Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Brittany Butler says her music career has taught her to seize opportunities when they present themselves.

She did that when a chance to audition for Season 7 of The Voice came along.

She wound up performing in front of a TV audience of more than 12 million and earning a spot on Team Pharrell Williams.

She did it again when a Boston recording studio reached out to her.

As a result, she released a 5-track debut EP on Friday, then watched it climb to number 51 on the iTunes R&B/soul chart.

“That completely surpassed any expectations I had,” says Brittany, now 25 and four years removed from The Voice.

That said, she considers the EP a project 11 years in the making. After all, she’s been pursuing music since age 14 when she started posting videos to YouTube.

And while that EP might be classified as R&B/soul, there’s a broad dash of jazz as well. That’s because Brittany dove into the music of Amy Winehouse after the Grammy winner died in 2011. In the process, Brittany rediscovered her roots.

Her grandfather raised her on jazz standards; her mother on old-school R&B. She had learned to sign by mimicking Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.

“So Amy’s music inspired me to start singing in that style again and once I did, it never felt more clear that my voice was meant for that genre of music,” says Brittany. “As soon as I started writing songs in that vein, I became much more confident as an artist and finally felt like I had my own vibe.”

Viewers got a glimpse of the result when she appeared on The Voice. The EP, filled with songs Brittany wrote, provides a far better sample.

Among those songs, she calls “Mother” the most personal. It stems from an assignment she had as a student at the Berklee College of Music where she was required to interview someone, then write a song based on the interview.

“I was so happy with how it turned out,” she says. “I typically tend to write about love, despite never actually being in love haha, so it was really refreshing to write about something different, or at least a different kind of love.”

Another of the five tracks on the EP is “Sick of the Same.”

“I wrote the skeleton of the song in 2012,” Brittany says. “It was inspired by two things: The current state of music on the radio at the time — ‘whoa-oh’s’ and ‘oh-oh’s’ ruled the airwaves — and the fact that I wasn’t where I wanted to be career-wise yet.

“I was sick of the same old, same old. Sick of hearing the same sort of thing every time I turned on the radio and sick of being stuck in the same place professionally.”

Still, even with songs in hand that she was proud of and wanted to share with the world, Brittany says she was having trouble capturing the sound she wanted when she tried to self-produce the EP.

That’s when she seized the second opportunity — a chance to work with Plaid Dog Recordings in Boston. She recorded the album in their studio, beginning work on the project a year ago. They also helped her set up a successful Indiegogo campaign to help fund the EP.

“So basically, the stars aligned I guess,” she says.

Since The Voice, Brittany has also graduated from Berklee. And, last year, her cover of “Just Friends” won the Amy Winehouse Foundation’s Back to Black 10 contest, launched to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Amy’s album by the same name. As a result, Brittany got to work with Island Records UK to record her cover and an original called “No Other Man” — you’ll find it on the EP as well — at the YouTube studio in New York.

What’s next?

Brittany admits she’s unsure. But she says she’ll be busy promoting the EP and continuing to post to her YouTube channel where she now has more than 100,000 followers and more than 9.3 million views.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that success truly does happen when preparation meets opportunity,” she says. “So I’m going to keep myself busy and on top of my game so that when the next opportunity rolls around, I’ll be more than ready to take it.”

Here’s “Sick of the Same” from Brittany Butler’s self-titled EP.