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Shannon O’Hara’s Fiery Debut A New Take on Indie Pop

January 22, 2020
Growing up in North Carolina, Shannon from a young age expressed a deep interest in creating and playing music. Raised on listening to her parent’s classic rock of the 70’s, at the age of five she began writing songs and habitually playing her Casio keyboard. One of her early influences was Pink and as a child she loved singing along to Disney soundtracks. Her interest only grew as she enrolled in music classes in elementary school, then begin taking piano lessons in middle school. After a year of piano, she realized that she preferred playing by ear and discontinued lessons but, went on to teach herself guitar with the help of online videos. Shannon began performing in worship bands at age fourteen in several local churches continuing to develop her own personal sound. During her childhood she was an avid fan of American Idol. She waited patiently until she was 16 years old the minimum age to audition. When the time finally came, she auditioned in Asheville, NC. After qualifying, she proceeded through to a second audition in New Orleans, LA and finally to Savannah, GA. It was during this last round of auditions she was able to perform in front of the celebrity judges, Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and Luke Bryan. Shannon sang Adele’s hit song, “When We Were Young”, to the judges accompanying herself on piano.  The judges were unanimous in their decision. And just like that her sights were set on Hollywood.

Shannon’s vocal talent took her to new heights when she premiered on TV on the sixtieth season of American Idol in 2018 and proceeded to the semi-finals, placing in the top twenty-four. One major highlight of her American Idol TV appearance was a solo performance singing Katy Perry’s song “Unconditionally”. Katy Perry herself cried during Shannon’s stripped-down and raw version of the song. The video of this performance received over 1.3 million views. Another notable performance was her duet with Grammy nominated country music singer and songwriter Cam. Being impressed with Shannon’s vocal performance on TV, Cam invited her to sing as an opener during a stop her tour, honored, she humbly accepted.

The judges characterized her voice as being “soulful” and praised her for the way in which she allowed them to experience expressive and raw emotion through her singing. Katy

Perry even dubbed Shannon a “secret spiritual ninja”. Country singer Luke Bryan remarked Shannon was a “little songbird”.

After her tenure on Idol, she released her first professional original single “Motionless” as a YouTube video. The song is a raw piano centric ballad, which was left unedited because Shannon and her producer felt that it truly resonated with the heart of the song. This song resonates so much to her because it is a part of her experience finding and strengthening her faith. After this, she released a second video which is a cover of the Tamela Mann song “Take me to the King”. Shannon chose this song to cover because of her deep admiration for Tamela’s impact on the gospel genre.

For her next venture, 19-year-old Shannon enlisted the help of several accomplished North Carolina musicians including a cellist, violinist, bassist, and drummer, for her new single titled “The Fire”. Along with the help of her producer Jacob Early, Shannon worked on the single tirelessly over a six-month period. “The Fire” is a new combination of classical influences with pop music and electronic elements. The uniqueness of the song came from its many transformations during production. The song started as folk but ended up becoming something different entirely.  Showing off Shannon’s beautiful warm vocals, the love song which adequately describes being in love but not truly wishing to fully admit it.

Shannon is also exceedingly passionate about helping others. For the past three years she has worked as a worship leader for a Church with outreach programs dedicated to helping the homeless community. Several summers have been spent by her in Nicaragua doing mission work as well. Presently Shannon is enrolled in ministry school away from her home state. She will be writing music while studying and hopes to release her next single in late 2020.

Though she was featured in recently released Lifoti's January/February 2020 issue 11, you can check it from below link's for your country:

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