Up Close With The American Idols - Carly Smithson - Page 2

What kind of album will you record, rock or pop?

Oh I've never sung pop music on the show at all. I think it's pretty clear what I'm going to make. Probably going to be a little bit pop/rock, but definitely I will be influenced a lot by '80s melodies - combined with a little more modern [sound]. I always love those bands like Skid Row. That's kind of my background, like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Heart, kind of like more classic rock. And it'll definitely be very vocally challenging. I like a song that's hard to sing. But it's funny, I think about as "pop" as I'll go will be Celine Dion, that kind of thing. I love her music as well. I think it'll probably be like Skid Row meets Celine Dion. There will be no R&B or that kind of thing, but there'll a little bit of soul.

Who are your favorite artists?

I think my favorite of all time is Madonna. She's just ridiculous. My favorite vocalist is definitely Ann Wilson. Yeah, I just think she's amazing. They [Heart] are from here - right?

[I tell her they are, and offer some trivia that Nancy Wilson and her husband Cameron Crowe have a house nearby to my hometown.]

I think probably the Wilson sisters have influenced me the most. Also Fleetwood Mac. Lynyrd Skynyrd's probably my favorite band of all time. Yeah, Led Zeppelin. I have different tastes than most - Journey. I'm trying to figure out what's on my iPod right now. I put the classic rock on just to drive the car. "Simple Man" is like my favorite song ever. I really wanted to do "Simple Man" on the show. Never got the chance to.

Did you find any of the show's theme weeks frustrating, in regards to song choice?

Sometimes it was frustrating. But it'd be over pretty quickly because you had to choose your song like that. [Snaps fingers] So the frustration didn't last long. You kind of had your song and you had to make the most of it. There were a few weeks... [pauses — thinking] They don't really hide how we pick the songs. They give you the list of twenty or twenty-four, that kind of area. It gets smaller as the number of Idols goes down. And then if two or more people want the same song they put it in a bucket and you have to pick it out. But you only get to pick three songs from the list. Then you have to wait until everyone else is done picking and pick what's left. And I pretty much picked what's left. I would put my hand in the bucket and pick it out and be like, "Crap!" It'd be like one piece of paper that had the name of the song on it, the rest of the pieces of paper were blank. I would just keep picking out blanks. I wanted "Jolene" so bad, but "Here You Come Again" was the last song nobody wanted. The only song that I picked that I got was "Come Together". And this was from Top 12.

Article Author: Sherry Lipp

Sherry writes mostly music and dvd reviews and on occasion she gets to do an interview. She plays the guitar, enjoys playing with her dog Pepsi and she and her husband are currently in the process of internationally adopting from Poland.

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