Angie Miller, American Idol Finalist, Talks Religion And Spirituality As Part Of Her American Idol Experience

In an interview with TVLine's 'Idology,' posted on May 27, Angie Miller spoke about religion, spirituality and staying true to herself during her American Idol experience.

Although Miller doesn't specifically intend on becoming a Christian music, she incorporates messages of spirituality and God into many of the songs that she writes or choses to perform. "I'm not going to go down the Christian genre, I'm not going to be in the Christian world. So I still want to feel my songs have some sort of, not being like oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, but just like, you know, the songs are going to come from my heart and that's my heart. So, lyrics and meaning behind things are totally going to like have the spiritual meaning to things," she told 'Idology.'

Through her American Idol journey, Miller discovered the importance of staying true to herself as an artist. She said that one of the most important things to her as an artist is to be able to believe and feel the things that she is singing about. "The one week that I did 'Shop Around,' and completely screwed everything up. I think that goes to show, that meaning was not a meaning that I would want on my album or anything," she told 'Idology.' "It's not me at all, the message of it isn't me," she added.

Miller took a few risks during the season, featuring songs that explored heavily religious themes including Colton Dixon's 'Never Gone,' Kari Jobe's 'Love Came Down,' and her newly successful, original single, 'You Set Me Free.'

Performing Dixon's, 'Never Gone,' during Top 20 week proved to be a very smart move for Miller, however, because Dixon, another recent American Idol star, remains popular with the American Idol audience and fresh in everyone's mind. His song deals with religious sentiments and was made popular through his American Idol career. "I actually covered it on Youtube, before I did the show, and he saw it and commented on my YouTube channel," Miller said during her interview with 'Idology.' "He wrote on it, he was like, 'you're good, we should work together in the future,' and who would have known?"

Then, for her Top 6 performance, Miller decided to perform Jobe's, 'Love Came Down,' a popular Christian song, in the category of 'song you wish you'd written.' "It's so important to me, song you wish you'd written, a song that you wish like those lyrics came from you and that sound came from you," Miller said in the interview. "That was hard for me to choose, but when I thought of that song I was just like yes. Like the meaning, the sound, like everything was just really me."

"I don't want to be like just a good singer, just a good performer, or whatever. I want to be like an artist, someone who really appreciates the music and appreciates the lyrics and just everything all together," Miller added, in reference to her unique song choices on Idol.

Miller performed her original single, 'You Set Me Free,' as her final Hollywood solo. As risky as it was to perform her own song, she found that it was a huge success, becoming extremely popular on YouTube, with over 3 million views, the day after her performance. "I had written that like two months beforehand or something and I had only sang it once, like once in front of people, that's it. I didn't know yet if it was like really a good song or not," Miller said during the interview. "And that night, the night before I did it, we had to meet with vocal coaches and sing our song to them or whatever, and I look at him and I was just like, 'Tell me if this song is terrible, cause I don't know. Just say if I should do it or not.'"

The success of her original song was really a turning point for Miller. "That's when the American Idol journey for me really came to life and I was like, 'wow I actually have a chance at this now,'" she said. Since the single was released on May 17, it has continued to gain popularity and wide-spread success.