Jordin Sparks entered the Main Stage at RootsTech 2023 enthusiastic and utterly confident. Her smile beamed as she walked across the stage, greeting her audience. Almost half a life earlier, Jordin Sparks staked her claim to fame when, at 17, she became the youngest contestant to win the American Idol singing competition, a distinction she still holds. Such an achievement could easily trigger a tidal wave of emotional and social demands that would challenge any adult, let alone a teenager. Her comments about how she survived the early days of superstardom, learned to heal from disappointments, and later thrive as a wife and mother are inspiring.
As became obvious in her address to a RootsTech audience, family is important to Jordin. She had many great things to say about how her family keeps her centered in her true identity, reminding her who she really is, and that blessings are everywhere if we only learn where and how to look for them.
Jordin's Family Story
Jordin Sparks is from Glendale, Arizona, as she mentioned in her keynote, but she gives New Jersey half the credit for being her home growing up, including during a time when her father, NFL cornerback Phillippi Sparks, played for the New York Giants.
Growing up, music was very present in her family. She points to her mother and two uncles who played piano, one of whom was in a band, and her great grandpa who played the organ. But, she quietly admits, nobody in her family sings like she does. Many of her fans might say further that nobody in the world sings like she does!
Her family was always encouraging when it came to music and her singing.
Especially her "nana", Jordin insisted.“She would sit and play piano, and I learned some of my first songs ever with her playing the piano."
Her mom and dad were always encouraging, her dad always singing around the house, but never seriously. "So I don’t know," she ponders. "Maybe he does have a voice like mine!"
In general, her family would play and just have a lot of fun with music all the time. And anytime her grandparents had company over, they would try coaxing a performance out of young Jordin.
"Hey, here’s Jordin and she likes to sing," they'd say. Jordin says she was quite shy about singing to an audience. “Before I got over my stage fright, I’d have to be either on the balcony, like the second level upstairs or behind a door [to sing]," she explained. "Nobody could see me. I just had to be up there." Going from singing behind a door to family friends, to winning American Idol is a huge leap!
Raised Listening to a Broad Spectrum of Music
Fans of Jordin Sparks may be very interested in knowing what type of music she listens to. At RootsTech, she was very specific about the music she was exposed to growing up. From her mother, Jordin picked up ‘80s hair bands like Journey, and Heart, and Pat Benatar. Her mother listened to all of them. Jordin's grandparents' generationally appropriate tastes exposed her to the music of Johnny Mathis, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald and, of particular influence, Nat King Cole.
"Nat King Cole is my favorite artist of all time," Jordin said. "His voice is like butter, isn’t it?"
Jordin listened to a lot of R&B with her dad, like Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey.
"Whitney Houston was definitely the one I looked up to," Sparks let us know with a lot of emphasis. "Her voice was so beautiful, and it just kind of cut through everything! And I loved how she smiled and brought joy to people."
Living a Dream
When Jordin Sparks won American Idol at such an early age, she never thought she would remain the youngest to do so for such a long time. She admits when it happened it felt almost like a fluke or a dream: “Like, okay, this is really cool!,” she described feeling. But as time goes on, she's convinced some immensely talented and younger singer will win.
As for the pressures, the shock of the dream becoming reality and of handling life as an overnight star, Jordin says she’s still processing it.
“It was definitely new,” she said. “My dad, since he played in the NFL, was kind of in the spotlight growing up." Since she was on the sidelines, Jordin was able to see how he interacted with fans, how he did his interviews, how he carried himself. "And that really helped me as far as my own transition into the spotlight," she says.
Competing at such a young age was, in some ways, a benefit. Thinking about all the self-conscious worries of the other contestants never occurred to her. As far as she was concerned, she was living out the dream she had always wanted: singing those songs, meeting Randy, Paula and Simon, the 3 American Idol judges, and even getting to see Ryan, the show's host.
Most Recognized Face on the Planet at the Time
“I think the first couple of years I was prone to panic attacks and really bad anxiety just because it was a lot,” she confides. “You know, I went from being a high school kid to all the sudden being the most recognizable face on the planet at the time.”
That beautiful and recognizable face became familiar all over the world because of what goes with it: her voice.
Although not covered during Jordin's RootsTech keynote, here's a bit of background on her accomplishments after first becoming famous:
- Since Jordin Sparks "graduated" from American Idol with the highest honors imaginable, her hit singles have sold more than 10 million digital tracks, one of which, “No Air,” ranks #27 in Billboard’s Top 40 Biggest Duets of All Time.
- Sparks' major high-profile performances include singing at the Super Bowl XLII, NASCAR’s Daytona 500, and the Indy 500.
- Oh, and she's an amazing songwriter! As co-writer of Ariana Grande’s smash single, “The Way,” she received a BMI songwriting award.
- Before headlining her own tours, Jordin toured with superstars like Britney Spears, Alicia Keys, Jonas Brothers, New Kids on the Block, and Backstreet Boys.
- And of course, in 2023, she came to visit RootsTech, the largest genealogy conference in the world, to tell her story and delight the audience with inspiring performance.
My Family, They’re the Thing That Brings Me Back to Center
While speaking of the day she won American Idol, Jordin was asked what helped her find solace while dealing with the fame. She referenced a picture taken with her grandfather on the day she won and said, "I would say my family. They definitely have helped keep my feet on the ground, kept my head screwed on straight." Jordin's career since the moment that photograph was taken has shown that statement to be true. Right after learning she had won on American Idol, while trying to describe how she felt, she mentioned all her family members in the audience: "Mom, Dad, I love you! Nana, Papa, PJ!" Her family was there to support her, as they always have been.
"They’re the most amazing people," Jordin described in her keynote, "and they’ve always believed in me. I think that’s really helped propel me, because everything can be so crazy. In the industry, there’s lots of peaks and valleys, [and] you kind of never know when the next gig is going to come, so you’re always in limbo. [You can] feel out of control sometimes. But I feel like, with my family, they’re the thing that brings me back to center."
Taking Things One Step at a Time—Falling in Love and Starting a New Family
When asked about the songs she picked for her debut album, Jordin expressed a particular love for the song, "One Step at a Time." "I felt like it was written for me," she says and told about how it came into her life when a lot of amazing things were happening, but she didn't know how anything might turn out. "That song encouraged me when I heard it, and I knew if I was able to sing it, I would be able to encourage other people, no matter what they were going through.... That’s all I want to do is to be able to sing songs and touch people."
"My grandpa used to say, well, how do you eat an elephant?... And he would say ‘One bite at a time.’ And so it has travelled with me. This song has taken on a life of its own, and every time I sing it it’s like a different push of encouragement."
After American Idol and doing all the amazing things that went along with it, Jordin's life changed in significant ways. She met and married Dana Isaiah, whom she describes as an amazing man, and soon also had a son, DJ. When asked how all this changed her perspective, Jordin got a bit emotional.
Jordin has been quoted before as describing her love for her family as a “never-ending, deep, deep love that you don’t even realize is emanating from you.” Starting her own family shifted everything for her. At the time before she and her husband met, she was going through a period of coming back to herself, learning to trust herself again, she explains. It was a time of learning to forgive herself for choices she had made, learning to see the world through a different lens, to shed the jaded attitude one develops from being let down so many times.
"It was very, very unexpected," she says about meeting her husband and falling in love. "God just put him at my front door. He literally came to my house, and we locked eyes and that was it! I knew the second day that I was going to marry that man!”
Even so, she said she kept that feeling to herself and kept her distance emotionally.
“I was in the middle of my healing journey. I was in the middle of really just trying to work on myself.”
Because of her state of mind at the time they initially met, she thought it best to remain at arm’s length.
“He didn’t really know anything about me!" she said, which she described as refreshing."It was nice to be able to talk to somebody and build a rapport and friendship with somebody who really saw me for who I was, and saw me for the things I liked and how quirky I was.... It was nice to have somebody not want anything from me, you know what I mean?” Now they are heading into their sixth year of marriage.
From Family Life to the Broadway Stage
Building on her music career, Sparks has also tapped into acting skills she developed as a youth, which have led to her starring on Broadway and in motion pictures. Highlights include a role in In the Heights, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as her lead role in the SONY Pictures film, Sparkle, with Whitney Houston.
“I have always loved musical theater," Jordin said. "I did community theater when I was growing up in Phoenix...Then I did drama club at my school. And that was most of the acting that I had done. And then once I got on Idol, they asked me what types of things I liked. So, people knew that I liked Broadway. And then one day I was going through the emails...and there was an offer to do In the Heights.... I played Nina Rosario, and it was so fun!”
Then in 2019, Jordin got the opportunity to act in another Broadway musical, Waitress, where she played a role she identified with very closely, so appropriate for that particular time in her life. “It was amazing to be connected, so connected to a character, because she has a baby and she’s going through all these changes.... DJ was only 15 months when we moved to New York to do this.”
One of the songs in the musical that Jordin performs is called "She Used to Be Mine," a song that contemplates who someone is versus who they thought they would become. Although not included in the recorded keynote, Jordin performed this song for the live audience at RootsTech.
She’s Messy, But She’s Kind
One of the lines in that song particularly resonates with Jordin. "I feel like being kind is so rare nowadays," she says. "I know I definitely can work on [that] more. And that everybody, collectively, if we could be a little kinder, the scales might tip in our favor! Kindness is what I want to leave as my legacy." Jordin also expressed that she hopes music will live on as her other legacy. "I want people to be able to listen to my songs years from now and say, wow that was a great song!"
Other RootsTech 2023 Keynotes
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