Meet 2023’s ‘American Idol’ Top 10 Contestants
Oliver Steele
Born: July 8, 1997 – Howell, Mich.
Favorite Alums: Maddie Poppe, Walker Burroughs, Phillip Phillips, Alejandro Aranda, Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daughtry
Musical Influences: Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Ed Sheeran, Allen Stone, Chris Stapleton, Daniel Caesar
First Idol Experience: Watching Kelly Clarkson when he was five years old. “It’s still vivid. Everybody in the house was talking about the show and we gathered around to watch the episodes.”
Steele’s family moved from Howell, Mich. to Mount Juliet, Tenn., when he was three, but his earliest memory of music dates back to his early years in Michigan. “I remember this side room in the house that we lived in. It was very messy and unorganized and there were instruments all over the place and songbooks that had clearly been typed with an old computer or a typewriter years ago. Just pages and pages of lyrics in a big, massive book. I can remember the dusty smell of old instruments and old wood all over the room, because my dad had many guitars.”
And why was there a room filled with instruments? “My dad was a professional musician. He played with many, many people, a lot of whom are legends. I grew up surrounded by that. He was mentored by Leon Rhodes of the Texas Troubadours, who taught him guitar. He went to high school with Charlie Daniels’ son and played with Charlie on a few occasions. He opened for B.B. King at one point and got a guitar signed by him. He worked with Percy Sledge, Bill Monroe and Gregg Allman. One time we were driving to a gig and a song by the Goo Goo Dolls came on. My pops said, ‘Oh, I opened for them once.’ And I asked him, ‘Why did you wait to tell me that story? Tell me everything.’ But he’s very humble about it all. ‘People are people’ is what he always says.”
In that environment, it’s not surprising that Steele had music in his DNA. “When I was a child, I wanted nothing more than to play the violin and so my father put me in piano. I later found out he didn’t want to listen to me practice the violin in the house, which is totally fair. He could handle me plinking on a piano, I guess. I took some piano lessons as a kid. I wish I would have stuck with it. It’s funny. My dad always tried to get me to learn guitar, but I had to find that on my own.”
Also in his youth, Steele sang to himself until an incident when he was 13. “I was walking to class with my friend who heard me sing. She got upset and asked, ‘Why did you not tell me that you could sing?’ And I replied, ‘I don’t sing.’ And she said, ‘No, but you do.’” That was the first time Steele realized he did have some vocal ability.
Before he wrote his first song, he was proficient at poetry. “I entered a contest in middle school and I was one of two students who had poems published in a book. So when I got into music it was a natural transition to write songs.”
It wasn’t necessarily a strong start, however. “I absolutely remember the first song I wrote, and it will never see the light of day,” he says. “It was so bad. Don’t ask. I won’t tell you. You’re going to write some bad songs and then every now and then you strike gold. But you’re going to write some stinkers.”
Steele wouldn’t even share the title of the tune. “That secret stays with me. I’ll tell you that it’s two words and I won’t tell you what the two words are.” Steele also participated in a couple of school musicals, but choir was where he experienced the most growth as a singer. “I remember choir so vividly because it was the highlight of my day. I had the most amazing teacher, Sandra Elliott, and she is one of the greatest teachers that has ever existed. She was so good at seeing the talent in her students and nurturing it and helping it grow and pushing us to go past our limits. She provided us with a safe haven for those of us who felt lost or felt like we didn’t have a place where we belonged. I was a very shy, modest kid, but she helped me to come into my own. I visited my high school not long after my audition aired and talked to the kids and said hello to Mrs. Elliott, to show my appreciation and my gratitude. She’s retiring soon and they’re having a party for her but I’m out in [Hollywood] and can’t make it. I’ll be there in spirit.”
Source: Billboard
