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Let’s talk about some of the songs you performed on “Idol.” One
of my favorites was your interpretation of Smokey Robinson and the
Miracles’ “The Tracks of My Tears” during Motown week.
My first impulse was to do “War” by Edwin Starr. I love that song.
That makes sense — Bruce Springsteen recorded it, too.
He
has? I haven’t heard that version. I want to hear that. And Randy
Jackson produced a Motown album with Boyz II Men and they do a version
of it. It’s great, but the week before I had just done “Ring of Fire,”
so I already caused controversy and pushed the buttons and polarized
everybody and I’m really happy about it because I liked what I did and I
got to be weird and set myself apart, so I felt I should probably go
the complete opposite direction and be super-cleaned-up and kind of
pretty and acoustic and organic. That was me being strategic, because I
don’t really see myself singing in an acoustic style but I knew I could
and it was fun. Because it was Motown, I always wanted to dress fitting
the song, so I said, “Let’s get a suit and brush my hair and take off
the makeup and the nail polish and do like a real classic look because
it’s fresh.” It got everybody talking and I realized I could play with
image on the show more than I thought I could.”
How did you work with the stylists?
They were really
good. Miles and Art were very, very, very collaborative and receptive
to every idea that I had and they really supported me. I mean, a lot of
it was me saying, “I want to do something like this,” and they’d say,
“OK, let’s go shopping,” and then we would put together [my look] as a
team.
Not every contestant comes up with their own ideas for how they’re going to look.
I’m the L.A. guy. I like clothes and visual presentation and playing dress-up. I think that definitely was an advantage.
You mentioned singing an acoustic song. Your version of Tears
for Fears’ “Mad World” was a great example of that. How did you choose
to sing that?
The theme was year of birth. They gave us a list
and that song popped out at me and I remembered the Gary Jules version
from the movie, “Donnie Darko.” It’s haunting and beautiful and it gets
in your head and the words are amazing and I wanted to do it because I
knew it would be different and very non-“Idol” and not showy. I wanted
to pull back and sound really vulnerable and just do the song justice
and they came up with a great arrangement of it, kind of this ambient,
acoustic thing.
How closely did you work with ["Idol" Music Director] Rickey Minor on arrangements?
I
worked with the vocal team first and my team was Dorian Holley and
Michael Orland. We would look at the song and cut it to make it fit in
the time of one minute and 45 seconds. We would figure out which parts
of the song we liked the most, how to make it flow, what key to put it
in, vocal things to do with it, style things to do with it and if I had
an idea in my head we would figure it out and they would make notes and
they’d send that off to Rickey’s arranger. Then Rickey would get it and
develop it. So the first time we hear what it’s going to sound like is
the Sunday before, because they give us rough mixes for our iTunes
recording which happens the next morning, Monday morning, before our
band rehearsal. After a couple weeks of that, I got Rickey’s number and I
asked if I could just call him. He’s super-talented, awesome. So I was
really happy that we got to skip all that process and talk one-on-one.
You mentioned the Johnny Cash classic, “Ring of Fire.” Tell
me about choosing that song and the very non-country arrangement of it.
I
was really inspired by David Cook’s approach to the show the year
before. I thought he was really smart in that he didn’t let the theme
weeks throw him off, whereas a lot of people conform to the theme, so it
turns into this talent show, whereas he kept his cool points because he
always made it work for his style and he was very true to his own
artistry. I just took a page from him. When it came to country week, I
thought: “This is one of those moments where you can take a song and
make it work for you,” like he did with “Billie Jean.” Country music is
like the furthest thing from me but I remembered an electro version of
“Ring of Fire” I had heard a couple of years ago. I didn’t remember who
it was by. It was sexy. The words are hot. The melody’s good. I knew
that’s the one I should do. It’s dark and kind of risqué and I liked it.
I searched iTunes for different versions of it. That’s basically what
Cook did, he found covers and used those arrangements, which he got a
lot of [criticism] for. There’s no reason why he should have. We’re
singing covers, so what’s the difference?
I’ve never understood why anyone would be upset that a David
Cook would sing Chris Cornell’s version of “Billie Jean” instead of
Michael Jackson’s original arrangement or that a Chris Daughtry would
sing Live’s version of another Johnny Cash song, “I Walk the Line.”
I
never got that either. If you asked him who it was by, he would tell
you. It’s not like we’re trying to trick anybody. There was a woman
named Dilana who sang “Ring of Fire” on the “Rock Star: Supernova” show
and that was the way she did it. She had a recording of it out with the
Middle Eastern dub kind of feel to it. I loved that style. I love world
music, especially when it’s in that dub electronica kind of vein. I
really love that, like Thievery Corporation’s a good example of that. I
was really excited to be able to do a song on “Idol” that sounded like
that and I knew it was probably going to be like, “What?” Vocally, I
felt like I nailed it. And of course I read the press and people were
saying, “He’s screeching,” and I’m thinking, “That’s not really
screeching. I don’t really know what that is to you.” But everybody has
their own opinion.
So while you were on “Idol,” you were reading what people were writing about you. Did it affect you?
I’m
pretty objective, pretty resilient to that kind of thing. I didn’t take
it personally. I try to take it as research, like how people were
responding to it, and I felt the same way about the judges. They had
objective opinions and everybody has one. Listen to their comment and if
it’s a good critique, take it. Make notes. Fix it if you agree, and if
not, just keep doing your thing.
It’s not about them and what they think. It’s about that I get to be on
TV in front of millions of people and I get to sing. It’s about the
opportunity and the experience and it’s not about “Did the judges like
it?” I didn’t want to be too concerned with that, and by having a sense
of humor about it, it made me more OK.
Back to David Cook for a moment. You’ve said you were
inspired by the way he looked at the songs he did over the season as a
“set list.”
I definitely approached the show in the same way,
creating a lot of variety with the songs I chose. If I did an acoustic
down tempo soft falsetto ballad the week before, then I wanted to
contrast and go completely the other direction the next week. I wanted
to keep everybody guessing and I wanted to make it a really dynamic set
of songs.
Was “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” a song you knew from your father’s record collection? Yes,
and my mom’s a huge Stones fan. She’s gone to their concerts. I was
going to sing “Cryin’” by Aerosmith that first week and had rehearsed it
and cut it down and gotten a rehearsal track, but at the last minute,
the publishers weren’t comfortable with one of the details in the
contract and didn’t really know who I was yet, so they pulled it and I
had to come up with something really fast. I needed to do something that
would establish me as a rocker, because I looked at my group and I knew
that there were a lot of poppier R&B and country [singers], and I
wondered, “How do I make myself different and stand out?” There was a
girl rocker and I thought I’ll be the boy rocker. Kris [Allen] and
Allison [Iraheta] were both in that group with me and we went through
together and did all our press together and all three of us are signed
now. It’s a beautiful thing that, for reasons that are beyond us, we’ve
been cool. And the three of us get along really well, which is nice.
Anyway, I picked “Satisfaction” because I knew the song and it was a
song that everybody knew. It was a rock song and I wanted to associate
myself with icons, with famous rock stars. And Hollywood Week was a good
time for me to do my research into how [people] were going to see me.
It was an experiment. What happens when I sing this way? How does it go
over? What happens if I do this?
We did our second round of a cappella group choreography and we sang
“Some Kind of Wonderful” by Grand Funk Railroad and I got to really wail
and go high and go crazy and they loved it. So I knew I could go nuts
and they’re going to like that. Simon said, “You can sing. I didn’t know
what the big deal was before. OK, you’ve got pipes.” That helped
establish myself and then the final day of Hollywood Week was pick your
own song off this list and I wasn’t feeling any of the songs. I asked,
“Can we sing from the girls’ list?” and they said yes. I knew I had to
get up early the next morning and know the song and be prepared. I
didn’t want to worry about learning words. I wanted to be able to sing
the song. What song on this girls’ list do I know that no one else is
doing? “Believe” by Cher. I remember loving that single.
It was the first time I had worked with Dorian and Michael and I
asked them, “Is it too gay? Is it too ridiculous?” And they were like,
“Uhhh…” [Adam shrugs his shoulders while looking up and rolling his
eyes]. I said, “What if we make it a rock-pop ballad, not a dance song?
What if it’s totally different?” And they said, “Let’s try it.” I sang
it and I felt good about it. It set me apart. None of the other guys
were doing ballads. I knew the [judges] would remember me, because there
were 75 people. I needed to stand out so that they would put me on the
show. I knew that that was how it was going to go down.
Looking back at the season as a whole, what do you know now that you didn’t know before you were on “Idol”?
I
learned a lot by watching myself back. Like, less is more. I don’t have
to do quite as much every time, because when I watched some of the
first performances, “Satisfaction,” “Black or White,” they get a little
manic and that was because I was excited and had all this adrenaline. By
getting used to working on the soundstage and getting comfortable and
not being as nervous, I learned what works and what doesn’t.
How did you like working with this season’s mentors?
Slash
was really cool and very flattering and Smokey was amazing. That was an
honor. All the mentors were great, like being onstage with Queen and
Kiss was so cool. And I learned a lot about dealing with the cameras. I
had never really worked with a camera and the director on the show,
Bruce [Gowers], is amazing and really fun and we got along really well.
He would tell me, “I’m going to do this with the camera. Just play with
that camera.” He gave me some directions here and there and it helped me
make the most of that format, because I was used to being onstage and
not being intimate. And Ken Warwick, the producer, is the most
supportive and warm and so is Mike Darnell, from Fox. I mean, he’s
amazing. I never felt stifled. They really encouraged everything, all of
it. It was really, really nice.
And now you’re recording your debut album. What is your vision for your first record?
I
want to do pop-rock electronic, like dance rock. I want it to be rock
and roll, a nod to all the ’60s and ’70s rock that I love, the classic
and the glam rock, but with a very current, futuristic sensibility for
dance floors. I want people to have fun. I don’t want to sound like I
have this social cause, but I think that music in the ’70s was so cool
because it was about partying. It was about bringing people together and
celebrating and not about all this dark sad [stuff]. I want to bring
back the fun stuff. I want to bring people together and get them to
dance and smile and feel sexy and celebrate our similarities, not our
differences.
– Fred Bronson
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