In the first part of my chat with American Idol season 10 Top 24 contestant, Tim Halperin, we touched on the earlier rounds of his Idol journey, from his initial audition in front of the judges in L.A. to making it into the Top 24.
During the final part of my interview with Halperin, we talked about Top 24 from his song selection to the Wild Card round, what he took away from his American Idol experience, and what lies ahead for his music career.
How did you go about selecting your song for Top 24?
For Top 24, I had a list of about five or six songs that I thought would be really good. And the thing that I wanted to do for Top 24 was show off the fact that I wasn’t a one-trick pony; I wasn’t kind of pigeon-holed in one sound. Up until that point, I had really done slower kind of ballad type songs, which is definitely probably one of my strongest types of songs to sing, but there’s also this soulful part of my voice. I love doing soul/pop rock kind of tunes.
I was looking at Gavin DeGraw, I was looking at John Mayer, and of course that Rob Thomas song. We rehearsed, and felt the Rob Thomas song was just a really good fit for my voice.
Rehearsals went well, I was able to fine-tune it, and I felt like even the on stage rehearsals were going really well. I thought the performance, to be honest with you, went really well. If you notice when you watch the crowd, they really loved it. I thought that it went really well, and the judges thought that it wasn’t my style. Maybe it wasn’t, and I can see where they’re coming from, just because all they’d really heard me perform were ballads. Maybe I should have stuck with that sound for my first round, before I ventured off into something else.
For me, I have no regrets with that song choice. The other thing that was kind of hard to deal with was when Ryan asked Steven what type of song I should have picked and he said John Mayer or Jason Mraz, when in fact, John Mayer co-wrote that song that I sang and played guitar on the track. So that was kind of frustrating to hear.
Article comments
1 - Adam
Actually, John Mayer did not co-write Streetcorner Symphony with Rob Thomas, that distinction belongs to Matt Serletic. But Halperin is correct, Mayer did play guitar on the track. It's a great song so props to Halperin for attempting it.
2 - handyguy
I was a little taken aback to hear that the top 24 [and this week's top 13] performances were pre-taped. I thought Idol was all live once the voting weeks started. Wonder if any of the vocals were 'sweetened'?
And MTV reports that executive producer Nigel Lythgoe referred to people complaining about the pre-taping as "morons." Nice.
3 - Kirsten
The semifinals are usually pre-taped. From what I read from someone who attended the tapings, the contestants performed like it was a live show, no do-overs, but mentioned possible editing of the critiques.
There were reported technical difficulties again this week, which is why they pre-taped again. The show is supposed to be live next week.
4 - handyguy
They seemed to be scrambling for time during the live results show Thursday. It was odd only calling half the contestants to the 'spotlight of fate' and then telling all the others they were safe. I would think they would have things pre-timed to the second, but it seemed clumsy.
5 - Kirsten
Thursday's show was live, Wednesday's show was pre-taped.