Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Aniston Pate of American Idol Season 22

Idol returned to ABC last month with the judging trio of Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie back intact.

Here’s more about Aniston:

* Her full name is Aniston Pate Lees and she’s a 2021 graduate of Dalhart High School in west Texas.

* She’s now moved to Nashville where she’s a commercial voice major at Belmont’s School of Music.

* She’s also a country singer-songwriter who’s already released impressive original music as Aniston Pate.

* Her debut single, “Welcome Back,” came out in 2022. She also released a five-song EP, “Keystone Cowboy,” that year.

* Her most recent single, “Drowning in a Drought,” came out last March. It’s a song she wrote with Zach John King. “It’s not everyday that you get to put out a song as real as this one,” she said at the time.

* According to her Spotify bio, Aniston began pursuing music in fifth grade, knew she wanted to attend Belmont by eighth and started playing gigs around her hometown as a high school freshman.

* She’s come a long way since those early shows in her small hometown, touring west Texas in 2022 and embarking on another summer tour last year that included stops in Waco and Austin.

* And earlier this year she was scheduled for her debut show at Nashville’s famous Bluebird Cafe.

* Wrote Aniston when announcing the gig: “I think back to a younger me, sitting in my bedroom watching YouTube video after YouTube video of performances at the Bluebird, dreaming of leaving my small town and being there.”

* Back on Spotify, Aniston says she finds inspiration in Texas red dirt artists like Wade brown and Randy Rogers as well as female country artists like Miranda Lambert and Lainey Wilson.

* Aniston performs an unreleased original called “Hummingbird,” dedicated to her mother, for her Idol audition. Luke Bryan calls her audition “great,” Lionel Richie says she conjures up comparisons to Dolly Parton.

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