ROSWELL, Ga. — In the latest season of American Idol, three metro area singers have punched their golden tickets to Hollywood.
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One of the first is a high school student who performed an original song dedicated to his teacher’s son who was murdered in metro Atlanta.
Slater Nalley’s emotional song “Traces of You” started as a poem that Lovett teacher Michele Davis wrote about her son, Carter, who was murdered in 2016. Roswell police say it was a random attack.
Channel 2′s Karyn Greer spoke to Davis about how the song is helping memories of her son live on.
“Our world absolutely shattered. That’s that’s for sure. Carter was our sunshine just, you know, huge personality. Silly. You know, he lived his life all in and we’re so thankful for that,” Davis said.
Davis traveled to Nashville with Nalley to introduce him to the judges and tell them why his original song meant so much to her. She was at a writing retreat reading the Greek mythology story of Icarus and Daedalus and the parallels to losing her son.
“I hadn’t been able to write about Carter just in general since I had lost him. Something about that story, of course, just struck a chord with me hearing that first-person telling. It just broke through and I was able to write the poem Traces of You and that’s the poem that Slater took and made his own,” Davis said.
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Nalley says he is so grateful and thankful for Davis and she says the same about him.
“ I wouldn’t be here without her, so being able to share that special bond with a teacher. More than just a teacher being able to share that special bond with a teacher that is now like one of my best friends forever and their family too, you know, just it’s really special,” Nalley explained.
“I just could not have imagined where it would go. I’m just so incredibly blessed and humbled. For all of my family, it’s just it’s a gift of a lifetime. Carter gets to live out a little bit in (a) song,” Davis said.
Nalley makes another appearance on “American Idol” at 8 p.m. Sunday on Channel 2.
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