McHugh said that navigating losing her sight aged 22 due to degenerative macular condition Stargardt disease, external had made her more determined to succeed.
She said music had “always been an outlet, emotionally, as so many musicians will say, but for me, when I’m on a stage singing and the lights are down on the audience, it’s the one place that I don’t think about my sight loss”.
McHugh said that “as long as I know the words and I’m not trying to read them off an iPad then I’m absolutely there in that moment”.
She described her sight loss as “just a small part of me, it’s not who I am”.
McHugh added that while many people with differences and disabilities sometimes felt they had to make themselves smaller “so that you don’t become a nuisance to people”, she chose “to find a way to take up space and be bigger and that’s where music took me”.
She is now working on her first original song in a studio which should be released “relatively soon, hopefully, fingers crossed”.
Footage shared by McHugh on social media after her win showed her laughing and smiling with family and friends screaming in delight as they celebrated her victory at a watch party in Cardiff.
She has won a £50,000 cash prize and a recording contract, with her first ever single, a cover of The Beatles classic Blackbird, now released.
