Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Darby Walker admits she was stunned to land in the bottom two this week on The Voice.

And with good reason. Results on iTunes are usually a good indicator of who is in danger of elimination on the show.

Darby’s cover of “You Don’t Own Me” landed at number 45 on the iTunes singles chart when voting ended.

Four contestants wound up below her; all four were at least 38 spots lower on the site’s singles chart.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be Aaron (Gibson) and I in the bottom two. I wasn’t expecting that at all to be really, really honest with you,” Darby said during a conference call with the media Wednesday.

The indie alternative artist from Los Angeles wound up heading home in 11th place after The Voice twitter save went to Aaron for the second straight week.

Making the situation more difficult: Darby said Aaron, a colleague on Team Miley Cyrus, was her best friend on the show.

“We were both just in shock,” Darby said. “It was just a lose-win-lose situation. It was not a fun situation to be in.”

Aaron had done even better on iTunes, ranking fourth among the 11 remaining artists with his cover of “Hurt.”

But Darby added that “the universe works in interesting ways” and said she has faith that everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

And she made it absolutely clear that she wouldn’t change a thing about her time on the show – well, except for this week’s outcome.

That includes her songs choices, which featured renditions of “Those Were the Days” from 1968, “Ruby Tuesday” from 1967 and “You Don’t Own Me” from 1963 once the live shows began.

Darby said those songs helped her “break out of the indie box.”

“I tell some people I feel like I was born in the wrong time. It was good music. It was music that meant something. I feel like a lot of songs nowadays are about love, or being heartbroken or about sex. I feel like that’s all we’re hearing.

“The songs I sang are about so much more than that – about freedom, self-expression, love and peace and being who you are.
The fact that I was able to put those songs out there was beautiful. I would do it again the same way.”

She also appreciated the way Miley allowed her to express her artistic freedom, even when that meant wearing bell bottoms and a rainbow colored coat for Top 11 night and performing with flowers in her hair behind a flower-adorned mic stand on Top 12 night.

“The thing about Miley is I really got the freedom to go all out and be 10,000 percent of what I wanted to be. I don’t know if I would have gotten to do that if I had been with another coach,” she said.

Darby was 17 when she auditioned for the show and turned three chairs. A native of the Atlanta, Ga., area, Darby’s mom moved the family to California when Darby was 9 so she could pursue her interests in the performing arts.

Original music is definitely coming, Darby said during the conference call. Fans can expect songs with messages like those she conveyed on the show and songs featuring sounds from the vintage music she loves.

But that’s not all. Darby also filmed a role for a horror movie set for release in February. And she plans to continue her stepped up social media presence that came along with landing a spot on Season 11 of The Voice.

“Just expect a lot of art,” Darby said when asked about her future.