Jessica Sanchez was born and raised in Chula Vista, California by her Mexican American father and Filipino mother. She first came to the attention of many when at the age of 10, she got a standing ovation for performing Aretha Franklin's "Respect" on Showtown at the Apollo.

The following year Sanchez reached the wild card round of the America's Got Talent semi-finals. The show's executive producer judge Simon Cowell named her performance of Celine Dion's "I Surrender," "one of the best I have ever heard."

The big-voiced teenager auditioned in San Diego for the eleventh season of American Idol with a performance of Buddy Holly's "It Doesn't Matter Anymore." Sanchez advanced to the final but lost out to Phillip Phillips.

Sanchez debuted this on the American Idol final performance show as her potential coronation song. The judges expressed a lack of enthusiasm for the tune, as they were hoping for something more "urban" and even Sanchez herself acknowledged it was not the most suitable choice. However, it was still released as her debut single on May 23, 2012.

In retrospect Jessica Sanchez had little statistical chance of defeating Phillip Phillips in the American Idol finale. In all of the previous 10 seasons of the competition, the winner was the one whose first name came second alphabetically.

From the moment Jessica first heard the tune, she knew it wasn't the right fit for her. "It was confusing," she told MTV News, "because it was the winning song, and you try to pick a song that you'd want to put out as a single but also that would sound good when you won the competition. I felt like I had to sing a vocally strong song but also one that was kind of mainstream, and that was in the middle, kind of. And even listening to it, I was telling them, 'Some things have to be changed in this, because this is not completely me.' And when we did that, nothing was really that changed, and that's why it came out like a pop single. I totally agree with Randy [ Jackson]: That song was not me at all. I want to do pop, but, like, just a sprinkle of it, not a whole bucket."