Idol Chatter & Voice Views

At age 9, Adriana Louise used music to help her cope with the most traumatic experience of her life.

A gang tried to rob her father’s store and wound up holding her family at gunpoint.

To cope with her fear in the aftermath of the incident, Adriana told The Voice, she taught herself to sing and play guitar.

“After that, the only thing that made me happy was music,” the 22-year-old from Brooklyn said. “It entirely got me through that experience.”

But the path to pop stardom is competitive and, judging from her pre-audition interview, it sounds as though Adriana has spent as much time waitressing and bartending as she has performing.

Nevertheless, she shows up for the blind audition looking like a pop star and uncorks an exuberant version of Jessie J’s “Domino.”

It works better than she could have hoped. All four judges turn around and start piling on the praise.

Cee Lo says she already looks like a “consummate professional” on stage. Adam says: “You have a voice a lot of people try to have on record, but don’t have live, and you have it live, which is so rare.”

Despite their compliments, Adriana chooses Christina for her coach.

After all, the first record she bought with her own money, back when she was 9, was a Christina Aguilera album.

What the show didn’t show: In a post-audition interview with Christina Milian, Adriana revealed her strategy — getting the crowd so pumped up during her performance that the judges couldn’t help but turn around. “And I had the perfect song for that.” She also admitted she had not performed on stage for three years. Her bio on The Voice tells us she also plays guitar and gets musical inspiration from Selena and Michael Jackson. But to get a better glimpse at Adriana, head to her “Some of My Background” blog. It sounds as though she’s a true amateur. She admits to being “deathly shy” as a youngster until a middle school teacher convinced her to try out for Annie when she was in sixth grade. She wound up as a vocal major at the prestigious Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School.  “It wasn’t until this year that I realized .. what am I doing with my life?!?” she writes. “It’s years later and I’ve been so scared for so long. I hadn’t performed on a stage for well over 3 years.! I always knew my whole life i just wanted to be a singer, and always thought it wasn’t attainable.” She waited six hours at the open call auditions for The Voice in New York. And, presto, she’s a member of Team Christina. Anyway, read the blog. It’s very good. I just wish I could find some pre-Voice video of Adriana performing.

Editor’s Note: Check back for live blogs once the battle rounds begin on The Voice.

Adriana Louise singing “Domino”