Neal Evans Boyd (November 18, 1975 – June 10, 2018) was an American pop opera singer. He was best known as being the winner of the third season of America's Got Talent.
Boyd grew up in Sikeston, Missouri, his father of African American descent, and a European mother. Boyd and his brother were raised solely by their mother, and, subsequently, endured poverty conditions. He discovered operatic music in junior high school when his older brother was doing a school project involving classical music and brought home a CD of the Three Tenors. Boyd was so enthralled by the passion and skill of the famous trio that he started learning to sing in Luciano Pavarotti's and Plácido Domingo's operatic styles. Boyd graduated from Sikeston High School in May 1994, where he was senior class president.
He earned a bachelor's degree in speech communications from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri (May 2001), a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Missouri School of Music in Columbia, Missouri (May 2001) and a master's degree in management from the online University of Phoenix. Boyd was president of the Student Senate at Southeast Missouri State University, where he was also a member of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. While in college, Boyd interned at the capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri.