Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Her audition: Jozy Bernadette, 25, Grand Forks, N.D., sang “American Woman” by The Guess Who for her blind audition. Her strong vocals enticed late chair turns from Adam Levine and Gwen Stefani. Jozy opted to join Team Gwen, nabbing the final spot on her team.

Her background: Her dad, Glenn Hansen, played in the NBA (for the Kansas City Kings and Chicago Bulls, 1975-1978), so it’s not surprising that Jozy was involved in sports growing up. She played basketball, she told The Voice, until she realized singing “gave me a feeling nothing else could give me.” Her junior year in high school, she won a competition, which made her think “maybe I can really do this.” She now sings at weddings, but also works as a creative recruiter, helping other people find their dream jobs. The Voice is her attempt to find her dream job.

What the show didn’t show:

* Her full name is Jozy Bernadette Hansen. She’s the youngest of five children and was involved in dance, music and sports growing up.

* She began taking vocal lessons in her home state of North Dakota when she was just 5.

* She performed locally throughout high school and college and won the Grand Cities Idol competition once in the early 2000s, according to a 2015 interview with the Grand Forks Herald.

* The newspaper was interviewing her because she also auditioned for The Voice back in 2015. She made it past the first round of auditions that year, but not the second.

* She also auditioned for American Idol when she was about 19.

* She has a communications degree from the University of North Dakota. But, of course, she would rather make music her career.

* During a conference call with the media, Jozy described herself as a pop-rock singer with some funk and soul mixed in.

* As for picking Gwen as her coach, Jozy said: “I went with my gut and my heart and my intuition at that moment which is kind of the fun and the beauty of that magical moment. I think that Gwen (during her feedback) really touched on everything that I was seeking for in a coach. So I went with Gwen.”

* She said auditioning for The Voice previously and not making the show “made me a better artist. It taught me a lot about myself and that you can pick yourself up and try again. I kind of want that to be something people look up too. You keep fighting, you keep trying. I am on Team Gwen now. So it is worth the failures and the no’s and the closed doors to get to where I am today.”

* Jozy said a key to making the show was going into the auditions determined to have fun and not take it quite as “very, very seriously” as she did the first time around. “This time I went in and I was 100 percent myself and sang a song that I really, truly had a blast singing. And I wanted that to come through in my audition.”

Keeping up with Jozy:
Twitter: @therealjozyb
Website
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube (Note: All videos there are at least four years old)

“Set Fire to the Rain” (cover)