Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Her audition: Nyla Martin, 17, “Ain’t No Way” by Aretha Franklin: Wow, talk about a big voice. Most impressively though, was the way she built the dramatics in that audition. Carrie Underwood can’t believe she’s just 17 with that big voice. Luke Bryan was equally impressed. Lionel Richie wants her to dial back the vocals even a bit more, but gave her the third yes to advance.

Here’s more about Nyla:

* She’s a very young singer from the Charlotte, N.C. area who has studied musical theater at the Northwest School for the Arts.

* In June, she won the Child Star of Tomorrow competition at the Apollo Theater in New York. The victory came with a $5,000 grand prize. She was 16 at the time.

* Singing “I Am Changing” by Jennifer Holliday, “Nyla became everyone’s dream girl and brought the house down,” according to a press release from the venue.

* Earlier in the year, she represented her school at the National YoungArts Week. You can check out her very, very impressive performance of “Somebody Else’s Guy” below.

* Wrote Nyla about the experience: “The experience that I had with @youngarts Week is one that I will never forget. Thank you to all the talented people who made it easy for me to just be myself and realize that without us, there would be no future in the world of art. I had so much fun and I loved every minute of my time there. ”

* And Nyla has apparently been singing for quite a while. There’s a 2021 video on Facebook promoting an upcoming holiday concern in which Nyla, in the 7th grade at the time, was going to be performing. The post indicates that she started performing as a vocalist five years earlier and also plays the piano and ukulele.

* In addition to performing in musical theater productions at her school, she performed with the Children’s Theatre Charlotte.

* She doesn’t appear to have released music, but she has an original called “Too Far Gone” as the earliest post on her Instagram.

* And her Idol audition likely went very well. In a promo clip, Carrie Underwood raves about her “ginormous voice,” says she has “all the potential in the world” and adds that it’s hard to believe she’s as young as she is.

Nyla on social media:
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
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