Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Alanis Sophia from American Idol Season 19

Alanis Sophia is one of the singers we’re likely to meet Sunday night when auditions continue on American Idol.

Here’s more about Alanis:

* She describes herself as a dancer, actress and singer-songwriter.

* Alanis was born in Puerto Rico and lived there until age 5, when her family moved to Florida.

* She fell in love with music at a young age and “would just randomly sing all the time,” she says in a video on her YouTube channel.

* At age 12, she was a contestant on La Voz Kids. She says it was her first experience performing live, but she wound up as runner-up.

* Appearing on the show made her realize music was what she wanted to pursue, Alanis says. But she says the show was also a lot of pressure because she didn’t have any prior vocal training or performance experience.

* She then became an ambassador for Visit Florida, a tourism campaign for which she recorded jingles that aired all over the world.

* She released a debut EP that included three covers and one original, which was recorded in English and Spanish. Those came out in 2014 and the songs can still be streamed individually on Spotify.

* In 2017, she was contacted by Big Machine Music Group and wound up signing a deal as a young Latina, with the goal of creating Latin-flavored country music, a genre well outside her comfort zone at the time, she admits.

* In that video on her YouTube channel, she says she recorded more than 100 songs during her time with Big Machine. She eventually parted ways with the label, but says she values the experience for all she learned.

* “It was like school for me,” Alanis says. “Big Machine pushed me even more to wanting to stay in the industry.”

* She also great attached to the music she created, so she released six of the songs on an EP called “Closer” in 2020. You can check out “Laurel Canyon,” my favorite track, below.

* Now 19, Alanis says in her American Idol announcement video that she just started her first job outside entertainment, working part-time in an ice cream shop.

* Thanks to her ventures as an entertainer, Alanis has built a sizeable fan base, including 76,000 followers on Instagram and more than 280,000 on Facebook.

Alanis on social media:
Website
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube