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When Jackie Evancho received the invitation to sing the National Anthem at the inauguration of Donald Trump the 16-year-old singer didn’t think twice before accepting. “When I heard that there was even a possibility of me performing, as I’ve said before, it’s an honor for me to perform for my country,” Evancho said one day last week after school let out in her Pennsylvania hometown. “I don’t think about politics, I just immediately thought, ‘Of course’”.

Evancho says she had expected some people to criticize her decision — and some did — but many of her fans backed her right to decide for herself. “And I paid most of my attention to the positive stuff,” she says. “I did feel the pressure but mentally I treated it as if it was a plain old concert or a TV show,” Evancho says of her brief time in the spotlight at the inauguration. “I had to go through more security, but I tried to treat it like a normal day.”

Keeping it normal has been her goal since she was a very young child with a very big voice. While still in the single digits she started performing, but it wasn’t until she was the ripe old age of 10 that she made it onto “America’s Got Talent”, finishing second in the televised contest to someone whose name no one remembers in comparison to hers. “I guess that since I have experienced (the public spotlight) for half of my life I really don’t remember much of anything else,” Evancho says. “It’s kind of like my regular life, except for the traveling. I just feel very privileged that I have this opportunity.”

Her résumé is filled with youngest this and that, including youngest solo artist to score a platinum album, youngest to headline a variety of prestigious venues. “I think at the time it was really neat, and it still is, but as I get older I do think it would be really great to just be known as a great artist,” Evancho says.

As for one of more unusual titles — being named “one of the best mannered people of 2011” — she admits she’s not really sure what she did to earn that. “I honest don’t know,” Evancho says. “I’m very polite, I will admit. I try my best to treat everyone super polite and kind, because that’s how I was raised.”

In addition to the inauguration song on the steps of the Capitol for a worldwide audience of millions, she’s previous sung for prestigious listeners include President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, Pope Francis, and the Japanese royal family. None of those experiences made her all that nervous, and they certainly didn’t give her anxiety like she felt the first day she showed up for classes at her local high school after several years of online schooling to accommodate her career. “That was by far worse than any performance I could have ever done,” Evancho says. “High school just kind of brings out the worst in people sometime.”

And if you’re wondering why a singer whose nerves were mastered years ago would feel that way, well, it’s because there are two Jackies, she says. “I feel like Stage Jackie, I guess I would call it, is a little bit different,” Evancho says. “In public school I’m very shy, but I do have great friends and we do enjoy the football games and stuff. “The minute I get on the road is when I transform into Stage Jackie,” she says.

Evancho made her name initially for her classical crossover repertoire, singing the kinds of songs you’d hear at a concert by Andrea Bocelli or Susan Boyle, but more recently — including on her forthcoming “Two Hearts” album — she’s been adding more traditional pop music to the mix. “These days my sets usually consist of my favorite songs from my past and my present,” she says. “I have a few songs from my album coming out in March, they’re really fun to sing. It’s pretty much classical and pop, a mixture of both.”

Now in her junior year in high school, Evancho says she mostly tries to schedule her shows for weekends — in addition to Sunday in Cerritos she’s performing Saturday in Palm Desert — though her schedule for the next few months looks particularly busy. “Just a bunch of concerts, TV shows, the album release,” she says. “I’m going to be doing some more songwriting and I would love to do some more modeling,” she says.