Idol Chatter & Voice Views

His audition: Ricky Manning, 19, of Cape Coral, Fla., auditioned with “Love Me Again” by John Newman. His nerves were obvious early in the performance, but he shook those off once he hit the high-energy chorus and eventually prompted Blake Shelton and Pharrell Williams to turn their chairs. Pharrell complimented him on his vocal “consistency” and the way he “got lost in the moment” of his audition. Blake praised his conviction. Ricky decided to join Team Pharrell.

His background: Ricky has six siblings and says all of them sing, play guitar or write songs. He got into music in third grade, singing songs by The Jackson Five and Stevie Wonder. “I was a lady’s man in third grade; I really was,” Ricky tells us. He eventually got into musical theater. Rather than going to college after high school, he decided to give himself a year to see what he could accomplish with music. He moved to New Jersey and reconnected with his father and plays in the streets or subways three of four times a week. “I thought I was going to get a crowd, get money and then somebody in that crowd would be with a record label and want to sign me. But you’re background music, basically, until the train comes and then they’re gone and no one’s listening to you again.” Now he’s coming up on the end of that year he gave himself to make music work.

What the show didn’t show: Busking in the “smelly subways” of New York City certainly isn’t glamorous, but it has its benefits, Ricky says. “I definitely honed my skills as a performer on the streets because I could do whatever I wanted. I could sing whatever I wanted when I wanted,” he said in a conference call with the media. “I could sing three songs on repeat for three hours because it was a new crowd every two minutes.” A 2013 grad of North Fort Myers High School, Ricky’s Facebook bio says he started singing around southwest Florida when he was 13. He classifies his music as pop / singer-songwriter. And while he doesn’t appear to have released any music, I’ve embedded a couple of his originals below. His subway singing background also played a factor in Ricky’s choice of a coach. “Being a subway singer, the one thing that I try to do the most is make the very few people who are listening feel something. And the very first thing Pharrell said to me was, ‘I could tell you meant every word you were singing. And I felt every word you were singing'” Besides that, he considers Pharrell “a creative genius.”

On iTunes: Just his audition song.

Keeping up with Ricky:
Twitter: @TheRickyManning
Facebook
YouTube

“Prom Queen” (original)

“Dance Again” (original)

“I Can’t Make You Love Me” (cover)