourite at the beginning of the finals. She wowed the judges again with performances of "Emotions", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Piece Of My Heart", "Brown Sugar" and "You're Beautiful", which is seen as the performance of the show.
Elimination
Maria gave a good performance of "Brown Sugar", but the song was widely regarded as unsuitable [1] – both lyrically and in terms of its appeal to a largely teenage target audience – and she landed in the bottom two with The Conway Sisters (who had been getting bad reviews for the previous few weeks). Simon Cowell kept The Conways as they were his act, and Sharon did the same for Maria. Louis Walsh had the deciding vote and sent Maria home. Sharon said that Louis voted the way he did because The Conway Sisters were from Ireland like him, and he received a lot of negative press, particularly when it was revealed that Louis had known the Conway Sisters personally prior to the competition.
Many felt that Maria was the strongest contestant, and that she was cheated out of the show.
Record Deal
On March 6, 2006 Maria announced that she had signed to the record label Phonogenic. Her debut single will be released on July 31st and is titled 'Sleepwalking'. Other tracks on the album include a cover of a song called 'Black Mona Lisa'. The album is due out in September.