Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Daniel Passino performs Monday night on The Voice. (NBC Photo)

After a run on The Voice that saw him make it all the way to the Top 10, he obviously wants to release his own music.

But his time on the show also interrupted his pursuit of a vocal performance degree at the University of Michigan.

“I might go back to school and finish my degree, or I might try to decide if something needs to be pushed out right now while the juices are still flowing and I’m still in the public eye for a second,” Daniel said during a Wednesday conference call with the media. “I’ll have to re-evaluate and then go from there.”

Daniel auditioned for The Voice at age 21 with a cover of “Marvin Gaye” and landed a spot on Team Christina.

He was eliminated in a knockout round match against Alisan Porter, but then rescued when Pharrell Williams chose Daniel as his comeback artist.

Along with Nick Hagelin, he became one of the first comeback artists on the show to make it past the live playoffs. In fact, he wound up performing through three rounds of the finals before finding himself in the bottom two Tuesday night alongside — who else — Nick Hagelin.

After the save-me performances, Nick advanced to the Top 9. Daniel said he sensed his elimination coming, not only from the feedback he received following his Monday performance of Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” but also from the coaches’ comments during Tuesday’s show.

“You had three coaches vouching for Nick, who did a phenomenal job. You had Christina standing on her chair telling everyone to vote for Nick. Then, when it was my turn, it was almost — well, my brother described it as a eulogy.”

An aspiring pop singer, Daniel said his biggest lesson learned from The Voice was the need to be unique.

“That’s what Pharrell stressed to me the entire time,” Daniel said. “You have to find what makes you different from everyone else. You have to have that mystique about you.

“And that’s what I wanted to get from Pharrell. I knew he had a relationship with Justin Timberlake. I knew he had a relationship with Michael Jackson. Those were all my questions the entire time. I wish it could have been portrayed that way on TV, showing how passionate I was.

“I think that was one of my biggest regrets from the show. I didn’t feel like I had a personality per se on the show. I made a really conscious effort to make sure I didn’t have a backstory of anything that was tragic in my life. I’m sure everyone has tragedies in their life, but I didn’t want it to define me. I didn’t want it defining me moving on in my career.”