7 stars you'd never know started out on TV talent shows

The X Factor, the show which has given us the likes of Little Mix and James Arthur, launches its 14th season this Saturday 2nd of September. Get the popcorn in, you have been sufficiently warned!

To mark the return of one of our favourite TV talent shows, we got thinking about all the amazing stars who first made their name on similar programmes. While we all know that One Direction first got famous on The X Factor, you might not realise that some of these incredible pop stars first appeared on small screen talent contests...

Lush Life singer Zara Larsson is still only 19, but she won the 2008 edition of Talang, the Swedish version of Got Talent, at the tender age of just ten. She claimed the crown by smashing a version of Celine Dion's epic ballad My Heart Will Go On. "I sounded like a little guinea pig!" she told the BBC.

Interestingly, while the show proved Zara had a huge talent, it didn't really contribute that much to her later success. "Nobody really wanted to sign me, which I was devastated about," she said.

Zara came back with her own music at the age of 15. "A lot of the people didn't even recognise me," she said. "So in Sweden, the talent show is like super-irrelevant. And that's great because usually it's very hard to wipe off that kind of Got Talent stain. It just stays on you - but it didn't for me."

Beyonce is now the kind of solo star who can pretty much freeze the earth's revolutions with a single Instagram post, and before that she was part of one of the biggest and best girl bands EVER, in the form of Destiny's Child.

Nevertheless, not many people know that the original Destiny's Child line up began life as a pre-teen group called Girls Tyme. They auditioned on a huge show called Star Search back 1993, but actually lost out to a grown up male band called Skeleton Crew. (And where are Skeleton Crew now, eh?)

Queen Bey brought the past back to life when she sampled a clip from the nineties talent show on her 2013 hit Flawless.

So we all know that Justin Timberlake used to be in mega US boyband *NSYNC, back when he still wore matching double denim with then-girlfriend Britney Spears.

But not many people also know that Justin, as an 11-year-old cutie, competed on Star Search in 1992 (but was quickly knocked out.) If there's anything following TV talent shows religiously has taught us, it's that winning or losing doesn't actually mean that much in the long run...

Becky Hill is a massive Radio 1 playlist favourite with her up-to-the-minute dance pop hits like Rude Love and Unpredictable. But not everyone knows that the hotly tipped star was actually also a contestant on the very first series of The Voice UK, joining Jessie J's time and reaching the semi-final of the competition.

Becky in fact became the first The Voice UK contestant to bag a UK Number One with the 2014 banger Gecko (Overdrive), made with Oliver Heldens.

Let's face it, Carly Rae Jepsen was born to be one of the greatest pop stars of our age. Carly, you have given us Call Me Maybe and Cut To The Feeling, and frankly we're not sure we deserve you.

However, those of us who live outside of Canada might not realise that the pop star first cut her teeth at 21 on the 2007 edition of Canadian Idol. (She didn't win! But she came third...)

"It really was a game-changer, and I have no regrets in doing that show," she told Yahoo Music. "I think from that experience I learned that it is important to not knock down different opportunities, because it might just be the thing that really helps you, or gives you that leg up that you need."

Chasing Highs singer Alma is one of the most hotly hyped new names in the music industry, but the highlighter yellow haired star only came fifth when she appeared on the Finnish version of Pop Idol at the tender age of 16. Nevertheless, Alma credits her time on the show with giving her the exposure and the connections she needed to make it big.

“Just a pretty voice is not enough,” she explained to The Guardian. “You can’t just walk into a label’s office and be like, ‘Hey, can I sing a song to you?'"

We all know the former Pussycat Dolls member and solo star Nicole Scherzinger literally can't seem to stay away from TV Talent Show competitions - after all, she's been a judge on The Sing-Off, The X Factor USA and The X Factor UK.

But before she became famous, Nicole was a 2001 contestant on the now-finished show Popstars, which she won as part of a girl group called Eden's Crush.

At the time Scherzy was still working out what kind of artist she wanted to be, and initially she only auditioned because her Mum forced her. "I said no, that I was in this great acoustic goth band, and I was also studying theatre and music at college. I wanted to be on Broadway," she told The Independent. "But she just kind of pushed me out the door anyway, and insisted I go." The rest, as they say, is history.