You bet your sweet pickle Wisconsin’s Genevieve Heyward is moving on to Hollywood Week.
The 26-year-old indie rock singer who calls Door County and Nashville home received a golden ticket after her audition in the Season 24 premiere of “American Idol” that aired Jan. 26 on ABC.
Heyward performed “Magic Man” by Heart for the auditions taped last fall at Belmont University in Nashville. She received a vote of approval from all three judges, Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood and Lionel Richie. They also bestowed a nickname on her: “Pickle Girl.”
She’s such a big pickle lover that it’s part of her brand as an artist, complete with T-shirts she sells as merch. She had her parents and the large, spirited group of other supporters who came with her for the audition all outfitted in the shirts and also shared them with the judges.
Before she laid into “Magic Man,” she appeared cool as, well, a cucumber talking pickles with host Ryan Seacrest and Underwood, who is also a fan of pickling. (For the record, Heyward is partial to dill over sweet.)
Her performance, accompanied by a guitarist, brought Underwood to her feet.
“I mean that’s a tall order right there,” she said of the song choice. “… But you made it your own. You weren’t trying to like emulate. You even changed the melody a little bit. You have this cool rasp at the top end of your voice. I want to hear more.”
Bryan said she’ll need to push herself even further to be competitive on the show but said she did well.
“You’ve got the tools to do pretty much anything you want do,” Richie told her. “It’s just don’t think. Just let your voice do what it’s supposed to do.”
There was jumping up and down by an elated Heyward, “Pickle Girl” chants from the judges and assorted pickle puns after she received her golden ticket to advance to Hollywood Week, which is the next round of auditions.
During a post-audition interview on the show, Heyward was asked how it feels to be “Pickle Girl,” which are the two words Underwood wrote in her notes to help remember who she is.
“It’s not who I thought I would be, but I think it’s who I was born to be, and we can’t always pick that. I’m gonna to be the best version of Pickle Girl I can be.”
Heyward, who grew up in Lake Geneva, has been performing in Door County since she was a young girl. Her family has a cottage on Washington Island, where she spent summers growing up. After her graduation from high school in 2017, the family moved to Door County. She spent seven years heavily involved in the music scene there and performing around the state. As a full-time singer-songwriter, she now splits her time between Nashville and Wisconsin.
During a recent interview with the Green Bay Press-Gazette, she talked about how touched she has been by all the support from Door County, including watch parties at some of the venues she regularly plays.
“That’s why Door County is where I call home even though I’m not necessarily from there, because there’s this strong sense of support and community,” she said. “I’ve always felt it there, always, but now it’s even stronger.”
“American Idol” airs at 7 p.m. Mondays on ABC and streams on Hulu.
