American Idol Season 1 Flashback
As the current season of American Idol gears up once more, I am taking a moment to look at what brought us to this point, starting with a look at a few of the contestants from Season 1 of the biggest show on television for the last 5 years. With music and videos from Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, Tamyra Gray, and Jim Verraros.
As we approach the competition starting up on the most recent season of American Idol, it allows me to do something the other similar shows can't do. That is to look back over the last decade of the show, and visit with the performers I really thought were due another look and listen. Hard to believe it has been a decade, but this summer, it will be 10 years since Fox aired the show that caught the imagination of the viewers.
Once he was no longer under contract with 19 Entertainment and off the tour, he came out in The Advocate magazine. While music was his focus, he also made inroads in the movie industry while living in California. The roles included a leading role in Eating Out and Eating Out: Sloppy Seconds. Jim also married his longtime boyfriend, Bill Brennan. You can find out more about Verraros on his official website here. You can find his latest release on iTunes and Amazon.
From the beginning, many thought that beautiful Tamyra Gray would take this competition. For many, it was gonna be a battle of the big-voiced divas, between Tamyra and the little girl from Texas, Kelly Clarkson. That train of thought was derailed by the first surprise elimination of the series, when Tamyra was sent home in fourth place. Soon after, Tamyra was signed and started writing material for her debut. Her first single was Raindrops Will Fall, a song that listed by Gray and Sam Watters, the lead singer for Color Me Badd and Tamyra's future husband, among the co-writers. She returned during season to to perform it live.
Gray went on to do some acting after her stint on Idol, mostly on series television. But she also scored roles on Broadway, in Bombay Dreams in 2004, and later as a replacement Mimi in Rent in 2007 and 2008. She also wrote the winning single for Season 3 winner Fantasia, I Believe. You can find out more about Tamyra on Twitter here.
One should have realized the screaming heard every time floppy-haired cutie Justin Guarini hit the stage meant something, at least to the voters. It seems the soft-voiced singer crooned his way into the hearts of many, and found himself alongside Clarkson in the final two. The first person to be the runner-up, he went on to co-star with Clarkson in the awful movie From Justin To Kelly, something he never seemed to recover from. He moved on from Pop to Jazz, and his latest release, What You Won't Do For Love, hit the stores in 2010.
If that was the end of the line for Kelly, that would have been good. But Clarkson never settled for just good. Her second album, Breakaway, set the world afire, with over 12 million albums sold. She continues to sell both albums and singles, like her latest hit, Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You).
For several years, Kelly was the poster child for what Idol could do for a young star. What was ignored was that Kelly had spent the year before her Idol experience shopping a demo around Los Angeles. She was offered recording deals from both J Records and Interscope, but turned both down with the fear of being pigeonholed as a Pop Queen. She remains with RCA Records, turning out Pop hits to this day. You can find her on her official website here and on Twitter here. And you can find her latest album, Stronger on iTunes and Amazon.