Clay's Blog

• That voice could not be denied...part 2

  07/20/06 1 Comment

  During American Idol, season 2, I was on the internet at the same time, but the only site I frequented was HGTV. You see, I had just bought my first house about a year earlier and I was getting all kinds of information on there, plus, they had this thing called a message board where you could go and talk about plumbing or spackling or electric and get some good advice from experts. I had no clue that there were message boards in cyberspace for other things, I thought it was unique to HGTV. I was wrong.

  One of the message boards on HGTV was called Special Interests and I found it very enlightening because we talked about all kinds of things, not just home improvements. We went through the 2000 election sparring with each other, depending on who you were for, Bush or Gore. That was interesting and fun.

  I started giving reviews of each AI episode, what each Finalist sang, how they sounded, what the judges said, and each week, my Clay love got stronger and stronger. One of the posters on the board was from Raleigh, Clay’s hometown, and she directed me to a message board called Bolt. So I went and that was my first forage into the wide world of internet message boards.

  I read about American Idol there for around a week, but the posts moved so fast it drove me nuts. Somehow I found a message board called “That’s the Clay”. It was all about Clay 24/7. All about his voice, his songs, his persona, his performances, the judges and what they said to him. I started reading and eventually made a few friends. Who would have thought that one could make friends on the internet? Not me, no way. But I did.

  There were thousands of Clay fans on that message board. It wasn’t just me. I was learning something everyday. We all started to get friendly and talked mostly about Clay, but about other things, too. Like his charities, our families, our likes and dislikes, our pets.

  Then Clay didn’t win.

  About half way through the last show, I had a feeling that Clay was going to lose. Sure enough, he did. I was numb. I walked around my house for an hour, back and forth, back and forth. Then I cried. Not big hacking tears, but softly sobbing because Clay didn’t win. How could he have lost? Was there an anti-matter shift with the matrix that jarred the time/space continuum out of alignment? The next day, work was pretty horrible. I was feeling down all day.

  I had to ask myself ‘Why’? This was a young man who had a great voice. That’s all. I didn’t know him; I’d never met him and probably never would. So why did I feel this shook up? Why was I this upset? Why did it affect me so much?

  Therein lies the mystery of Clay Aiken. Why him and why now? All I know is that I didn’t want to lose him. I couldn’t imagine never hearing him sing again. All I knew was that the runner-up in the first season faded from the public, but I didn’t want that for Clay, or for me. Little did I imagine that not only would Clay NOT fade from my life, but that I’d see more of him than I could have hoped for.

  After the show was over, Clay was all over the morning TV shows, in many magazines and radio interviews, on Larry King Live, on Oprah, where Clay's hair was product-challenged.

  GMA, where fan-girly Diane Sawyer swooned all over Clay.

  The Today Show, when Katie couldn't remove the grin from her face.

  Live with Regis and Kelly, where Kelly spouted some inane comments.

  On June 10th, Clay's CD single, 'This is the Night' was released. Oh, man, how we longed for that CD. How anxious we were to get our hands on it. One of my co-workers volunteered to go to Walmart’s before work that morning and picked a CD up for all who wanted one. I remember ripping that cellophane off and throwing that sucker into my CD player. I was lucky I got any work done that day. Clay sold about 393,000 singles, unheard of in this current musical landscape. It was the best-selling single of the Soundscan era, with the exception of Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’ which he re-released to commemorate Princess Diana’s death.

  I also remember calling up radio stations to request Clay on the radio. We all did, all the message board posters. We were laughed at. Or mocked. Or scorned. Maybe American Idol was too new to leave any kind of impression on these DJ’s and Program Directors. Maybe Clay was unproven. Maybe the demographic of Clay’s fans weren’t the demographic that radio wanted listening to their programs. Maybe RCA didn’t throw enough promotional dollars behind the CD.

  Maybe the sky is green.

  All I know is that Clay Aiken, with the best-selling CD single in ten years, had trouble getting radio play. Which is really another story altogether because radio airwaves are the property of the public and the public wanted to hear Clay Aiken on the radio.

  I want to hear Clay on the radio. I think that America deserves to hear that voice on the radio. The summer of 2003 was not a particularly fun radio experience for most of us. But all was still well because Clay was out there, doing his thing and we were eating up every.single.word. out of his mouth and we were buying all the magazines that he appeared in…………

  Stay tuned for the next installment!

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