Anyone who appeared on that crapfest The One SUCKS.

Jackie Mendez has always been surrounded by music. Born and raised in Miami with its vibrant and diverse musical landscape, Jackie is of Cuban and Lebanese decent, and her mother is a classically trained pianist, her father a trumpet player.

The first step for Jackie’s musical career came at the young age of 17, when she was offered a recording contract by Eleckra records, a division of the Warner Music Group. Jackie moved to Los Angeles, where she worked for a year and a half on recording an album which, unfortunately, was never released. But looking back on the experience, Jackie admits that maybe that was for the best. "I was still very young,” she recalls, “and it was a contract for five years.” Now at 24, she wonders if she really knew for certain back then what type of music she wanted to record or image she wanted to project.

After Los Angeles, Jackie returned home to Miami where she continued working on her songwriting skills and gathering performance experience.

In 2006 she heard about the auditions for a new musical reality show called the The One: Making a Music Star, which was slated to be the US version of Endemol's Star Academy and Operacion Triunfo, in which ten contestants would be filmed as they practiced for live performances and tried not to be the contestant who was voted off that week, all while competing for the grand prize: a recording contract.

According to Jackie, her first audition for The One took place in her car: "They called me because I had sent in my photo and information, and they asked me to sing over the phone," she recalls, laughing. "I was being heard over the speakers on the other side of the line." But Jackie wowed them, and eventually made it through numerous rounds of the auditions and into the top ten.

Once again, Jackie flew out to Los Angeles where the series was being taped. Her performances included covers of the Bee Gee’s hit “Emotions” and Donna Summer’s "Hot Stuff" and "Last Dance,” but unfortunately the series was cancelled by ABC Networks before a winner was chosen.

Jackie wouldn’t let this get her down, though. She moved to New York and began working there, but ironically enough, it would turn out that she needed to leave her hometown of Miami in order to get a gig back there--and a really big one! While home in Miami to spend the holidays with her family, Jackie got a call the call from David Cabrera, Ricky Martin's musical director: Did she want to audition for a position as vocalist with the Ricky Martin band? Yes!

The rest, as they say, is history. Two weeks later Jackie found herself immersed in intensive rehearsals for the North American leg of Martin’s The Black & White world tour, which kicked off with a dazzling series of four sold-out concerts at the Jose Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico in February 2007.

Here she is performing on The One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNc4j6gmnfs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtTNzIYPh5k

she sang with Ricky Martin!