Meet and hear more from Maya Smith of The Voice Season 10

The Voice

Meet and hear more from Maya Smith of The Voice Season 10

March 11, 2016 By Mark Franklin 0

Her audition: Maya Smith, 31, of Los Angeles, Calif., auditioned with Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.” Her soulful vocals prompted chair turns from Pharrell Williams and Christina Aguilera. Pharrell praised her control and her range. Maya decided to join Team Pharrell.

Her background: Maya’s mom retired from a career with the postal service and Maya says she has worked there for the past 10 years. “I just kind of put magazines in boxes all day. It’s not exciting.” Her mom believes Maya’s true calling is music. Maya says she used to have a big problem with shyness. A well-received karaoke performance helped her get over that. She then started gigging at a sports bar.

What the show didn’t show:

That karaoke performance came back in 2011, so Maya’s a relative newcomer to music.

On Facebook, she identifies herself as an artist and model; on Twitter, she calls herself “a hippie at heart.”

During a conference call with the media, Maya said she always loved music, but “never necessarily had all the resources.” For instance, when she was growing up, she was learning to play violin until they took music out of the schoools.

Her shyness also held her back, she admits. “I just wouldn’t get up in front of people until a few years ago … Right now, I’m just working on my confidence building.”

She prefers to sing soul music, “like all day every day,” she says. Her favorite artists include Aretha Franklin, Lauren Hill and Erykah Badu.

As for her coach of Pharrell as coach? “I knew that I was going to pick Pharrell even when trying out for The Voice was just a daydream when I was work. I just knew that it was always going to be Pharrell, because I’ve been a fan of Pharrell’s literally since I was a kid, since I was in middle school, since he was producing records with Neptunes and N.E.R.D.”

On iTunes: Just her performance from The Voice

Keeping up with Maya:
Twitter: @MayaSmithMusic
Facebook
YouTube

“By Your Side” (Sade cover)