The Collective

The Collective

The Collective is a name used by more than one act, including an Australian pop and R&B boy band and a US management/production act. The Australian group is the best-known version in this context: it forms during the fourth season of The X Factor Australia in 2012, after five solo auditionees are put together by the judges for the groups category.

Australian boy band

The Australian Collective consists of Trent Bell, Julian De Vizio, Jayden Sierra, Will Singe and Zach Russell. All five audition as solo performers for The X Factor Australia, reach the super bootcamp stage, and then fail to make the top six in the Under-25 Boys category. The judges Ronan Keating, Guy Sebastian, Natalie Bassingthwaighte and Melanie Brown then form them into a boy band for the home visits round, where they perform Rihanna’s “We Found Love” for the first time as a group in London in front of Keating and guest mentors One Direction.

Keating later selects the group for the live finals. At the launch of The X Factor in Sydney, he announces the name The Collective, saying the fans help choose it from a list of options. In the live shows, the group performs songs including Jessie J’s “Domino”, Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose”, New Kids on the Block’s “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”, The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, Ed Sheeran’s “Lego House”, Timomatic’s “Incredible”, Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat”, OneRepublic’s “Apologize”, Chris Brown’s “Yeah 3x” and Karmin’s “Brokenhearted”.

The Collective reaches the grand final, the first group to do so in the current Australian series on channel Seven, and finishes in third place. In November 2012, it signs with Sony Music Australia. Its debut single, “Surrender”, reaches number six on the ARIA Singles Chart. The self-titled mini album The Collective follows in December 2012 and includes “Surrender”, recorded versions of six songs from The X Factor, and a version of Wham!’s “Last Christmas”, which is also issued digitally as a single. The group then joins The X Factor Live Tour across Australia in January 2013.

The Collective’s third single, “Another Life”, appears in June 2013 and reaches number 47 on the ARIA Singles Chart. The group performs in Indonesia for RCTI’s 24th anniversary special X Factor Around the World in August 2013, where it sings “Surrender” and a duet of “Payphone” with Fatin Shidqia. It also supports Jessica Mauboy on the To the End of the Earth Tour in Melbourne and Reece Mastin on the Restless Tour in Canberra.

Later releases include “Burn the Bright Lights”, which reaches number 34 on the ARIA Singles Chart, acoustic covers of Ne-Yo’s “Lazy Love” and Ariana Grande’s “Problem”, and “The Good Life”, which reaches number 74. Zach Russell leaves the group in January 2014 to pursue firefighting, and Will Singe leaves in February 2015 to focus on a solo career.

Other act with the same name

The name The Collective is also used for a US-based management and production act that is active from 2005 and includes Jeff Varner and Ernie H. Gonzalez.