Florence-native singer Grace-Miller Moody, pictured at Charleston’s Riviera Theater, where she has performed, has gone on to perform at this summer’s Carolina Country Music Fest after competing on NBC’s “The Voice.”
Photo by Milton Morris
Grace-Miller Moody
Age: 21.
Hometown: Florence.
Claim to fame: Moody starred in season 27 of the hit NBC talent show “The Voice,” making it to the Knockouts round of the competition.
Field of study: Moody is a psychology major at the College of Charleston.
Road ahead: After performing at the Carolina Country Music Fest this summer, Moody is working on releasing the songs she’s written. “I do see myself in a few years, hopefully, on a bigger stage with a bigger crowd,” she says.
When Grace-Miller Moody was a young kid belting out her favorite song—“Jesus, Take the Wheel” by Carrie Underwood—she never imagined she’d one day sing in front of millions of people.
“I really just sang around the house, and I didn’t really think anything of it,” she says. “But my dad kept telling me, ‘Hey, this is your God-given gift. You need to do something with it.’”
It was her dad who sent her the open call for NBC’s hit show “The Voice,” in which aspiring singers compete to win the favor of famous recording artists, who then coach the singers through the subsequent knockout rounds.
“I was like, OK, this can’t hurt,” Moody says. “And I submitted a video. I immediately got a call back, and I thought it was a scam.”
But it was very real, if not surreal, when Moody found herself walking onstage in Hollywood, launching into Maroon 5’s “Sunday Morning,” and seeing Michael Bublé’s chair turn. Then John Legend’s chair turn. Then Kelsea Ballerini’s chair turn, and then—after a dramatic pause—Adam Levine’s chair turn.
Not only had Moody achieved the coveted “four-chair turn,” but she had also convinced Levine, the Maroon 5 bandleader, to turn his chair for his own song—a rarity on the show. She chose him as her coach. It was an easy decision for Moody, and a meaningful one.
Her brother had been diagnosed with leukemia when he was younger, and when he finally went into remission, the family flew out to Las Vegas and attended a Maroon 5 concert.
“It was just so powerful between me and my family,” she says. “I feel like when I’m singing (‘Sunday Morning’), I’m thinking about my family, thinking how they’re all I need in darkness, they’re all I see.”
On “The Voice,” Moody went on to win the Battles round with her cover of “Use Somebody” by rock band Kings of Leon. And although she was eliminated in the Knockouts round, the entire experience, she says, was a dream come true for the little girl who used to sing around the house in Florence.
“It was just so exciting to really see how everyone works whenever it comes to creating music and putting their minds to something that we all love,” she says.