Idol Chatter & Voice Views

On TV singing shows, lots of coaches, judges and mentors will advise against performing a song by Whitney Houston.

Yet that’s just what DaNica Shirey of York did during her Voice Season 7 knockout round match, which aired last week.

And Whitney proved no problem for the 25-year-old, the first York County contestant to qualify for the show.

Coach Pharrell Williams declared her the winner, despite a solid performance by her opponent, Katriz Trinidad.

That means DaNica advances to the Top 20 on the show, the live rounds, which begin next week.

As for her knockout round song choice — Whitney’s “Saving All My Love for You” — DaNica said it was simply a case of turning to an old favorite and one of her inspirations when it comes to music.

“I have always been really inspired by Whitney,” DaNica said when I spoke with her last week. “I don’t feel like I would have been the same singer had I not grown up trying to sing her music. (Doing that) just brought my singing to another level.”

“I came across ‘I Believe in You and Me’ by Whitney Houston and I loved it,” DaNica said. “I just kept singing it for years.”

That includes at an appearance at the Apollo Theater in New York when she was 15. The performance helped DaNica score a win in the adult division of a singing competition there.

“I know a lot of people are very picky about her so it can be really, really scary to sing a song by her,” DaNica admitted. “But I thought that, if it went positive one time for me singing a Whitney song, maybe it could possibly happen again.”

It did, of course. Pharrell and guest mentor Taylor Swift had nothing but praise for DaNica after she performed the song during rehearsal.

More praise followed her on-stage performance, with Blake Shelton calling her “a perfect singer.”

And it got better. The clip of her knockout round ended with Pharrell saying he thinks DaNica could win Season 7 of The Voice.

Turns out, he told her the same thing during rehearsal.

“I lost it,” DaNica recalled. “I started bawling. I said, ‘You guys are making me cry.’ And then Taylor (Swift) is like, ‘Oh, group hug.’ And they both just hugged me for a minute.

“The fact that he (Pharrell) believes in me that much, that I could honestly go that far, that means the world to me.”

The knockout round concludes Monday night on The Voice. Check back at 9 p.m. for a live blog.

And I’ll be posting another blog between now and next week about DaNica’s strategy heading into the live shows.