Idol Chatter & Voice Views

A quick look at new singles from three former Voice artists you’re likely to remember for their strong performances on the show.

Jamar Rogers has released his first new music in two years, an addictive single called “Arrows” and featuring L.A.-based rapper Rila.

The song was released on the Tommy Boy Entertainment label and is the first single off an upcoming album called “Tribe of Lazarus”. Three remixes of “Arrows” are also available on iTunes.

Jamar was a contestant on Season 8 of American Idol; you’ll recall he was a good friend of Danny Gokey. Then he auditioned for Season 2 of The Voice, came out as HIV positive and advanced all the way to the Top 8.

Earlier this summer, Jamar filmed an intriguing video for The What’s Underneath Project in which he discusses coming out to his religious mother and step-father as a teen, drug addiction, learning he had AIDS and then learning to love himself.

I’m embedding the single version of “Arrows” below. You can check out the remixes on Tommy Boy YouTube channel.

Dia Frampton, Season 1 runner-up on The Voice, released a cover of the INXS hit “Never Tear Us Apart” earlier this month. She also shared her struggles as a musician in a compelling blog published in late August, writing “a year shy of thirty, I feel like I might as well be fifty when it comes to women in the music industry.”

Voice watchers will recall that Dia released a pretty good pop album called “Red” after her run on The Voice. Then she released a superb EP with Joe Trapanese as Archis in February 2015. She was working on a second Archis album, but recently announced to fans on Facebook that it had instead become a Dia album, to be called “Bruises” and to be released early next year.

“I’m ready to share the last five years of my life with you,” she writes. “Years of hope, failure, heartbreak, and courage.”

In the meantime we have that cover of “Never Tear of Apart,” released under just her first name. Says Dia: “Whenever I listen to this song, I feel healed in a weird way. I hope that doesn’t sound corny. ‘I told you, that we could fly, ’cause we all have wings, some of us don’t know why.'”

Paul Pfau, a singer-songwriter from Season 8, is about to release his first post-show EP, “Great Ameican Love Story,” due out Sept. 30.

He’s already released a first single from that EP, “See You Better,” which is embedded below. And though you can’t download the song yet, he just released a lyric video for another EP track, a song called “Cry.”

You can also head over to Paul’s Facebook page for some interesting reads. He’s invited fans to share their own great American love stories, and several have.

Paul was 26 when he auditioned for The Voice and landed a spot on Team Pharrell. He advanced to the knockout round before being eliminated. Pre-Voice, he released an album called “Happy to Be” in 2013.