American Idol

by Richard Rushfield

  Chapter 15

  THE BUBBLE

  It’s an awe-inspiring sight. Hours before dawn, a line of thousands gathers, stretching out into darkness. Some are singing. Some play guitar. The entire mass throbbing with excitement.

  On TV, it seems as though the line files straight in to the judges’ table. In fact, it’s more complicated than that, a multifaceted system taking place over the course of days or months. The legions that line up will be winnowed down to a few hundred in each city who will ultimately be seen by the judges. In the end, six months later, of the thousands who stand shivering in the cold stadium parking lots, no more than two or three will stand on Idol’s big stage.

  Many contestants spend years preparing for their auditions before making it through. Season 6’s Gina Glocksen, season 7’s Carly Smithson, and season 9’s Lacey Brown, among others, each auditioned in more than one season before reaching the big stage. Others, including season 6 champion Jordin Sparks, have followed the audition tour to multiple cities until they finally got through. Singers are free to audition as many times as they can bear, until they make the semifinals, after which they’re not allowed another shot at Idol no matter what their fate.

  For every one of those hard-striving dreamers, there’s the story of one who just stumbled in on a lark or who, like champions Ruben Studdard, David Cook, and Kris Allen, just came to keep their brothers company.

  The stadium events, just one part of the audition process, are themselves seven-day affairs. On the first day, contestants must stand in line just to register, fill out paperwork, and get the wristbands that allow them to audition. The following day sees the predawn lineup and the carnival atmosphere of excited dreamers huddling together in the darkness, awaiting their chance at their destiny. There isn’t actually any reason for them to line up so early. The numbers on the wristbands determine the order in which they will try out, not the order they get in line. But that doesn’t deter the thousands of enthusiastic contestants.

  Ace Young remembers getting to Denver’s Invesco Field for the season 5 auditions. “It was three in the morning and everybody was singing. Singing their brains out. I was thinking, Man if you’re singing at three in the morning, you’re not going to have a voice by the time we get to actually sing. And a lot of the people actually lost their voice by the time we got in. That first day they cut fourteen thousand people down to four hundred. We sang on a football field, there were about ten tables with a lot of British people sitting behind those tables and we walked up and sang in groups of four, some people got a ticket, most people didn’t. When you got a ticket, you just went through and gave them all your information and left.

  “Three weeks later and we had to come back to the city that we initially auditioned in. It was hard for a lot of people because they were traveling from all over the place. So it was financially hard for everybody because we hadn’t made it at that point. So I came back three weeks later and then again two weeks after that until I got to sing for the actual judges themselves.”

  Auditioning in a distant city can be an expensive and exhausting proposition, sometimes requiring multiple trips back for follow-up rounds. After having spent years living in Los Angeles and knocking on doors in show business, Brooke White was on the brink of calling it quits between her and music, when her friends and advisors persuaded her to give the dream one last final chance. “I decided to check Idol out, and I found out that there was one audition left, in Philadelphia. I spoke to my husband and my manager and we all decided it was worth a shot. We scraped money together and I got a plane ticket, and I waited twenty-one hours for my first audition, and I made it.

  “I was in a turnaround city [the rare stop on the tour where all the rounds from stadium to judges are packed into consecutive days], so everything happened the same week. I didn’t have callbacks. I was there five days in a row. The waiting was insane. There were so many people there, and you’re hearing people sing, people who are amazing, and they’re leaving. Fifteen hours go by. People start leaving because of the wait, and I got up there and said to myself, ‘I don’t even care if I make it. I’m so tired, and I just want to go home.’ ”

  After the day at the stadiums, the remaining contestants return to sing for the producers. If they make it past that round, they sing once more for the judges. These rounds can be months apart or, as in some cases, occur on consecutive days. It’s at this point when the stark divide between the talented and “alternately talented” is most acute. Matt Giraud remembers sitting with one of these hopefuls. “I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he was an astrophysicist. He wore a suit and was singing really low. The thing is, all the crazy ones think they’re going way further than we do. I didn’t know how far I was going but he sure as hell was going all the way.”

  Of finally stepping before the judges, he remembers, “Singing for the judges was weird. It was like stepping into the TV. You can hear their voices, you can hear Simon and Randy, and it just kind of felt like the TV was on in the background. It was just really weird knowing you were going up for your epic, big audition. It could be nothing, it could never be shown, or it could be everything.”

  Once contestants are given their golden ticket, the veil of secrecy descends, beginning with their first stern lecture from the Idol staff. Season 8’s Jackie Tohn recalls, “After you get through the judges, they [the production staff] sit you down and say, ‘This is the deal, Hollywood Week is coming. You can’t tell anybody where you’re going. You can’t tell anybody where you’re staying. You can’t tell anybody when it is. No information except to a very close loved one and you have to make sure they don’t say anything.’

  “And then they tell you these horror stories. ‘Three years ago we had to change hotels when someone revealed where we were. And the person whose fault it was got cut. We’re not saying it’s why they got cut, we’re not saying it’s not why.’ They pretty much put the fear of God into you from the word go.”

  This need for secrecy creates no shortage of complications for the young contestants. As Ace Young recalls, “By November I knew I was in the show. I had a job selling copiers but I didn’t know how to tell them that I needed the time off because I couldn’t publicize that I was on the show. So it was a very interesting time, because you have this life-changing opportunity that’s coming your way but you can’t even tell your parents you’ve made it because if it makes it to press then they kick you off.”

  Then there are the awkward situations of other sorts, such as the incident that happened to Carly Smithson en route to season 7’s Hollywood Week. “Because there was a shot of me in the ads for the new season, I’d been warned to come in disguise, to put on a baseball hat and cardigan. Well, my flight stopped in Vegas, where I became very hot, so without thinking I took the cap and sweater off but tried to keep my head down because I was terrified someone would recognize me. When I got on the plane, I was walking through first class, looked down at a man, and saw John Mayer. At that moment, he looked at me and his eyes lit up, and he yelled out to the whole plane, ‘Hey, that’s the girl who’s going to be on—’ when I shushed him, cut him off, and raced back to my seat. I was petrified that I was going to be disqualified. At the baggage claim, he sent his people over to ask if it was really me. When I got to the theater, though, and confessed it all to the producers, they laughed and said it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.”

  “Even in the early days they called it the week of hell,” recalls RJ Helton of Hollywood Week. To the two hundred or so people who emerge with a ticket to Hollywood, it can seem as though they have won the lottery. The iconic Idol image will always remain that of the hopefuls racing out of the audition room, golden ticket in hand, leaping into the arms of a cheering family. The euphoria is so overwhelming they can be forgiven for believing that they are but a mere technicality away from their dream.

  But in fact, having beaten such odds, they face an equally stiff challenge in the days ahead. Each year, somewhere in the
neighborhood of two hundred singers enter Hollywood Week. Before it’s over, that number is shaved down somewhere between thirty and fifty. (It varies season to season.) At this point, contestants are not competing with the deluded masses, but with the best of the best—mostly.

  Hollywood Week is also the part of Idol that most resembles a reality show like Survivor or Road Rules. There’s a very specific set of challenges to overcome in a very specific order. Ace Young tells of his week, “I remember sitting down, and the very first song we started singing, the judges started cutting people. Literally, they just got there, and people are getting up on stage and saying, ‘Hi, my name is so and so.’ ‘Sing. All right, you can go home.’ It was almost like we were just the cattle and we had no control over anything. So much so, that when you missed something they’d send you home right there, on the spot, on the stage. I saw a lot of talented people get up and not do very well. And I saw the opposite. I saw people who didn’t have as much talent get up onstage and do amazing, because this was everything to them and they couldn’t let anything get in the way. It was a really interesting time. And I remember, nobody wanted to talk to anybody because we didn’t know if we were going to be there, you had no idea who was still going to be there. Nobody wanted to befriend anybody.”

  “When you’re cut, it’s like, gimme your papers and your number,” recalls season 8’s Alexis Grace. “Go up to your room. Pack your bags, and then they slip your itinerary under your door for your flight the next day.”

  Pleasing the judges often feels like luck of the draw. Season 8’s Jackie Tohn recalls how another member of her group persuaded her to sing “Mercy” by Duffy. “I said, ‘I know eight of these songs out of ten choices we were given. We’re not doing “Mercy,” which I don’t know.’ He said, ‘We have to, it’s a sick arrangement.’ In the end, everybody in the group gets cut but me. Simon goes, ‘So, Jackie, I guess you used your feminine charms to convince these boys to sing a song that’s perfect for you.’ ”

  Perhaps the most intense moments come during the group numbers when the singers are thrust together to plan those quickie song and dance routines. Megan Joy recalls the tension that can take over the groups: “Everybody picks groups immediately. I’m the last one sitting there without a partner. They’re, like, okay, we’re going to need to put you up here with some people. So they put me in a group. So it was really embarrassing. Then you have to rehearse it until, like, five in the morning. So you don’t sleep that night. You get, like, three hours of sleep if that. That’s why people fight. There were a couple of, like, testy moments where someone would say something bratty. . . . That day I remember right before we sang, I was done. I was exhausted. We couldn’t get along. No one was getting along. There was nowhere to practice so your groups are taking turns in the bathrooms or corners. It’s just really crazy by that point. I was just, like, this is not worth it. I’m not going to make it anyway. I’m going through misery to get rejected, so I need to go home. I remember in the bathroom I started to cry and I turned around and my mom was there. I really started to cry. I was, like, I’m done and I want to quit. She said, ‘No you’re not quitting, you’re here and you’re doing it. You’re going to be great no matter what happens.’ ”

  The ultimate torment of Hollywood Week takes place when the judges deliver the fate of the young performers. Season 8’s Alexis Grace recalls, “At the end, they put people in three rooms. So all seventy people were in this one room. You had to be silent for three hours. If you whisper they said, no no. And you want to talk some Temptation Island stuff! They keep switching the room that Tatiana [season 8’s outright drama queen, Tatiana Del Toro] is in. So the room that she’s in knows they’re going home, or maybe she’s so crazy, they’re going through. Either way, whichever room she’s in is scared. Every single one of us became mathematicians, trying to figure out what our chances were.”

  “They said you can’t go to the bathroom. It was hours,” remembers Jackie Tohn. “And I had to pee, and when we’re at the point when they came in, Paula, Kara [DioGuardi], and Randy, our room was last, and we hear another room screaming with joy. And we’re like, oh, my God. And Randy looks right at me and says, ‘For some of you it’s your last opportunity, it’s your last year and we’re really sorry to say . . . that you made it through.’ And everybody’s crying and screaming. People were, like, punching each other, not in a bad way, but they’re saying, ‘Oh, my God!’ People just go crazy. Adam [Lambert] and I were crying. Adam was holding me like a baby and we’re sobbing. And Paula’s hugging us saying, ‘I’m so excited to see how this unfolds for you.’ ”

  After surviving Hollywood Week, the contestants return home for a few weeks or months, depending on the season. The schedule varies from year to year. The field has been shaved down to a manageable size by this time, so the show can conduct the background checks on each of the surviving contestants. In most seasons, Hollywood Week is shot in December and the green mile episode in February, just before the semifinals live shows begin. The green mile is the most exquisite piece of torture on the Idol calendar.

  Alexis Grace remembers returning to Los Angeles for the episode. “The green mile was the longest day I’ve ever experienced. We got up at 5:00 A.M., and went until 10:00 P.M. It was just sitting, doing interviews, and it was emotional because I did about four interviews, and they all emphasized how make-or-break the day was, asking questions about my daughter—stuff to really make you emotional.”

  Brooke White remembers the tension. “Knowing this was going to change my life completely either way was really intense. If I didn’t make it, I didn’t know that there was much more for me in music after that. I broke down, and totally started bawling. Michael Johns turned around and hugged me and they made me get in the elevator, and I thought, I want this more than I thought I did. When you sit down in front of the judges, there’s cameras around and people are everywhere and the camera guy gives a thumbs-up and you don’t realize that your life is changing so fast.”

  Megan Joy, alone in Los Angeles from her Utah home, recalls her day after learning she was going to be a semifinalist on American Idol. “I hugged everybody, hugged the judges, and then at that point I still didn’t have any friends. So we were all done and so everyone went off in their groups to celebrate. So I went by myself and I went to a pizza place on Hollywood Boulevard to get spaghetti. I got a pitcher of beer to celebrate and I made a friend with the guy who was there. He was really funny and really interesting and we just talked. I couldn’t tell him what I just did but I was, like, ‘I’m celebrating I just progressed on a TV show’ and he’s, like, awesome.”

  Having made it out alive at Hollywood Week, the singers step onto Idol’s little semifinals stage. Finally, each has their chance to perform live before Idol’s millions of viewers, but close as they are to the dream, half will fall before making the big stage. (In some years, the number is more like two-thirds, as the format switches back and forth between boy/girl rounds and the three-heat sudden death version.) While most who make it to the big stage manage to make careers in the music industry, history has not been kind to those who fall during Idol’s semifinals.

  Whatever the stakes, the remaining contestants are at last singing live underneath the Idol logo for tens of millions of people. Ace Young recalls of the experience, “Doing the actual show live was ridiculous. Just doing a show that was live for the whole world was more nerve-wracking than the judges. I was sitting there thinking, My grandparents are watching this, my family is watching this in Colorado, all my friends are watching it. I remember that first week after we all performed, we walked out to the car and went back to where they were putting us up and we had two hours to wait before we got to see what we just did on television. We’re all sitting there going, ‘Are you going to watch?’ ‘I don’t know. Are you going to watch?’ Everybody was sitting there talking about the fact that they didn’t know if they wanted to see it or not because it would get in your head. And everybody ended up watching
it.”

  On the final night of the semifinals, after the top twelve are announced, a coronation party complete with red carpet is held for the anointed, and the newly minted Idols get their very first taste of the limelight. “You walk down a red carpet and people are screaming,” remembers Brooke White, “which was weird for all of us. You’re trying to look at every person. You’re shocked. It’s such a new situation. We did a press junket the first few weeks on the show. The first ten interviews were torture for me. I would go home and lie in my bed and analyze everything I’d said.”

  “You can’t even comprehend how intense it all is once it gets to that point, and it’s crazy before then, but it continues to get crazier and crazier,” says Megan Joy. “I remember my face hurting from smiling so much. I remember I loved it.”

  Alexis Grace tells, “I’d never experienced this before. Pictures, interviews, people calling out our names—one thing after the other. It was super long, and I was still in shock that it was really happening. That’s when we all realized what a big deal it was.”

  Each year, the producers encourage—beg, even—the contestants not to look at the Internet, warning them it doesn’t help to have all the trash that’s spewed out there in your head. Each year, few listen. Almost all read the reviews, the message boards, the hater sites. Having struggled so hard for this moment in the limelight, it’s a lot to ask these young people not to look once their moment has arrived. Some of the more methodical, like season 9’s Adam Lambert, say they study the Internet to see if what they are attempting to communicate is coming across. Others just can’t resist taking a peek. Brooke White recalls glancing in the Web’s closet of horrors. “The one time I caught a small glimpse of something and it was mean, I realized that I wasn’t capable of dealing with it. There were other contestants who said it didn’t bother them, and I don’t believe that.”