Two Arizona women are sharing their singing talents with the rest of the country this weekend on American Idol.
Underneath the mountains in Anthem, a 22-year-old Arizona State University graduate is one of the singers who is on the verge of making her voice heard by a bigger audience.
Long before American Idol judges got to hear her pipes, Sophia Humbert would have her parents help convince Valley coffee shops to have their then-12-year-old cover some Adele and Taylor Swift songs for customers.
She’s performed the National Anthem at nearly every Valley setting you can imagine, but her most important performance to date was before the Idol judges, where she sang her own rendition of “Before He Cheats” in front of the original singer herself, Carrie Underwood.
Whether she’s on piano or the guitar, Humbert hopes to make a living through her art and maybe one day perform at the Arizona Financial Theatre.
Uplifting Arizona
Share your stories of hope and celebration! Have an uplifting story from your Arizona community?
Drew Ryn, from the small northern Arizona town of Chino Valley, grew up watching American Idol, back in the days of Kelly Clarkson and Phoenix native Jordin Sparks.
She still has the American Idol karaoke microphone she used to sing on as a child, but she’s also trying to make it to the big stage this season.
”It’s just three people staring you down, who just happen to be one of the biggest success stories of the music industry,” Ryn said of the audition process.
Before she had two million followers on TikTok, partially because of her spot-on cover of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” she was just a teen performing in a TV singing contest when she became the subject of cyber-bullying. Since then, she turned a sour note into a sweet one, performing hundreds of shows for anti-bullying.
”I knew there would be a special moment to release it to the world, and this is it,” Ryn said about her music and the Idol opportunity.
She’ll be watching Sunday’s episode back in Chino Valley, with the people who bought her that karaoke mic – her parents.
You can watch their singing journeys on American Idol, which airs this Sunday at 7 p.m. on ABC15.
