McKenna Breinholt
McKenna Breinholt is a singer/songwriter who auditioned in Nashville to be a contestant on season 22 of “American Idol.” She rose to the final seven contestants but was eliminated during the show’s vote to select the top five.
- “You go from having all eyes on you to no eyes on you within a week.” That’s how McKenna Breinholt describes the experience of being in the spotlight of “American Idol” and then getting eliminated from the show.[1]
Two unexpected life-changing benefits surfaced from her appearance on the show. First, she met members of her birth mother’s family. “After Katy Perry asked Breinholt to invite her family into the studio for the judges’ final votes, Breinholt, who was adopted as a baby, opened the door to find several members of her birth family, whom she’d never met before, standing there — two aunts, an uncle and a grandmother.” Her birth mother, Amy Ross Lopez, died in 2013 of complications from lupus. She was a folk singer who was half of the indie duo Nowhere Man and A Whiskey Girl. Breinholt connected with her birth family over video prior to the competition and began making plans to meet in person. Her adoptive parents, Lisa and Garin Breinholt, accepted an invitation from “American Idol” to document the reunion on the show.
The second benefit was that while recovering from surgery to remove a polyp on her vocal cord, she started writing her own music and recorded two songs. One of the songs reflects her path of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction and a return to her faith in God and her membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I will never have a faith crisis again, because I’ve been the lowest that I will ever be before,” she said. “And knowing that God stuck with me through all of that — and looking at where my life is now and how all of that was necessary for me to get to where I am now — it makes my faith so strong now.”[2]
- Breinholt grew up in Gilbert, Arizona, playing piano and later picking up guitar. Her mother, Lisa Breinholt, remembered her 6-year-old daughter sounding out the tunes from “Sesame Street” and other shows on a toy piano at home. “She’s kind of had a photographic memory for sound,” Lisa told me. “If she’s heard it before, she could play it.”
- At 16, she joined an orchestral group, Cinematic Pop, which performed hit song covers with instrumental arrangements. The 2015 performance, where Breinholt sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” with the orchestra, went viral (it now has 13 million views), and Breinholt, along with the group, was invited to perform for “America’s Got Talent.” But despite the unanimous “yes” from the judges, the group withdrew from the competition, citing logistical problems. A few years later, a producer she met at the show would reach out to Breinholt and invite her to audition for “American Idol.”[3]
Prior to her participation in “American Idol,” she was working as a receptionist at a local medical spa while pursuing a career as an aesthetician.
