Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Hallie Day, 24, of Baltimore, certainly impressed the Idol judges during her audition in Pittsburgh.

They saved her audition for last in the Pittsburgh episode, and Jennifer Lopez left saying they might have found the one, much as Steven Tyler did last year after Lauren Alaina’s audition.

But the Idol judges weren’t the first to be impressed by Hallie.  She competed in and won a Baltimore Idol competition sponsored by FOX45 WBFF in July. That earned her a trip to the front of the line at the Pittsburgh auditions.

Hallie’s a waitress now, but she has had dreams of stardom for a while.

When she was 15, she told Idol she dropped out of school and moved to New York to join a girl group named Plum Crazy “determined to be a superstar.”  Instead, she says she found loneliness, debt and addiction.

She eventually moved back to Maryland, but says she didn’t have a structured family life and wound up in the emergency room after she “drank a bottle of pills.”

She credits her husband, Ryan, with helping turn her life around, convincing her not to give up on music.

“Music and my husband saved my life,” she told the Idol judges.

Then she belted out a rendition of “I Will Survive” — appropriate song choice, right? — that had Jennifer Lopez raving about how she can see Hallie “up there, stealing the show, on an album cover … You do have a gift. Your husband is right.”

She also had a lot of soul in her voice, something she attributes to being “raised on” soul and jazz music from a very young age.

As for the gift, it’s one Hallie admits she was ready to give up on.

“I had wanted this for so long,” the waitress says in her golden ticket interview, “and I truly gave it up a couple of years ago. Like, ‘all right, I’m just going to go and have babies. I mean, what else am I’m going to do with my life?’ You know? … Now, I’m here. I have an amazing husband who’s walking me through this. It’s just in me to get on stage and deliver.”

If case you missed Hallie’s audition, I’ve posted it below. And if you know of pre-Idol music from Hallie, let me know.