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Hellin Kay

Photo: Max Vadukul

This article appears in the November 2014 issue of ELLE magazine.

It's a particular edict in pop music that an artist's talent is not necessarily calibrated to his or her age. Take, for instance, 17-year-old Lorde, with her meticulously crafted alt-rock sound, or Adele, who mined her late teens and early twenties for all those heartbreak hits. Even Michael Jackson launched his solo career at the tender age of 13.

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Set to join this prestigious camp is Jacquie Lee, the New Jersey–born 17-year-old who, if you don't recognize her as The Voice's season-five runner-up, you'll soon know as a preternatural belter who blends powerhouse pop with the bluesy, lovelorn vibe of Janis Joplin. "I was so blown away by her voice," says Lyor Cohen, the former CEO of Warner Music Group and president of Island Def Jam who mentored Jay Z, broke Bruno Mars, and managed Run-D.M.C. "I don't typically sign TV-generated artists," he says, but after hearing Lee's stirring rendition of Joplin's "Cry Baby," Cohen did just that, to his new label, 300 Entertainment, setting up Lee to be the first breakout the NBC singing-competition show has ever produced. "Her bravery and interpretation of the song compelled me—her truth came out. And that's what I'm in constant pursuit of. Hers is an undying passion to sing."

this image is not available
Hellin Kay

Photo: Max Vadukul

That passion similarly captivated another music titan: Lee's The Voice mentor, Christina Aguilera. "She's a rarity. She channels something a bit deeper and wiser than her years, and that's something you can't teach someone."

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But you can hear it, on Lee's current single, "Broken Ones," and the rest of her debut five-track EP (also titled Broken Ones), a hook-heavy mix of R&B classic breakup songs ("Just like everyone else," Lee says, "I've had relationships in my life, and some have been challenging") and moody yet up-tempo jammers that she classifies as "soulful pop." Given her cross-generational influences—from Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran to the Beatles and Led Zeppelin—Lee's album boasts a supremely catchy gloss, underneath which lies an exploration of the darker, minor-chord side of traditional pop music. "I'm not really into the bubblegum stuff," Lee says, "but music is my gift, so I feel like it's natural for me to understand it on a deeper level. It becomes my outlet—how I get all my anger, all my sadness, all my happiness out. I can just write about it, or I can go onstage and perform the hell out of it." When she does, it's with, as Aguilera puts it, "a big voice from a small body" that lacks nothing in "raw bite and fire" and brilliant ingenuity. "People want to believe there's something about pop music that can be organic and real," Cohen says. "And that's Jacquie's lane. She's not fabrication. She's confident. She lights up a room. She's going to move people the way she moved me."