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Some Hearts debut is on its way to being the top-selling album by an Idol contestant." border="0" width="245">Country singer Martina McBride is this week's guest mentor (Fox, Tuesday, 8 ET/PT), and the seven remaining finalists will sing country selections.
Unlike the past two seasons, however, none of the current contestants has displayed a clear affinity for country music. That's too bad for them, because since Season 1 finalist Josh Gracin released his first single in 2004, country has proved to be the most reliable format in which to launch a post-Idol recording career.
Four finalists — Gracin, Season 4 winner Carrie Underwood and last season's Kellie Pickler and Bucky Covington — have made the trek to Nashville. All have met with some measure of success, providing a few bright spots for a genre that has seen sluggish sales so far this year.
Underwood's single Wasted sits atop the country charts, her fourth consecutive No. 1 single. Her album, Some Hearts, has sold 5.2 million units and likely will become the top-selling album in Idol history.
Gracin and Pickler both sold gold with their debut albums. Pickler's Small Town Girl, released in October, could become the second-best-selling album from Season 5, behind Chris Daughtry's Daughtry. Covington's self-titled debut, featuring his single A Different World, arrives today.
So why is American Idol so compatible with country music?
For Lyric Street Records president Randy Goodman, who signed Gracin and Covington, the secret lies in the stories.
"When you first look at it, you think, 'This is a talent contest,' " he says. "But they've been able to create intrigue, drama, the protagonist, the antagonist. There's a story.
"Country music has always been about storytelling, and the fact that the show really develops a sense of story makes it uniquely compatible to our format."
Role of the country format
Sony BMG Nashville chairman Joe Galante says country fans who watch the show latch onto the performers' personalities.
"Whether it's Carrie or Kellie or Bucky, there's a certain feeling from the audience that these people are from small towns — in these cases, the Carolinas and Oklahoma," Galante says. "They represent the people watching the show."
For Pickler, the answer is simple — and practical.
"Country music is just one format: It's country," she says. "You don't have to worry about being in the competitive market with pop, rock, soul and all that. Because country radio plays only country songs. With Katharine McPhee and Taylor Hicks, it was like, 'What genre are you going to put them in?' But you know exactly where the country singers are going to go."
Doug Montgomery, program director at WBCT-FM in Grand Rapids, Mich., says success on Idol doesn't automatically equate to country hits.
"They've got the advantage of being much more familiar than the guy who's straight out of the clubs," Montgomery says. But "it still takes a hit song.
"For every slam-dunk that Carrie Underwood has had, it isn't necessarily an automatic. Bucky is having some success (on the radio), but Kellie Pickler has had a much tougher struggle."
Even so, Pickler has done respectably well with a top 15 peak for her single Red High Heels and her new I Wonder generating higher album sales in markets where local radio stations play it.
Idol contestants do arrive in Nashville with some baggage from the show. The country market prefers its acts to at least appear to have developed organically.
And it can be extremely resistant to outsiders.
"We had a lot of skeptical people at radio stations," Galante says. "They immediately thought we were going to take a pop singer and try to make her country, and then she was going to become pop again."
Says Tom Baldrica, Sony BMG Nashville's vice president of marketing, "People at country radio weren't sure what they wanted to do with Carrie. There was a group saying, 'This is spectacular, because this girl's out there advertising us to 30 million people a week.' Then there's this other group going, 'I don't know if we want any sort of talent-contest winner here.' But "when Jesus, Take the Wheel came along, everybody in country radio heard that and said, 'It doesn't matter where this came from.' "
Fellow artists probably are the last group in the country industry to jump on the Idol bandwagon.
Last fall when Underwood won the Country Music Association's female vocalist of the year, LeAnn Rimes posted a message on her own website saying she found it "disheartening" because Underwood hadn't "paid her dues long enough to fully deserve that award."
Nashville's aspiring artists haven't been reluctant to express their opinions, either.
"I've been to dinner and had the waitress say something about it," Pickler says. "She was like, 'I don't understand how this is happening to you. We move here in search of making it, playing bars all night and working as bartenders trying to make tips to pay our bills, and nobody gives us a chance. But you just go get in line.'
"And it's like, 'Well, you know what, you could've gotten in line.' If you want to make it in the music industry and you see an opportunity that comes along like Idol, you're stupid not to take it."
Country music's power brokers often are frustrated in their attempts to secure prime performance slots at the Grammys and on late-night television. American Idol gives its finalists the one thing the country industry craves above almost all else: mainstream media recognition.
"I'm not getting anywhere near the same kind of spin on (new Lyric label mates) Trent Tomlinson and Sarah Buxton that I am on Bucky Covington," Goodman says. "I mean, Larry King Live, twice in the life of his single before we drop the album? That's unheard of. He's going to be on (Jimmy) Kimmel, he was on Good Morning America. All because of American Idol."
While most new artists start out as strangers to radio programmers and interviewers, that's not the case when they've been on Idol.
"They know who I am," Covington says. "Of course, that's going to make things a bit easier for me. There's always Idol to talk about. If you don't want to talk about anything else, we can talk about Idol."
Galante, who works with Underwood and Pickler, says the Idol contestants come to town better prepared for the rigors of starting a recording career than most new artists.
"These boys and girls have gone through a school that is substantially ahead of what we've done (to train new signings) as a town, in terms of national TV exposure," he says. "Watching that camera, being able to read a teleprompter. It really helps develop them, and it's something we're taking to heart about how we can help the rest of the baby acts through the system."
'Idol' provides exposure
The exposure also puts contestants ahead in artistic development.
"You're on television in front of 30 million people every single week, two nights a week, for 10, 12 weeks," Baldrica says. "You start to do that math — the impressions become unbelievable."
Underwood has become one of country radio's core artists.
"Carrie's tracking at the superstar level already," Montgomery says. "We have our audience compile who they think are our top 50 artists. Six months ago, Carrie was in the 20s. Three weeks ago, she's in the top 10 with the likes of Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Toby Keith — that's good company."
But while Idol gives singers a tremendous initial boost, the association takes them only so far.
"It's something for the moment," Baldrica says. "Then you have to be able to prove that it has some kind of longevity."
For instance, Gracin's first three singles all reached the top 5, and Nothin' to Lose reached No. 1. But his most recent, I Keep Coming Back, stalled in the high 20s last month, prompting Lyric Street to delay the release of his sophomore album while Gracin looks for better songs.
Underwood's sophomore album is perhaps the most anticipated country release of the year. She already has recorded about half the album with producer Mark Bright, who worked with her on Some Hearts. She's also doing more songwriting for the album, which is due in the fourth quarter.
"I've got a great singer, I've got a great producer, and I know we've got great writers in this town," Galante says.
"Is it 5 million? Is it 6 million? Is it 4 million, is it 3 million? I'm looking at a market declining 30% in the first quarter, so I don't know what the number is. I do know that, artistically, it will match and exceed everybody's expectations."
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