Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Jackie Verna performs Strawberry Wine on The Voice Top 11 Night. (NBC Photo)

Thirteen singers made Season 14 of The Voice with a single chair turn.

Jackie Verna advanced deeper into the competition than any of the others, making it all the way to the Top 10 as a member of Team Adam Levine.

Along the way, the young woman from West Chester, Pa., cracked the Top 30 on the iTunes country chart three times, peaking at number 13 with her Top 11 Week cover of “Strawberry Wine.”

During a conference call with the media, Jackie expressed gratitude to Adam for helping her improve her stage presence, emphasizing to her the importance of connecting with a song and for saving her when she was on the verge of elimination at the end of the live playoffs.

She went on to advance during two weeks of the finals on fan voting before landing in the bottom two on Top 10 results night. She was eliminated in spite of an emotional and well-received cover of “I Told You So” as her save-me song.

Jackie called her elimination “bitter sweet.”

“You’re sad, because you want to stay,” she said. “But at the same time, I’ve gained so much from this entire experience and grown both as a person and an artist.

“So just being able to move forward with everything I’ve learned from Adam, from my fellow contestants, I’m just humbled to even have had the experience. So I’m very excited to move forward and get started on some new things.”

Here’s what Jackie told Voice Views about her time on the show.

Jackie Verna performs during Tuesday’s results show on The Voice. (NBC Photo)

Jackie: I was very, very new to performing before coming to the show. I was only doing, you know, small open mics really and just kind of singing in my bedroom. So there was not much exposure for me before this. So I’m really just looking forward to getting started when I get home and making music and writing more and getting myself out there for more gigs and just performing and really just giving myself more exposure. I’m really excited to get started right away.

Voice Views: Have you done much songwriting on your own? Do you have many originals ready to record? And what can fans expect from you musically?

Jackie: I write a little bit, but I’m not quite ready to really release anything that I have. I definitely want to keep writing and keep collaborating with other songwriters before I put out anything of my own. And my sound, I definitely would love to produce country music and have a little bit of a pop soul effect on it and so I think my listeners will definitely expect something like that from me in the future.

Voice Views: What was your favorite performance of your own during the show and why was that your favorite?

Jackie: I would say “Strawberry Wine” (from Top 11 fan choice week) was my favorite because that was the first week that I came into my own as an artist. I feel like my fans were also very intuitive with me. That song, doing that, it just made me realize where I want to be sound wise. I don’t want to be a crazy belter or anything like that and I was always wondering where I fell with my range and what I should do with it. And I’ve really found the sweet spot in my sound where I want to stay. So that was a very, very important and eye opening week for me.”

Voice Views: Looking back at your experience on The Voice, what do you think you gained that’s going to benefit you the most moving forward with music?

Jackie: “The biggest thing musically that I’ve learned where I want to be in my range. Going in, I knew I had a little bit of a bigger range that I could do things with, but I never felt like I had to because I can do it. So now I really found who I want to be and the sound that I want to have and it’s really more that I want to tell stories (with my music). I think that’s kind of the biggest thing musically that I’ve learned being here on the show.

Editor’s Note: Jackie was 23 when she auditioned for The Voice. For more on her pre-Voice, head here. Her social media links follow.

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