Fantasia Barrino picks Danny Gokey to win American Idol 8

Fantasia picks Danny Gokey to win 'American Idol' (Google AP)

Fantasia says she's been voting for Gokey, the 28-year-old from Milwaukee, whose wife Sophia died of a congenital heart defect only seven months before he made the final 13.

Fantasia says she loves singers who can "take a song that's not theirs, but make it their own." And Gokey moves her every time she hears him sing.

A winner in 2004, she votes regularly and says she gets upset if her favorite doesn't make it.

And she has some do's and don'ts for contestants. She says don't "be mouthy to Simon. We just have to learn to take the blows." The best thing a contestant can do, she says, is to be him or herself.