Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Jennifer Jeffries performs during Hollywood Week on American Idol. (ABC Photo)

Jennifer Jeffries is among the singers who earned a golden ticket on Season 22 of American Idol.

Season 22 premiered in mid-February with Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie returning for the show’s seventh season on ABC.

Here’s more about Jennifer:

* She was 17 when she auditioned and is a senior at Starkville High School in Starkville, Miss.

* Jennifer hails from a large family. She’s the youngest of nine children and told Idol she also has 14 nieces and nephews.

* She told Our Home Mississippi that it’s also a musical family in which nearly everyone plays piano or guitar.

* And she told the Clarion Ledger that she’s been writing songs since she was really young, adding that she really got serious about it around age 9 when “I was doing it all the time.”

* In spite of her young age, Jennifer auditioned with an original, a song called “Change My Ways.” She received rave reviews from the judges, both on the song and her talent. Lionel said he loved her uniqueness. Luke said her voice sounded like it jumped off an indie film soundtrack.

* “Change My Ways” is the first song Jennifer every released, in May of 2023. She called it her “testimony story” in that interview with My Home Mississippi, adding: “One day, I was just sitting in my room, and I looked over at my desk. The first words were, ‘I’ve got a Bible on my desk, with no highlights, creases, and pages that are still crisp.’ I thought I had not done my best at putting God at the center of my life. I need to do better, and then, I just kept writing.”

* That song has now been streamed more than 100,000 times on Spotify. And Jennifer has released two more since getting that golden ticket — “Shadow Monsters” and “You Were a Child.”

* The latter is the original she sang in the first round of Hollywood Week. Jennifer told Idol she wrote it about watching some of her siblings struggle with anxiety and depression. “The fear of losing someone you love kind of haunts you a little bit,” she said. She released the song the same day her Hollywood performance aired.

* Jennifer has said she’d thought about auditioning for Idol, but wasn’t certain she was good enough. Watching a fellow Mississippian — Colin Stough — do so well on Season 21 was encouraging. But she told Our Home Mississippi, the biggest boost to submit an audition video came when she was on a mission trip to Virginia.

“Wwe were singing in the church house, and this lady turned around and said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but you need to go on American Idol.’ I felt like that was my sign,” Jennifer said.

* As for her songwriting, she describes it this way: “I write songs so that people can connect with them and know they’re not alone. Because a lot happens in your life, a lot of pain and a lot of joy. I try to capture both.”

Jennifer on social media:
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