WATCH: York Native DaNica Shirey Slays a Joni Mitchell Cover On The Voice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYVRVrZtrbo

The Voice live playoffs continued last night with Team Pharrell and Team Gwen; giving us a chance to see York, Pennsylvania native DaNica Shirey perform. DaNica has been one of the technical standouts all season long. She seems to be able to perform lyrical acrobatics better than any other contestant. Her issue has been developing her confidence and her emotional delivery.

Pharrell assigned a song for DaNica, which didn’t seem to happen last year, but if Pharrell says jump these contestants better say “how high”? He certainly raised the stakes for DaNica with “Help Me” by Joni Mitchell, yet again letting our local contestants show a depth via very tasteful song choice. It’s an extremely complicated and challenging song with loads of chord changes and colors. How would she handle the pressure of such a difficult song and also her new found fan base?

Straight out of the gate, DaNica brings a new level of confidence. Dressed in a fiery red-patterned dress and accompanied by two band members, she nails the first line and you’re hooked. She continues to navigate the jazzy verses of the song with such ease, its like she has been singing this song every day for her entire life. She moves effortlessly with the rhythm and shows a great deal of command adding in little runs and accents in just the right places. Then comes the chorus, where she hit all kinds of high notes to show off her power.

After the performance, Gwen gave the proper attention to the fact that this was an amazing song. Joni Mitchell is a musician’s musician and again our local favorites seem to be shining in the taste department. She certainly met the challenge and made it wildly entertaining. With Pharrell’s help they really made something interesting and different. And in this competition, different is good.

So now America can vote by logging on to NBC.com. You can vote up to 10 times for one artist. You can also go on to iTunes and buy DaNica’s version of “Help Me” and that counts as a vote. The artist at the top of the iTunes charts at noon today gets their iTunes votes multiplied by 10.