HunterGirl Reflects on ‘American Idol’ Return Performance With Noah Thompson: ‘It Was Just So Special’ (Exclusive)

American Idol Season 20 runner-up HunterGirl captured the hearts and ears of fans around the world during her time on the show a little more than a year ago. Then, just a few months back — during Season 21 — she made an epic return with her friend and fellow contestant, Noah Thompson. Together, the pair performed a duet of Thompson’s song, “One Day Tonight,” which HunterGirl told PopCulture.com “was just so special.”

“It was so much fun, getting to go back, see all the judges, see the producers. I spent a year of my life out there and it was like coming home,” HunterGirl said during a recent exclusive interview with PopCulture.com. “So I’m just hugging everybody, and then get to be back on that Idol stage. It was so cool, just full circle, a year later coming back on and it was just so special. I was just really glad that I got to come back. I love all the people on Idol and everything. I was just really happy to be there, honestly.” She then joked, “They let me back in.”

HunterGirl continued, “I actually got to talk to the contestants a little bit after our performance. I got to see them and stuff. I was just talking about the things that I went through on the show and they were talking about the things they were dealing with. It was really, really cool just to give some perspective, give some advice if anybody needed it. I’m sitting there thinking, I’m like, ‘I feel like I’m right back in it again, just getting to talk to these guys and their stories.’ I was really, really proud of all them and watching them grow throughout last season. I was just really excited for all them and they were pumped. They were like, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to have a good time.’”

In the time since competing on American Idol, HunterGirl has been touring quite a bit and recording new music. On Friday, she debuted her brand new song, “Ain’t About You,” which she wrote prior to joining the show. “It was actually a couple of weeks before I auditioned for American Idol,” she shared. “But this has been my dream since I was a kid. This has been my whole life and I’ve been in Nashville, I guess, about seven and a half years, but I’ve been playing shows since I was 14.”

She went on to explain, “A couple years back, nothing was really going on for me in Nashville. A lot of my friends were getting record deals or publishing deals, and it was just one of those days. I was like, ‘Lord, what am I doing wrong?’ Just wondering if I’m on the right path and overthinking everything in five minutes. You know what I mean? Those days where just everything hits you.”

HunterGirl recalled, “I’d played a show that day and I written a song with somebody else, and I got back home, and I was worn out. I was like, ‘Lord, why do I feel like I need to write another song?’ So I went in my room and I call this song my 45-minute conversation with Jesus. This is a song that kept me in Nashville and it was so scary.” She then joked, “I didn’t play the song for anybody until probably about six months ago at my label and stuff because I was like, ‘Nobody shall hear this.’ I wrote it by myself. If this is terrible, it’s 100% because of me and there’s nothing I can hide behind.”

However, performing the track live made a huge difference, she says. “Just getting to sing the song out of the shows and watching how it’s done on social media the past couple of weeks,” HunterGirl told us. “But just that perspective of everything we do and taking a look outside of ourselves and thinking about all the people that we could touch by what we do every day. It just kept me going a couple of years ago and little did I know, about a week and a half later, my life would completely change forever.”