American Idol Season 6 Recap
The sixth season began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. The
premiere episode of the season drew a massive audience of
37.7 million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more
than 41 million viewers. Jordin Sparks was declared the winner
on May 23, 2007, at 10:05 EST, with a new record of 74 million
votes in the finale against runner-up Blake Lewis.
Teenager Sanjaya Malakar was the season's most polarizing
and talked about American Idol contestant, as he continued
to survive elimination for several weeks. The weblog Vote
for the Worst and satellite radio personality Howard Stern
both encouraged fans to vote for Sanjaya. However, on April
18, after over 38 million votes, Sanjaya was voted off.
The Top 6 singers performed inspirational music as a part
of the first ever "Idol Gives Back" telethon-inspired
event which raised more than $60 million in corporate and
viewer donations. None of the singers were eliminated, and
the votes from that week were added to the votes from the
following week to eliminate two singers. Both weeks saw a
two-hour extension of the regular two-hour voting window,
and in the end, with a two-week total of over 135 million
votes, Chris Richardson and Phil Stacey were eliminated. The
next week, Lakisha Jones was sent packing after 45 million
votes were cast, a result Simon had successfully predicted.
Then, in the top 3, Melinda Doolittle, a frontrunner of the
show, was ousted after nearly 60 million votes, despite predictions
from Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell that she should be in
the finale.
A little over a month earlier, the show had launched the
American Idol Songwriter contest which enabled fans to select
the "coronation song" to be performed by whichever
two contestants made it to the finale. In the songwriting
contest, amateur songwriters were able to submit original
songs they had written and recorded. A selection committee
headed by Idol creator Simon Fuller then narrowed thousands
of submissions down to twenty finalists. With "one online
vote per fan," fans were able to listen to snippets from
each song and rate them. When the ratings were tallied, the
winning song was the balled "This is My Now" co-written
by Scott Krippayne and Jeff Peabody. Read more about American
Idol Season 6
American
Idol Official Site
|
