Julienne Irwin says she came closer than she ever thought she would.
Julienne, the Bel Air 14-year-old blessed with a heavenly voice, made it to the final four on “America?s Got Talent” before she found out Tuesday night she had been eliminated.
“I?m not upset at all about this,” she told host Jerry Springer after her elimination, based on viewer voting. “It?s just been so much fun.”
“When you put out an album, I?ll buy it,” Springer told her.
Julienne learned on the final episode of the wildly popular show that she had lost out to ventriloquist Terry Fator in the competition for a $1 million prize.
Bel Air ? and much of the rest of the country ? savored her singing once more when she joined country singer Taylor Swift in a duet of “Teardrops on my Guitar.”
Back home, the locals loved it and said they had no doubt Julienne would go far.
“Everybody?s disappointed, but at the same time, what she did can?t be taken away from her,” said Richard Lynch, owner of Buontempo Brothers Pizza in Bel Air, where a sign supporting Julienne has hung in the window for weeks. “No one can take away her being such a good kid.”
“Being my last performance, it?s great to end it with such a big bang,” Julienne said in a prerecorded interview.
Swift complimented Julienne for her “adorable personality” and humility.
After wishing on earlier episodes that she would someday get a chance to sing the National Anthem at an Orioles game, Julienne will do just that at Camden Yards Sept. 9 when the Orioles play the Red Sox, she said.
“I?m super-excited, especially since it?s such a big game,” she told The Examiner this week. “This journey has already far exceeded my expectations.”
