Amari Scott Keys, waitress at Wings and Rings, advances to Hollywood on American Idol

NASHVILLE — Amari Scott Keys has been singing seriously since she was 11 years old.

Homeless at the time, Keys spent two years looking for music studios in her home state of Connecticut and began writing songs for other people at 13 as a means to make money for her family.

Keys quit music three or four years ago, until recently when she auditioned for American Idol, a show that she had started watching from the very first season.

During her audition, she impressed celebrity judges Lionel Richie and Katy Perry with her rendition of "She Used To Be Mine" to earn her golden ticket to Hollywood.

Why did she decide to audition?

Keys, 29 and currently a waitress at Wings and Rings in Richmond, said she auditioned for the show after her and her mother had a breakdown in their relationship over Keys' transition to becoming a transgender woman.

"I think the genuine breaking point for me to audition and do this stuff probably had a lot to do with my mother and I no longer speaking," Keys said. "But also I think at the time I just wasn't happy. I was overwhelmed. I was stressed. And like I said, music became this coping mechanism for me."

Keys' mother was diagnosed with Moya Moya disease, a rare and progressive brain disorder that's caused by blocked arteries at the base of the brain. Keys' mother was just 28 years old at the time and Keys was eight.

"What ended up happening was the spread of disease causes strokes when she gets stressed out," she said. "She couldn't watch the news, and she couldn't do a lot of things. But with that, she also had specific ways that she wanted me to be, states of being that she preferred for me."

With Keys being aware that her mom knew she was an honest person, Keys said that she felt she didn't have to keep her identity hidden, but she couldn't act on it, adding that the two had agreed that she would live in a way that was best for her mom.

That lasted until about a year ago, when Keys decided to "go through with everything" that would make her happy, which ultimately severed their relationship.

"My whole reason for singing and whatnot was to take care of my mom," Keys said. "For a while leading up to transitioning, I was not going to do music anymore. I wasn't really happy. Something about it wasn't clicking to me.

"Once that relationship was genuinely severed," she said, "I was given the opportunity to audition. I had somebody send me a link, and I was like, 'Why not do what I want to do and live like I want to live, and then I wound up on the show."

'Not a huge vocalist'

Keys has never considered herself "a huge vocalist," instead preferring to be considered a storyteller or poet that enjoys singing.

Growing up, Keys was involved in a number of extracurricular activities.

For a while, she sang in the church choir, but eventually quit after she said her mother's comments on "her existence" made her feel uncomfortable being there.

Beginning in eighth grade, Keys tried out musical theater performance, but didn't really do anything else until transferring to another high school in Waterbury, Connecticut, her senior year.

"The music teacher was like, 'You're a very talented individual, and you're not trained.' And then he started to feed me some of the bits and pieces of music education, understanding theory and whatnot, and then I kind of developed more of a passion to understanding music, and that's when I went to school," she said..

Keys attended Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut, where she studied vocal performance before switching to musical theater.

On the day of the audition

Prior to performing in front celebrity judges Richie, Perry and Luke Combs, Keys had to audition for American Idol producers and advance past that round.

"You hear back from them, and you audition for the people that are really going to be like, 'You know, I can see this person,'" she said. "And then you go on and do your whole audition in front of the judges, which is crazy. Being on TV in and of itself is a whole process, so it was very interesting."

Keys wasn't scared or nervous to be performing in front of three of the music industry's biggest names. She was just tired after having waited to audition for about 15 hours.

"I was one of the last people on my date in my city, and I was falling asleep before I walked in," she said. "I was trying really hard not to because once you fall asleep, it takes about two hours for your voice to warm back up. And I was like, 'I cannot fall asleep. I have to stay awake, or I'm not going to be able to sing.'"

When she eventually auditioned in front of the judges, Keys said the experience was "extremely validating," adding that regardless of what they were going to tell her about her singing, the fact that she made it as far as she did gave her the push she needed.

As far as her song choice, "She Used To be Mine" actually was not the song that Keys auditioned with. She initially sang "Toxic" by Brittany Spears with jazz and bluesy undertones as a way of putting her own spin on the song.

Perry said she thought there was more however, suggesting a song that "encapsulates" Keys finding herself and everything that she had been through, leading to the Sara Bareilles song.

"'She Used To Be Mine' was a song that I sang often, especially when I was really down or lost in my relationships," Keys said. "I had been singing that song for several years, and I thought that song probably describes me and what I'm feeling the most."

After singing it, she received a standing ovation from Perry, compliments and constructive criticism from Combs and a comment from Richie calling it "an imperfect perfect rendition," earning the two votes she needed to get her golden ticket.

"I don't think that I believed it, I was so tired and so out of it," Keys said. "From that point onward, I think I was just kind of going through the motions trying to understand what was happening. I honestly don't think that I believed that I was even on the show until my audition aired two weeks ago."

Keys saw her audition live when Wings and Rings turned on the televisions to the show, saying that she screamed in front of the entire restaurant as the moment really set in that it was real.

Sharing her 'genuine story'

While Keys understands that her story told on the show this season is one of the saddest ones, the "genuine story" that she didn't share with them is "really depressing."

When Keys was 8 and her mother had her first major stroke, Keys helped her with everything.

From teaching her how to read, write and talk again to bathing her and cooking and cleaning for her, Keys was one of her main caregivers.

When her mother had recovered enough, the family moved to Alabama for between six months to a year where they lived with a pastor.

"The pastor was an amazing guy," she said. "He had an amazing family, and it was probably one of the coolest places I've ever lived. They were always doing these Bible games, and I enjoyed that. We used to sing gospel together and handle worship stuff, and it was wonderful."

Shortly thereafter, Keys' life took a turn for the worse when her mom began a relationship with a man she had met, a man that Keys defined as a pedophile.

Keys said that over the course of six months, she was sexually assaulted every single day and there "was not a day that it didn't happen." Before they moved back to Connecticut, her mom asked her if she had seduced him.

"He used to tell me that like all these crazy things about how he believed he was God reincarnated. It was crazy, like literally insane," she said. "He would kill me and my mom if I told anyone and that my mom was going to have a stroke and die anyway because at that time, my mom was given five years to live.

"I lived my life saying I'm going to take care of my mom and love on my mom," she said, "and then when she goes I'm going to go. That was my mindset as a child.

"She has five years to live. I have five years to live and that's going to be it, like I'm done."

When they moved back to Connecticut, Keys turned 10. She was sexually assaulted by four different people while homeless for the two years, she said, and her relationship with her mom got worse.

"My mom's brain disease messes with her personality," she said. "So she started getting verbally abusive, and she just wasn't a good mom to me during those years at all.

"She would forget to feed me and feed her boyfriend whoever that was at the time," Keys said. "She was really mean and tell me how I was going to hell or that I was this horrible kid and she would brag to other people about me about how much I do for her and then to me, she would call me "ungrateful bitch" and stuff. It was just rough."

Keys' mom then "disappeared to go try out a relationship with someone else at the time," which led to Keys staying with her cousin for the remainder of the two years, before being moved into a house with another man who she said was "a good guy" and never did anything to her.

Her support system now

While she has eight siblings and is on good terms with her father and his side of the family, Keys said that, for the most part, her boyfriend has been her only support system.

"My dad is not super involved in a lot of things and is a very specific type of man, but he's still being very emotionally sheltered, and my sibling all have their own things going on," she said. "I know my family supports me, but as far as the whole Idol thing, we have so much going on. I think my boyfriend has been very supportive and he's probably the most consistently supportive person I have in my life right now."

Keys has lived in Richmond with her boyfriend since January 2023 after the two met on a dating app while living in Auburn, where her father lives.

After splitting time living with her father in Auburn and her mother in Connecticut, Keys eventually decided to stay in Indiana.

On representing the transgender community on American Idol

While she isn't sure how true it is, Keys said that despite several LGBTQ+ participants on the show, she was told that she is one of the first openly transgender women to appear.

"There's amazing people on the show," she said. "Everybody was really nice specifically in production, and it wasn't a huge struggle.

I feel like a lot of straight men are not as open to finding transwomen, so a lot of straight men I wasn't close to, and I didn't make a lot of friends in general, but I was friends with the girls for my audition. That was pretty fun," she said.

Keys said her ultimate goal of being on the show is to experience financial stability for the first time in her life, while also being able to help others who can relate to her story through singing and being understood.

"I would love to be able to just live my life being authentic and helping people just by being myself," she said.

Evan Weaver is a news and sports reporter at The Palladium-Item. Contact him on X (@evan_weaver7) or email at eweaver@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: American Idol Amari Keys earns golden ticket to Hollywood