by News
By Heidi Venable published December 30, 2024
The show was pretty different back then. – CinemaBlend
(Image credit: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal)
When American Idol returns
for Season 23 on the 2025 TV
schedule, Carrie
Underwood will make her
debut as a judge 20 years after she won the fourth
season of the show. The
contestants who stand in front of her, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan, however,
will likely have a different experience than Underwood did back in 2005. The
judges back then were not afraid to give constructive criticism — with a
strong emphasis on criticism. Clay Aiken, the Season 2 runner-up, is actually
grateful he experienced the show in that era and explained why he’s glad the
judges were tougher back then.
When Clay Aiken competed on American Idol , he faced the infamous trio of
Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and
Randy Jackson, and he told US
Weekly that he feels that their honest
feedback helped him to become so successful. Aiken said:
We cared what the judges said, not only because we didn’t want them to say
something mean, but also because we would take it and then go back and next
week say. ‘Don’t do this again.’ Or they said, ‘I’m singing too many ballads.
Sing something uptempo.’ You would make a point to improve yourself.
It wasn’t just him, either, but Clay Aiken says if you look back at several of
the most famous _ American Idol__
_contestants, you can see the artists being shaped
over the course of the season, starting with the very first winner Kelly
Clarkson. Aiken continued:
I appreciate the criticism. Another thing that I think made the show great
was you could see growth in [season 1 winner] Kelly [Clarkson] from the time
she walked in that studio, that audition, till the time she made it to the
end. You can see growth in me, in Ruben [Studdard]. Ruben stopped wearing the
jerseys after a certain point. Fantasia [Barrino] grew. And a lot of that was
because we would get criticism every week.
Clay Aiken, who finished Season 2 in second place behind Ruben Studdard, said
he doesn’t see that kind of improvement in the current contestants, and Idol
could save a lot of time if they skipped over the “45 to 50 seconds where
they’re all going to say, ‘You did a lovely job and you’re a great star.'”
Aiken thinks the singers would benefit from being challenged a little.
Simon Cowell was largely considered the meanest of the original American
Idol judges, but there’s a chance that rudeness
was faked for TV. Randy Jackson,
meanwhile, agrees with Clay Aiken and has spoken out about singing
competition judges being too
nice.
Even Katy Perry — who was
definitely not always nice to the
contestants — had said she hoped
whoever followed her wouldn’t be afraid to speak their mind and actually
have a point of view.
It sounds like when Carrie Underwood officially replaces Katy
Perry, she hopes to bring a good
blend of the old and the new. The “Before He Cheats” artist said her judging
philosophy is to be
“honest and constructive but still kind.” We still have a couple of months
before we see what that looks like. American Idol Season 23 will premiere at
8 p.m. ET Sunday, March 9, on ABC.
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