Idol Chatter & Voice Views

How many singers can say they made Mariah Carey cry over their voice? In a good way?

Burnell Taylor can. The 19-year-old from New Orleans accomplished the feat as the final singer we met in the Baton Rouge auditions.

Funny thing about the audition. Burnell auditioned for Idol the last time auditions were held in the New Orleans area.

He appeared before the very same judge in the pre-audition screening, he told The Times-Picayune. And she rejected him.

“I was kind of nervous, because she had my life in her hands,” Burnell told the newspaper.

Being from New Orleans, Burnell has a Hurricane Katrina story to tell. His family was among the thousands who lost everything to the flooding.

Displaced, they spent a year living in Baton Rouge, then moved back into New Orleans and lived in a FEMA trailer for months, then finally relocated to an unfinished home.

In his audition clip, Burnell told Idol he’s been singing most of his life, but it wasn’t until after the hurricane that he decided to take his gift seriously.

He considers one of his biggest performances to date performing the national anthem when at the reopening of a branch of the New Orleans Public Library.

“I’m basically a nobody, an amateur to the people who’ve been doing this a while,” he told The Times-Picayune.

He also told the newspaper his favorite artist is India.Arie and he gravitates toward that type of music.

“I’m just a huge fan of that mellow, R&B, ‘sit down and let me talk to you’ type of singing,” he said. “I love singing up-tempo songs, and I will sing up-tempo songs … To me, I just can’t entertain the way I want to in an up-tempo song.”

Back to that audition. Burnell sang “I’m Here” from “The Color Purple.”

And Mariah wasn’t the only judge impressed.

Said Nicki: “I feel like we’ve been flying all around this country for that. While everybody else auditioned, you just entertained us.”

And said Keith: “Somewhere there’s a spotlight just waiting for you to walk into it.”

Here’s Burnell’s Idol audition. If you know of other video available of Burnell singing, pass the word along and I’ll add it.