From Singing On the Big Stage to Practicing Medicine in Alabama

Cullman Regional Medical Group Doctor Sang at NBC’s The Sing-Off

By Ansley FrAnco

The story begins with five-year-old Dan McNeill, MD, receiving the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album as an Easter present. His love for music began there. “I just took off, memorizing songs, learning a lot more about The Beatles, and getting interested in that style. As I got older, I got more interested in current music,” McNeil said.

By grade school, he was in his school choir and taking guitar lessons during his free time. Wanting to try out something new, he picked up acting. “I’m five-foot four, and in ninth grade, I looked around and realized it was time to stop playing basketball. And in tenth grade, on a whim I tried out for the school musical,” he said. After landing that initial role, McNeill performed in four plays and four musicals throughout high school, including ‘Oklahoma’, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ and ‘Into the Woods’.

“I don’t know if there was a singular moment when I knew I loved singing,” McNeill said. “It always was a big part of my life in terms of playing guitar and being in musicals. I knew whether I pursued it as a career or not, I would always enjoy it. That’s why I continued to look for opportunities while in college.”

During his Freshman year at Mercer University, he chatted with his girlfriend, Morgan, about The Melodores, an allmale acapella group at Vanderbilt where Morgan was in school. She sent him a video of the group’s performance, and he loved their music.

McNeill transferred to Vanderbilt and joined the group. A few years later, in 2014, NBC’s The Sing-Off, was looking for acapella groups to compete in their holiday special. The show hosted auditions in a handful of towns, and luckily enough for The Melodores, The Sing-Off was searching for talent in Nashville.

The group arranged and choreographed two songs to perform for a set of judges during the audition, and a month later, they got a phone call inviting them to compete on the show in Los Angeles. Because the show was a holiday special, there were two rounds of competition.

“The first round was overwhelming,” McNeill said. “We performed in the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, which is where they do the Oscars. It was crazy to be standing on that stage and to look out at this beautiful theater, and then to have these people who have an incredible writing and vocal career standing in front of you.”

The Meledores performed Trumpets by Jason Derulo, and McNeill was glad he didn’t sing the lead. But for the second round, McNeill took a bigger role and sang the lead of Take Me to Church by Hozier.

After giving a performance he was proud of, McNeill and his fellow acapella group members shared the stage with the two other competing groups as Nick Lachey waited to announce the winner. Letting the anticipation build, Lachey announced the winners from Vanderbilt University, The Melodores. The group members jumped and hugged each other. McNeill’s girlfriend, Morgan, along with his parents and sister made the trip out to see his performance and were thrilled.

The Melodores were awarded $50,000, which they split evenly among themselves. McNeill’s portion went towards an engagement ring for Morgan. They married a year after graduating college in 2016 and found their home in Birmingham after both were accepted into medical school in town. McNeill now works at Cullman Regional Medical Group as a pediatrician.

“I always had a passion for serving families and kids,” he said. “I think that had I pursued singing, there would have been ways to use that for service. But it felt more tangible to me to be sitting in front of families every day, examining kids and talking with them about life.”

As McNeil settles into his new home in Cullman, he continues to look for a church band and always keeps his eye out for an open mic night to sing his go-to song – Blackbird by The Beatles.