Growing up in Los Angeles, third-year College student Simone Marijic had always been involved in music through choir classes and piano lessons. Last year, she was back in her hometown taking music lessons again. But this time, from some of the world’s premier vocal coaches in preparation for her debut on “The Voice.”
Although performing in front of a national television audience is new ground, Marijic is no stranger to singing in front of a crowd. Marijic is the lead vocalist of the fraternity band Last Call, and a member of the Virginia Belles a capella group. She credits the Belles as a significant factor in helping her become more confident and pushing through the process of competing on “The Voice.”
“Because of Belles, I've had the opportunity to kind of become more confident, and they were super encouraging and helpful for me when I was going through this process with ‘The Voice’,” Marijic said.
On air since 2011, “The Voice” consists of a panel of four celebrity coaches — this season’s include John Legend, Adam Levine, Michael Bublé and Kelsea Ballerini — who each pick out a team of singers based on blind auditions from the contestants.
The blind auditions are the initial round of the show, where the coaches sit with their backs to the stage and only turn around if they choose to select the singer for their team. Those who advance past this round will successively compete amongst each other until the final round of the competition which features extravagant live performances from the five finalists.
The coaches help train these aspiring singers to win the competition, and subsequently, a recording contract. Former contestants from the show, such as Morgan Wallen and Melanie Martinez, have rocketed into mainstream stardom.
The path to landing a spot on “The Voice” came out of nowhere for Marijic. In September 2023, Marijic received an email from the show about potential casting. At the time, she speculated that her sister may have signed her up for their mailing list without telling her. She emailed them a one-minute video of her covering Sara Bareilles’ “Gravity,” to which the producers reached out again, this time asking for three full-length covers. Even up to this point, Marijic had yet to tell anyone that she was auditioning for “The Voice.”
“It was crazy that it had already gotten that far…because I never really anticipated anything to come out of it,” Marijic said.
Marijic’s full-length covers had impressed the producers enough to ask her for an interview and eventually selected her for a blind audition. For the show’s most recent season, the show’s blind audition episodes averaged over 5 million live viewers — the premiere was the most watched non-NFL telecast of the night.
Marijic had originally planned to spend her Fall 2024 semester studying abroad at the University of Oxford, but with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity arising, she decided to put her studies on hold. Right before she was set to leave for England in August, she withdrew her tuition for the semester and fully committed to appearing on “The Voice”.
“I was so excited for [Oxford], and I waited until the very last day where I had to withdraw my tuition in order to decide whether I had to fully commit to not being at school this last semester,” Marijic said. “Which was kind of a scary jump, but obviously for exciting reasons.”
During what would have been her fall semester, Marijic spent three and a half months staying in a Los Angeles hotel throughout the preparation and filming of the show. She noted that a majority of the process consisted of rehearsing with the celebrity vocal coaches, collaborating with the wardrobe team and working with producers to select the songs she would perform.
“Overall, it was pretty surreal. I had a hard time processing it while I was actually there, a lot of it was retrospectively looking back and being like, ‘holy s–t’ I can't believe that happened,” Marijic said.
Marijic was met with much support throughout the process and described her experience on the show as overwhelmingly positive. Although she came in a little nervous, having never performed in front of an audience of complete strangers — let alone the millions of viewers watching her on TV — everyone involved, from the coaches to her parents standing backstage, helped her build confidence when performing.
“You think of reality TV, and you think of these people controlling the puppets in the back, in the backstage,” Marijic said. “But honestly, I felt very valued by the producers, and I felt like they wanted me to do my best, and they wanted all of us to succeed and sound our best.”
Perhaps what Marijic cherishes most about her time on “The Voice” is the friends she made with the other contestants. These singers, having come from all across the country, range from full-time musicians to singers who had never released music. Many of the other contestants on the show are also college students, and Marijic is still in contact with friends from her time on the show to this day.
“I made some amazing, amazing friends through that, like, who live all across the country,” Marijic said.
Although she says her time on “The Voice” was a surreal experience that changed the trajectory of her life, Marijic is still more than happy to be out of the hotel and back at the University. She says that nothing can compare to performing for the University community.
“Performing here for your friends, wherever it may be, like musty basements or on the Rotunda, it's something that can't be matched by anything else, so I'm very happy to be back,” Marijic said.
As for her music career outside of “The Voice” and her groups at the University, Marijic is currently in the process of mixing and mastering a collection of her own original music soon to be released on streaming. Because she took the fall semester off for the show, she made it a goal of hers to finish the spring semester with original music that she felt proud of.
“I think [my] music is really representative of my personal style, and it kind of brings together folk, pop and indie elements,” Marijic said. “I would say Phoebe Bridgers and Sara Bareilles are my top two inspirations.”
Season 27 of “The Voice,” which Simone Marijic is featured on, premiered Feb. 3 on NBC and Peacock. Be sure to follow her on Instagram @simonemarijic for updates on which episodes she will be appearing on.
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