How Do We Change the World?

An American Idol Trip Down Memory Lane

“Oh Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining…”

When I was in school there was a girl who I heard singing in the auditorium. I stopped in my tracks as the hair on my arms stood up. I had never heard such a beautiful voice before and I was almost moved to tears.

Yes, she was singing Oh Holy Night, in the most perfect rendition I had ever heard of the song. She had a face to match her angelic voice. It was like she had been modelled after a porcelin doll. It transformed the entire energy of the space. You could hear a pin drop after her performance.

Such can be the transformative power of song. I spent the next several years doing everything in my power to have a voice just like hers.

Singing did not come easy to me at first. I’d never played a musical instrument before and had used all of my elective credits to take classes in art. I’d tried I suppose to sing Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven or some other male lead before at my parent’s house. Two of my brother’s friends told me that my voice sounded like crap.

I joined the high school choir and was terrified that they wouldn’t even let me in. Could I really sing in front of even the teacher? The girl before me auditioning helped calm my mood.

“Like I heard in detention that this is a super easy elective to get a good grade in.” She didn’t sing a note. That one was always smoking in the girls room, but she rather amused me. It’s a public school after all what do you expect?

The teacher shrugged and put me in as an alto after what I am sure was several off keys. In the choir of course I got to meet Candice, the girl with the voice that had so inspired me. We became friends.

I put everything into learning how to sing. Art had come so naturally to me I always had such an interest in the way light filtered through. Singing was by contrast a long uphill battle. I bought every CD I could find that had good women’s voices. I memorized the musicals Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon by heart. Every Disney princess song got played on repeat as well. I sang four or five hours a day until I think my poor parents’ ears were about to bleed. I got better and was quickly moved to first soprano. I was always trying to hit the highest notes.

Choir girls often had rivalries but oddly me and Candy never had the slightest one with each other. I wanted to emulate her and told her I thought she had the most beautiful voice I had ever heard. She casted a nomination for me as prom queen my senior year. I thought it was absurd.

“I think you’re the prettiest girl at the school.” Candie explained in the psychology class we were in together when she publicly stated her vote.

“Me?” I shot back. “You’re way prettier than me!”

“I’m too short!” She told me dismissively. She was 5 foot 3 inches and was self conscious about it, telling me that this was why she could not become a model. It was a rare relationship in that space and time where we both supported each other as opposed to the clawing, catty, backchannel gossip that populated the air with the girls.

I didn’t see Candie very often after high school, but the times I did visit or run into her often seemed momentous. One morning I was delivering pizzas and I drove by her house. I saw her sadly strumming her guitar alone out front with tears in her eyes.

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked her after dropping in.

“My Mom just died. I got the call about 15 minutes ago.” She told me. I hadn’t seen her since the Thanksgiving before many months prior. Her Mom had cancer with a type of brain tumor called a glioma, but she had talked a good game at the time. I didn’t know what to say.

I had moved to California when I heard about the American Idol thing with her. Of course I had to pay a visit in Los Angeles around the time of the show.

I think this first video, though low resolution, better captures Candie’s voice:

I was in Los Angeles on the night of her big performance. American Idol Season 2 was the hottest show on television. Over 30 milion people tuned in to see it. Of course I voted for her and told all of the eight people I knew to do so also.

I tend to agree with the judges that I don’t think she showed off her vocal range with a gritty tune by Janis Joplin. She was far from the pristine “Oh Holy Night” soprano that had first given me chills. Me and her sometimes had descants in choir where two or three of the highest soprano voices supported each other on the top notes. She could hit the high G.

It wasn’t a bad performance at all, but Candie was additionally hampered by the setup of the American Idol voting process at the time. In Season 2 eight singers performed each week for two slots at the top, which leaves a low margin of error. She also showed in a shockingly strong week, being outvoted by both Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard, who ultimately came in number one and number two on the whole season.

I waited in the lobby in LA after her performance. The final results had already been tallied. She didn’t make it. Me and her and her friend Brook (the blond seen in the background of videos) went out to Hollywood. Everybody recognized Candie that night. We went up to some friends house who lived in the Hollywood Hills and she sang a melancholy tone. It floated up to me and I remember thinking if they had heard her voice then she’d never have been voted off. It was every bit as perfect as the first time I had heard her sing.

Candie’s phone was ringing off the hook, of course. She had so many offers. “Candie thirty million people just saw you on TV tonight.” I told her when we had a moment to talk in the hotel room later that night. “I think you need to run with this right now. Strike while you’re still fresh.”

She couldn’t though. Something that wasn’t said on the American Idol tapes was that Candie was a single mother to a then three year old son. She had to go back to Toledo and take care of him.

Her friend Brook struck a different path. I didn’t know her as well as I did Candie, but she was in our high school choir too. Although I had never thought that she was as pretty or had as good of a voice as Candie did, she certainly could hold her own singing. “I’m staying in Hollywood.” Brook told us that night. Years later Candie told me she stayed in Los Angeles and had quietly carved out her name behind the scenes in the music business. Good for her.

Indeed I’ve slowly come to realize that there is no perfect voice, or perfect look. There is no hero. Instead it exists in each of us as individuals

Perhaps when one of us strikes a chord, we can get others to join in. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s the only thing that I’ve seen that really draws people together. Are you STEM folks listening? Start singing!

Of course I can’t say all of this without being brave enough to share my own voice. I think I look pretty not great here, as I have as usual not a shred of makeup on or any type of filter. Of course how would I be seen in the real world?

I’d guess exactly like this:

Perhaps it’s not about who has the best voice. It’s about who gets the most people to sing.

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