Simon Cowell Calls Tom Ball 'Susan Boyle's Grandson' After Jaw-Dropping 'AGT: All-Stars' Audition: Watch

Simon Cowell and Tom Ball
Trae Patton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images/rae Patton/NBC

Cowell called Ball's singing 'the best performance I've seen all series.' 

Simon Cowell turned nostalgic this week when he compared former Britain's Got Talent finalist Tom Ball to all-star Susan Boyle. 

Ball, a 24-year-old schoolteacher, finished BGT in third place last year. He's now competing for America's Got Talent: All-Stars and his performance this week of Simon & Garfunkel’s "The Sound of Silence" quickly established him a frontrunner. 

"You're like Susan Boyle's grandson, because what you do is not what we expect," Cowell said of Ball's performance. Boyle famously shocked BGT audiences with her performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" in 2009. The clip became a viral sensation soon after it aired. 

"A lot of people thought Tom was going to win," Cowell told the All-Stars crowd of last year's BGT competition. "I'm actually angry about something," he added. "I wish this was the first time I'd ever heard Tom, in a weird way." 

Later, Cowell told the contestant, "This is the song that, I believe, if you had done this, you would have won [Britain’s Got Talent] that year. Because that was incredible." 

Cowell finished his comments by proclaiming that Ball's singing was "the best performance I've seen all series." 

"You're really amazing," judge Howie Mandel added, and judge Heidi Klum chimed in to call the audition "larger than life." 

The audience gave Ball a standing ovation, and the three judges unanimously awarded him a Golden Buzzer as the audience chanted in support. He will now advance to the All-Stars final. 

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