A versatile singer and actress, Katharine McPhee parlayed her early success as the runner-up on American Idol's fifth season into a long-running career. During the 2000s and 2010s, she not only balanced roles on TV series such as Smash and Scorpion with her music, but also demonstrated her range as a singer. Along with frequent collaborations with Idol contributors including Randy Jackson, Andrea Bocelli, and David Foster, McPhee's smooth style felt equally at home on pop albums like her self-titled 2007 debut and 2015's Hysteria, and on more traditional fare such as 2017's I Fall in Love Too Easily. She followed a third-place finish on TV's The Masked Singer (in a duo with Foster) with the 2022 EP Christmas Songs.