The First Time

This weekend, American Idol Rewind wrapped up its audition shows by featuring the New York City auditions from spring, 2002. The highlight of those auditions was, of course, Justin Guarini singing Who’s Lovin’ You? The judges simply gushed, Simon Cowell in particular:

"Justin, you know, occasionally you're very privileged when you do a competition like this to hear somebody undiscovered who has a voice like yours. Welcome to Hollywood. Congratulations."

For whatever reason, the producers edited out the judges’ continued reaction after Justin left, where they called him "a star" and "superb," but they left in enough of the in-room comments that you get the point. Justin was a natural, someone who was going to be discovered whether it was through the Idol machine or otherwise.

Speaking of the Idol machine, the Atlantic Monthly has an interesting article about American Idol in its November issue ("Production Values" by Dale Peck). The article is primarily noteworthy for being one of the few mainstream print articles to call out the producers on their blatant manipulation of the results. Peck specifically mentions the season 3 finale, where Ryan Seacrest brought up Fantasia Barrino’s young daughter and placed her in Fantasia's arms after she finished her final song, "apparently in reaction to fears that Diana DeGarmo might pull out an upset."

The Rewind series will eventually culminate in a finale that was also manipulated, from the poor sound mix that minimized Justin’s vocals to the selection of songs specifically written for a female soprano (what male singer would otherwise sing a song about "waiting for that one special kiss?" Come on!) to Randy Jackson behaving so poorly toward Justin that Justin's fans will probably never forgive him. You have to ask yourself, if it’s so clear who should win, why do they feel the need to manipulate viewers? Well, we're reminded of the radio "expert" who commented toward the end of season one that RCA didn't want Justin Guarini because there wasn’t room in the market for two Justins (Timberlake being the other one, who of course was just starting to push his first solo album at that time).

Water under the bridge, right? Here are a few caps from the NYC audition show, with Justin then and Justin now. He’s still got IT.

New York City Audition, Spring 2002:



Introducing Episode 4 of American Idol Rewind, Fall 2006:

From Justin to Kelly to the World

You may have heard of a little movie called "From Justin to Kelly." Actually, the full title is "From Justin to Kelly With Love." Not that it is appropro of anything in particular, but who knows, maybe someday you’ll win a trivia contest with that little bit of knowledge.


You’ll never catch us proclaiming that J2K (as it is fondly known among Justin and Kelly fans) is great cinema, but it was what it was and it has found an audience. They originally set out to make a spring break movie for teens and ended up making a made-for-TV movie for tweens. Too bad they decided to release it in theaters. If it had been shown on FOX, that network may have had their own version of a hit ala Disney’s "High School Musical."

Before you laugh and think we’re deluded, we have reason for making this claim. J2K has been shown a number of times on the ABC Family Channel. Every time, every single time, we see a flood of traffic to our website. All kinds of people, looking for info on Justin in general and the soundtrack in particular (which, by the way, we have on the site, including Justin’s solo which was inexplicably cut from the film although 1) it supplies a vital plot point and 2) it’s actually a decent song).

Not only that, but this little movie has legs that has carried it around the world. Recently, it reportedly aired in Germany. Once again, like clockwork, we were flooded with German visitors, looking for more about that curly haired cutie they saw in the movie. We’ve seen people from all over - the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Iran (yes, we said Iran), South Africa, and a multiplicity of other nations - come, seeking photos and lyrics and mp3s and anything else they can find. The international response to the movie is most interesting, because people seeing it overseas most likely were not influenced by the over-the-top negativity heaped on the movie by the venomous American press.


It’s a movie you can watch with your kids, or let your kids watch on their own, and you probably won’t have to de-program them from anything they saw or heard. Can’t say that about many non-animated movies these days, and it's a nice change from talking wildlife. So there’s reason alone to turn it on the next time it airs. That, and you may actually like the music. Really. That’s all we’re sayin’. We give it two Idol stars.