Meet Rose Short, The Former Prison Worker Whose Performance Made Gwen Stefani Cry On 'The Voice'
The was a corrections officer who dreamed of a music career.
Instagram Rose Short has been turning in blockbuster performances this whole season of The Voice. She is the last remaining member of Team Gwen this time around and her coach had to give her an instant save to make sure she got to the semi-finals.
No one can question the save, however, since she knocked it out of the park with her rendition of "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman" on the most recent episode of the singing contest.
Rose has always wanted to be a singer but life got in the way for many years. She wasn't able to support herself financially with music so she had to go looking for a job to pay the bills. She made a surprising career choice either years ago when she became a corrections officer. She eventually was able to leave that job and pursue her dream of being a professional singer.
Who is Rose Short? Read on for all the details about the Team Gwen singer.
1. Who is Rose Short? She's been singing since she was young.
According to her official bio, Rose started singing when she was only five years old. She was living in Germany at the time, thanks to her military father being stationed there.
She sang in community events on base and when the family was relocated to Texas, she continued singing and got involved in theatre. She had hoped to make a career out of music but like a lot of aspiring musicians, she needed to take a day job to cover her bills.
2. Short was a corrections officer.
Rose made an unusual choice when she went looking for a day job. She became a corrections officer. She worked in a men's maximum-security facility for eight years but that job was never where her passion was and she finally decided to walk away from it and pursue music full-time.
When she told her family her plans, they were supportive. "They said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you to do this the whole time, we’ve been waiting for you to do it,’ and I am like I have this amazing support system I got to give it my all,” Short told a local news station.
Rose is in the final four of The Voice.
3. She slayed a John Legend song at her audition.
Rose stepped on to the audition stage and took a gutsy risk: she sang a song by one of the judges. She launched into "Preach" by John Legend and within moments, Kelly Clarkson was on her feet ready to turn around. All the while, Kelly was telling John to stay put and not get involved even though he wrote the song.
Gwen flipped her chair, too, and the two women both offered to coach Rose. She picked Gwen, saying she had been rocking with Gwen for years, even though Gwen didn't know it.
4. Rose Short almost didn't audition at all.
Rose's best friend and manager Taundra Shaw said that she had to push her pal to do the audition. She resisted going to the one in Austin.
"She didn't want to do it. She tried to fight me and said, 'No,'" Shaw said. She finally talked her into doing the audition in Miami and, well, we all saw what happened there
"This is her comeback season," said Chris Leiato, who has known Rose for twenty years. "There was a point where she had given up on herself and her talent and felt like she didn't want to do it anymore."
Gwen has been coaching her.
5. She made Gwen Stefani cry.
All of Rose's performances have been amazing — just check out her rendition of "God's Country" by Blake Shelton. But her recent performance of "I Wanna Know What Love Is" by Foreigner made coach Gwen Stefani beg for the cameras to leave her alone to cry. After the performance, Gwen covered her face and cried. "I'm not ready! Oh my god, I'm crying!" as Kelly Clarkson said, "That was moving!"
The reason the song was so moving is that Short was putting a lot of emotion behind it. “As soon as I got back, I lost a really good friend,” she explained to reporters after the show. She went on to explain how her emotions made her feel more connected to the music.
6. Could Rose Short win The Voice?
Rose is headed into the two-part finale of the show on December 16th and 17th. She'll be singing against Rocky Duran from Team Blake, Jake Hoot from Team Kelly, and Katie Kadan from Team Legend. All the contestants are amazing singers and the finale will be an exciting musical event for everyone involved.
The Voice airs on NBC.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.