At just 10 years old, Jackie Evancho became a worldwide sensation with her breathtaking performance on America's Got Talent . From there, she went on to become a multi-platinum-selling recording artist, working alongside everyone from Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand to Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli. The 24-year-old has truly found her voice, writing on her own for the first time six original songs on a new EP called Solla , co-produced by Smash Mouth's Greg Camp. Jackie says Solla is a reflection on self-discovery and a new musical journey. She stopped by the LifeMinute Studios recently to tell us all about it and perform the hit single off the EP, 'Behind My Eyes.' This is a LifeMinute with Jackie Evancho.
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00:00Hi, I'm Jackie Ivanko, and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:04If you could see behind my eyes, you'd see the truth inside the lies.
00:12At just 10 years old, Jackie Ivanko became a worldwide sensation
00:16with her breathtaking performance on America's Got Talent.
00:20From there, she went on to become a multi-platinum-selling recording artist,
00:24working alongside everyone from Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand
00:28to Joss Groban and Andrea Bocelli.
00:31The 24-year-old has truly found her voice writing on her own for the first time
00:35six original songs on a new EP called Sola,
00:39co-produced by Smash Mouth's Greg Camp.
00:42Jackie says Sola is a reflection of self-discovery and a new musical journey.
00:48She stopped by the Life Minute studios recently to tell us all about it
00:51and perform the hit single off the EP Behind My Eyes.
00:55This is a Life Minute with Jackie Ivanko.
01:03So I finally, for the first time in my entire career,
01:06am singing my own music that I wrote myself,
01:10and I've kind of been saving up all of these songs and ideas
01:14throughout my entire career, and this is kind of the first time I get to put it out there
01:18and the first time I had the confidence to really do that.
01:21Sola is basically little stories about my life, experiences I've had.
01:26Unfortunately, right now, they're a lot more on the sad side,
01:30just because that's the thing that I kept buried for so long,
01:33but there's a lot more where that came from.
01:36Yes, it is definitely a different sound than people have ever heard me do,
01:40at least since The Masked Singer,
01:42and that's actually where I was introduced to this pop side of my voice,
01:46and once I discovered that, I kind of ran with it,
01:49and so I was writing more and more music in the style of pop,
01:52but I'm most familiar or known for my classical stuff,
01:56and so to do all the pop stuff is really new and a challenge, but I love it.
02:01When I was on The Masked Singer, it was so exciting because
02:04no one knew who was behind this giant cat mask.
02:07When they were talking to me about the style I wanted to sing and everything,
02:11pop was the obvious choice, and it was really fun because I was anonymous.
02:16I was anonymous, nobody knew who I was,
02:18and so I was really free to just let go of all the rigid stuff
02:22that I'd learned throughout the years or adapted to or adopted throughout the years.
02:27Yeah, that's the show that really gave my voice the freedom to explore pop.
02:32Songwriting for this EP was kind of interesting
02:35because it was a mixture of stuff that I'd already had,
02:38like the oldest song on that EP, in terms of being written,
02:42I wrote when I was 15, and that's Consequences.
02:44There was no structure to the songwriting really,
02:47especially because this was my first legit experience with songwriting.
02:51I've learned whatever works for you, works for you.
02:54There's songs that I wrote in a hotel, there's songs that I wrote at home.
02:57Some songs took a few days, some songs took an hour,
03:01and it's just whatever feels right for that song, so it was cool.
03:05I think what inspires me most are the things people don't talk about
03:10or the things I'm afraid to talk about,
03:13and that's typically what just kind of pours out of me,
03:16especially over a quick span of time.
03:18Things that are heavy emotionally are what's really inspiring me at the moment.
03:34Consequences is a song that I wrote whenever I was 15
03:39and dealing with the pains and aches of becoming a teenager,
03:44as I think all of us relate to,
03:46and Smoking Gun was my first breakup song.
03:49I wrote that about, I think, a two-year relationship I'd had
03:52that ended very badly, and it's just weird for me
03:55because I've always watched all of these artists that I love do interviews,
03:59and they're saying things like these about their songs.
04:02Never thought I was going to be one of them.
04:04Back to the songs.
04:05Behind My Eyes, that's the title track to the whole EP.
04:16That was really fun because it was more of an upbeat 80s song-ish,
04:21and I wrote that just by myself in a hotel room when I was going stir-crazy,
04:26and so I kind of tried to capture that in a song
04:29because it's a familiar feeling for me.
04:31I felt that my entire career.
04:33That's a long time because I started at 10,
04:35but honestly all the tracks are deeply personal to me,
04:39and there's elements of things that are sort of taboo to talk about,
04:43mental illness, bad life experiences.
04:47This is my introduction to talking about my truth, basically,
04:50and it's a lot easier to do that through music.
04:52I listened to so many different styles of music.
04:55I was listening to Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett,
04:58but then on the other end of the spectrum,
05:00I was listening to Marilyn Manson,
05:02and then in the middle there's The Killers,
05:04and it was all over the place,
05:06but I would say my main inspirations these days are The Killers,
05:10the St. Motel, Amy Winehouse.
05:13All those little things just kind of live in me in my songs.
05:22When did I discover I could sing?
05:23I don't know if I ever really did discover that I could sing.
05:27It's hard to describe.
05:29My parents discovered me first when I was 8,
05:32and they were like,
05:33hey, my daughter kind of sounds good,
05:35but let's see if everyone else thinks so too,
05:37and then whenever I got on to AGT,
05:41I still kind of was just doing what I liked to do.
05:45You know, I never thought I was good or bad,
05:47but I saw everyone's reactions,
05:49and then I just kept doing it throughout the years.
05:51I would say that maybe within the last two years
05:53is when I kind of got the sense of,
05:55I know what I'm doing, and I'm supposed to be doing this.
05:58I think from there on, or there before,
06:00it was just going with the flow and learning thing.
06:03To be honest, when I was first on AGT,
06:06I think the gravity of it did not hit.
06:09I knew that it was a big deal,
06:12but I didn't feel that it was a big deal.
06:14I guess I'm somebody that functions off of feeling things
06:17rather than being told they are what they are.
06:19I didn't really realize that it was that big a deal
06:22until after when I went home,
06:24and my whole life changed.
06:26Nothing was the same since.
06:28Some of the challenges I personally experienced
06:31being a child star is,
06:33there's a lot of things that go on
06:35that are not exactly comfortable.
06:37I did deal with a good amount of pedophiles following me,
06:40put in uncomfortable situations,
06:43you know, and then there's the element of
06:45being stuck in the spotlight,
06:47and you're not even fully grown.
06:50It's just a strange thing for me to elaborate on,
06:53because as I grew up,
06:54I sort of started to care about how I looked,
06:57and I was comparing,
06:58and there's an element of comparing myself
07:01to adult female celebrities,
07:03and I'm a child still.
07:06And so there was this pressure on me
07:08that I put on myself to try to attain that,
07:11especially through growing up.
07:13And that morphs into disordered eating,
07:16and it's still there.
07:18It's not going anywhere at the moment,
07:20but I'm working on it.
07:21There was just a lot of dysfunctional things learned
07:24because of that.
07:25I mean, I had a fear of older men,
07:27including my own grandparents,
07:28because of the experiences with the older men
07:31who followed me everywhere.
07:33And there were things that happened
07:34even before America's Got Talent with older men
07:36when I was trying to sort of follow my dreams.
07:39There's a lot of things that would take forever to go off on.
07:42No, a lot of things are coming to light,
07:44and I was just going to say,
07:45I'm glad that we're all talking about it,
07:47because it's really important to get it to stop
07:49if you talk about it first.
07:51I can say from the perspective of a child star,
07:55it's so scary,
07:56especially with cancel culture and everything.
07:59People are so opinionated, especially online,
08:03the keyboard warrior thing.
08:05You know, our jobs are our lives,
08:07and it's so scary that one person
08:10who decides to start this internet revolution
08:13against somebody else,
08:14they don't feel the gravity of that being their lives.
08:18So yeah, we're all terrified to talk about it, I think.
08:21But we're all getting braver
08:24in terms of disordered eating.
08:26My advice, it's tricky for me
08:28because I'm still very much dealing with it.
08:32I guess what I can say is that
08:34when all of this started for me,
08:36there was a moment where I kind of caught it
08:38and prevented it from happening,
08:40at least at that point in time.
08:42And how I did that was,
08:44I was walking around my school,
08:45I was in public school at the time,
08:46I was so sick of being insecure about myself
08:50because I know I can't change who I am.
08:52So I told myself,
08:53anytime I feel that sort of anxious pang
08:56about am I good enough and do I look okay,
08:59I told myself in my head,
09:01you're beautiful, you're beautiful,
09:03and I would repeat it in my head.
09:05It actually worked for the rest of that year.
09:08But in my line of work,
09:09we're in the spotlight so much
09:11that it's so hard to keep implementing sometimes.
09:15But that's the thing.
09:16Don't give up on it.
09:17You have to keep going.
09:19There was a lot of beautiful, beautiful moments
09:21that I got to experience being a child star too.
09:24And some of the most favorite ones for me
09:27are the ones that are behind the scenes.
09:29But yeah, it's amazing that I got to sing
09:32with Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand,
09:34and those are staples, of course.
09:36But there are things like
09:37staying at the Malibu Beach Inn for weeks
09:40while I was recording my first album with David Foster.
09:43Little magical pieces like all the hermit crabs
09:46that lived in the rocks there
09:48and how much I got to sit on the beach.
09:50It's little things like that
09:51that really stand out to me.
09:53I was always a perfectionist.
09:55Don't get me wrong.
09:56But when I was working with David Foster,
09:59one of his main things that he would tell me
10:02was, yeah, that was good.
10:04That was really good.
10:05But we want it to be great.
10:07That is something that echoes in my head
10:09and sticks with me even to this day.
10:12And I'm really grateful for it
10:14because, yeah, you can pull off something
10:16and it's passable.
10:17But what makes somebody individual and great
10:20is when they try to perfect it to their own standards
10:24and then they're happy with it.
10:26So I'm really glad he taught me that.
10:28What I do when I'm not working
10:30is I'm such a busy body.
10:32So I'm still on my feet, flitting around everywhere.
10:35Everyone makes fun of me for it.
10:36But I'll be gardening, sewing, songwriting,
10:40painting, drawing,
10:41or just really trying to get out of my house,
10:43whether it's to go walk around
10:45or go to the grocery store.
10:47I de-stress by songwriting, actually.
10:51Things that keep my mind occupied
10:53for hours at a time,
10:54that's how I de-stress.
10:56I do have some pre-show rituals,
10:58but surprisingly enough,
10:59it's not so much singing warm-ups.
11:01It's more body stretches
11:03that I learned through the years.
11:05I thought it was so crazy
11:06when I first found out
11:07how physical, all over, singing is.
11:10It's not just here.
11:11And tension here can affect everything.
11:15It's mainly stretching.
11:17I do a lot of jogging.
11:18That's super important for breathing.
11:20I mean, Taylor Swift does it, too.
11:22She's constantly jogging,
11:23from what I've heard.
11:24That's mainly it.
11:25Oh, and then core stuff.
11:28What's next for me is
11:29a lot more songwriting, acting.
11:32I'm getting into acting more
11:33because it's been years
11:34since I was in anything.
11:36I kind of want to try my hand
11:37at producing my own music videos
11:40or short films
11:41and starring in them
11:42and stuff like that.
11:43That would be really cool.
11:45But mainly songwriting.
11:53To hear more of this interview,
11:54visit our podcast,
11:55Life Minute TV,
11:56on iTunes
11:57and all streaming podcast platforms.