Ava Nat, the Garden City 18-year-old who has consistently demonstrated vocal control and song interpretation mature beyond her years, was eliminated from the NBC singing competition “The Voice” Monday following her playoffs performance. Nevertheless, she remains eligible to be saved by a viewer vote to be revealed on Monday’s night one of the live finale.
“It was overwhelming,” she told Newsday Tuesday morning about standing on stage with Aiden Ross, Kirbi (née Savanna Kirby) and the trio DEK of Hearts, the remaining acts on coach Niall Horan’s team. The former One Direction singer chose 20-year-old Texas college student Ross to go on to the finale.
“I didn’t want to portray my face a certain way, like disappointed or jealous or whatever — I was genuinely excited for Aiden,” Nat said. “At the same time I was a little bit, obviously, disappointed because I was thinking, ‘Oh, well, this is the end of my journey.’ But then I was excited for Aidan. And it all happened so quick, but I got to give him a hug.”
Nat — née Ava Natalie Milone, a 2024 Garden City High School graduate and now a freshman at Nashville’s Belmont University — had performed Lizzy McAlpine’s “Ceilings” as her playoff song. Horan had lauded her on air as the “emotional storyteller” on his team, telling her, ‘“You can’t help but lean in and listen to every word that comes out of your mouth.”
Dressed in a white bolero jacket over a white three-tiered, floor-length gown, Nat delivered a stirring rendition of the bittersweet song in which the narrator compares her romance to like those found in movies, only for it ultimately to be revealed as a lonely person’s fantasy or reminiscence.
“Lizzy McAlpine is one of my role models musically,” Nat said, “and I love her songwriting and the way that she is vulnerable in her songs. And ‘Ceilings’ is something that [speaks to] the storytelling aspect of me. … I think that vulnerability is important as an artist. So I think that throughout the process, it’s been something I’ve consistently wanted to show — I want to be vulnerable when I perform. … I think that’s something important when you’re storytelling.”
Nat — the youngest of three daughters, one deceased, of attorneys Guy and Christina Milone — confided that when Niall announced his choice, she initially had misheard it. “This is kind of funny: I couldn’t really hear what Niall was saying at first — it was so loud there with the audience. And then he said, ‘Aiden,’ and I thought he said ‘Ava’, because of the ‘A.’ And I was like, ‘Oh!’ And then I was like, ‘Oh. No.’ But I genuinely was not taken aback that much — Aiden is incredible.”
Ultimately, she said, making it to the playoffs of “The Voice” has provided her further impetus for pursuing a music career. “I just got accepted into Belmont University’s songwriting program,” she said. “And that’s so exciting because I have a lot of stuff in my Notes app and I’ve been really eager to do that, but was obviously focused on the show.” Nat, who has chosen songwriting as her major, starts the program when she returns to school after Christmas break.
She’ll be in good company, she said: Not only is her roommate already in the program, but so is “Voice” coach Reba McEntire’s finalist, Aubrey Nicole [Dittmar]. “She’s a junior, but it’s cool that we’re both in there now!”
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