Idol Chatter & Voice Views

MKY, aka Mikey Jimenez, from American Idol Season 23

Season 23 officially kicks off Sunday, March 9 on ABC with Season 4 champ Carrie Underwood joining Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan at the judges’ table.

Here’s more about MKY:

* He’s 25-year-old Mikey Jimenez, a Mexican-American singer with a fondness for mixing R&B and Mariachi vibes in his music.

* That’s how he billed “Save Me,” a 2024 single and one of his most popular to date with more than 100,000 streams on Spotify. Check out the music video below.

* That’s just one of a long list of releases from MYK, who released another single called “Let Me” in October and who is approaching 200,000 streams on Spotify with a Spanish-language song “Dolor” from 2022.

* Oh, and MKY is familiar with singing show, having competed on ABC’s Boy Band and making the Top 8 on the show at age 17 in 2017. He auditioned with Ne-Yo’s “Because of You.”

* That led to a stint with a quartet called 4th Ave., consisting of MKY and other contestants from the show. The group released three singles and a five-song EP in 2018 alone.

* They performed together for about a year and a half before MKY left the group and began releasing his own music.

* According to online bios, MKY was inspired to pursue music by listening to his father and grandfather sing. He got comfortable performing for others by singing to customers in a hair salon. His father owned a barber shop; his mother was a hair stylist.

* According to his Spotify bio, his musical inspirations include Ritchie Valens, Smokey Robinson, Luis Miguel and Chris Brown.

* Along the way, MKY has developed an impressive social media following, to the tune of 139,000 followers on Instagram and more than 200,000 on TikTok.

Keep checking back for more profiles of Season 23 contestants each day between now and the March 9 American Idol premiere on ABC.

MKY on social media:
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube