Idol Chatter & Voice Views

You might remember her as the young woman who sang her entire blind audition song on The Voice in Spanish, yet enticed Blake Shelton to turn around.

Yes, Blake Shelton, of country music fame. He said he just couldn’t resist her big voice.

Now Cathia, the self-described “little girl with the big voice,” has released her first EP.

The five-song effort is called “Unbreakable” and hit iTunes last week.

And don’t jump to the wrong conclusion. The last of the five songs — “Solo Tu” — is in Spanish.

But the rest — including the fun and catchy title track — are in English.

Cathia — last name Ochoa, standing 5-foot-1 — is from Bronx, N.Y., and was 19 when she auditioned for Season 4 of The Voice.

A graduate of the LaGuardia Performing Arts High School, she spent time on Team Shakira and Team Usher on the show and made the Top 16 before being eliminated.

Now 20, she wrote all of the lyrics and melodies for her debut EP.

She said she felt it was important to include a song in Spanish because ” it’s part of who I am” and would help her reconnect with the Latino fans she made from her appearance on the show.

“Spanish was my first language and it’s how I was introduced to music in the first place, through one of my main inspirations- Selena Quintanilla,” she wrote in response to questions I emailed her earlier this week.

As for that excellent title track “Unbreakable” — the story behind the song sort of sums up the experience of making her first EP.

“I wrote this song in a time of uncertainty, when I felt like I was being pulled in a million different directions,” she says. “I had been so busy trying to get the EP done, as well as keeping up with college and working at a recording studio; all while trying to juggle my personal life and try and enjoy my downtime.

“The song is something I wrote to lift up my spirit and remind myself that no matter how crazy a situation may seem, if you fight through it, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to! It was my own personal anthem to reassure myself that all the hard work that was going into the EP at the time would pay off in the end.”

Below, I’ve embedded a lyric video for “Without You,” one of the songs from the EP, and an Ask Cathia video that will help you reconnect with the personable young singer.

If you like to hear more, head to her YouTube channel. And you can follow Cathia on her website or here on Twitter.

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