Del Mar singer and 'The Voice' finalist Kendra Checketts is obsessed with Grammy-award winner Billie Eillish

Local singer/songwriter Kendra Checketts sang the national anthem at a Petco Park Padres game against the Red Sox this past season.

By Diane BellColumnist

Jan. 30, 2020

7 PM

Grammy foresight? When local singer Kendra Checketts was one of the final 24 candidates on NBC’s “The Voice” last spring, she was invited to choose a song to perform. She begged to sing “Bad Guy” — a departure from her usual repertoire. Teen pop sensation Billie Eilish had just released the tune a month earlier.

“If I could do ‘Bad Guy’ ... that would be insane,” Checketts texted “Voice” producers. “It’s a new song and I think I could do a super cool rendition of it.”

Little did Checketts know the song would go on to win Eilish one of four Grammys Sunday night. Checketts got permission to perform the tune on the show, and it was included on an album of the top 24 Season 16 “Voice” performances.

So when listeners stream “Bad Guy” on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services, they can listen to Billy Eilish’s or Checketts’ rendition. “I knew it was going to be popular,” Checketts said of “Bad Guy,” “but I never expected it to blow up this much.... This song is huge.”

Meanwhile, the Del Mar singer has cut back on live performances to concentrate on releasing her own album, “Twelve Hundred,” due in mid-April.

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Diane Bell

Columnist Diane Bell has been chronicling life in and around the city of San Diego for The San Diego Union-Tribune since 1995. In bite-sized news items, she tells about the people, places, history and highlights of this dynamic region, capturing the off-beat, the upbeat and the heartbeat of San Diego. In prior years, Diane was opinion pages editor and an editorial writer, and served as president of the National Association of Opinion Page Editors. She received her masters in journalism from the University of Missouri, followed by stints as an editor and a reporter covering various news beats, including education, features, general news and consumer issues. She won the national Penney-Missouri award for consumer reporting. Before becoming opinion pages editor at the U-T, Diane was senior deputy editor of U.S. News & World Report in Washington, D.C.

Del Mar singer and ‘The Voice’ finalist Kendra Checketts is obsessed with Grammy-award winner Billie Eillish