'American Idol' Season 5 Alum Mandisa Dead at 47: She ‘Struggled’

American Idol alum Mandisa died on Thursday, April 18, at the age of 47, which was confirmed by local California radio station K-Love.

“Mandisa loved Jesus, and she used her unusually extensive platform to talk about Him at every turn,” David Pierce, the Chief Media Officer for K-Love, said on Friday, April 19. “Her kindness was epic, her smile electric, her voice massive, but it was no match for the size of her heart.”

He continued, “Mandisa struggled, and she was vulnerable enough to share that with us, which helped us talk about our own struggles. Mandisa’s struggles are over. She is with the God she sang about now. While we are saddened, Mandisa is home. We’re praying for Mandisa’s family and friends and ask you to join us.”

A cause of death has yet to be publicly revealed.

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Mandisa had previously been candid about her personal struggles, revealing during a 2017 interview with Good Morning America that her friends once staged an intervention for her to help.

“I came out of the movie theater, this was after years of me being in that dark place and ignoring everybody, and I noticed that my car had a bunch of sticky notes all over it,” the singer recalled at the time. “As I got closer to it I realized that those notes said things like, ‘We love you. Come back to us. We miss you.’ And then as I got closer to my car, a group of my friends, who I had shut out, they were there.”

Mandisa added, “And they had been waiting at that movie theater as I sat there and watched two movies, not just one, they waited there for over four hours for me. And they pretty much had an intervention and they said, ‘We love you just as you are but we love you too much to leave you that way.’”

Mandisa rose to fame as a contestant on season 5 of American Idol, which aired in 2006. Mandisa, who notably stood her ground with kindness when judges gave her tough criticism, finished in the Top 10.

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One year after her elimination from the singing competition, she dropped her debut album, True Beauty, in 2007. Mandisa has also collaborated with the likes of TobyMac, Matthew West, Michael W. Smith, Kirk Franklin, Jordan Feliz and Jon Reddick.

Since True Beauty, Mandisa released five more full-length albums and a holiday-themed EP. She won four Grammys for her various contemporary gospel albums.