Higher Note Blog

Man­disa grew up in a “typ­i­cal Amer­i­can fam­i­ly” — divorced par­ents and an extend­ing fam­i­ly — but what she has accom­plished is not typ­i­cal. Par­lay­ing her appear­ance on “Amer­i­can Idol” as a final­ist in Sea­son 5, Man­disa has blos­somed into a con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian music artist, who gar­nered a Gram­my Award nom­i­na­tion Wednes­day night for Best Con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Music Album for “What If We Were Real.”

Man­disa and Matthew West, whose “Strong Enough” earned a Gram­my nod for Best Con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Music Song, will be per­form­ing at Mis­sion Hills Church in Lit­tle­ton on Sat­ur­day, Dec. 3.

Man­disa sur­vived Simon Cow­ell’s stab­bing com­ments about her weight and now five years after wow­ing TV audi­ences, Man­disa is address­ing her demons of child­hood abuse and liv­ing life to the fullest.

High­er Note: How did you get involved with “Amer­i­can Idol?”

Man­disa: I was a back­ground singer in Nashville. I was doing stu­dio work. Nashville is such a great music city, you can cut any type of music, coun­try, Chris­t­ian, hip-hop. I was doing a lot of choral work, and back­ing up Chris­t­ian artists and doing wor­ship ser­vices. I was mak­ing a liv­ing full-time in the music busi­ness.

It was the last year that I was eli­gi­ble for “Amer­i­can Idol,” and I won a radio con­test in Geor­gia. If you won, they sent you to the Chica­go audi­tions, and you got to skip wait­ing in line — so I missed all that dra­ma. They flew me out to Chica­go and set me up in a nice hotel.

I was con­tent singing back­ground, and with every­thing that was hap­pen­ing in my life. But any singer that watch­es “Amer­i­can Idol” thinks what if . And I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life think­ing what could have hap­pened.

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