Now that he's got a successful album, Chris is making the most of it and seizing the bull by the horns (literally, almost). This item, reproduced below verbatim, seemed like a good way to end the week:
STAMFORD, Conn. (December 27, 2006)—VERSUS and the Professional Bull Riders, Inc.
(PBR) today announced that Chris Daughtry, lead singer of the chart-topping rock group, Daughtry and American Idol finalist, will be performing Saturday, January 6, at the VERSUS Invitational presented by Amp’d Mobile from Madison Square Garden. The VERSUS Invitational kicks off the 2007 season of the PBR Built Ford Tough Series presented by Wrangler and this special performance will take place during intermission at the event, which begins at 2 p.m.
ET. Daughtry’s performance will be part of the exclusive VERSUS telecast on January 6 at 7:30 p.m.
“Daughtry is an exciting addition to the VERSUS Invitational and a great cross-over platform for the network,” said Bill Bergofin, Senior Vice President of Marketing at VERSUS. “Music is an important aspect of the sports experience and the group’s album is currently at the top of Billboard's rock chart. Daughtry's performance provides added entertainment value for our existing fans and viewers, while drawing in new audiences to experience the raw intensity of PBR bull riding.
”
Daughtry, a North Carolina native, rose to stardom on the last season of American Idol. Since releasing the self-titled album in November of 2006, it has risen to the top of the rock charts. In addition to performing at the event, VERSUS.
com will feature exclusive footage from Daughtry’s performance and other never-before-seen footage. The band will also be incorporated into a promotional campaign for the PBR on VERSUS for several weeks after the conclusion of the VERSUS Invitational
I'll have a longer post later today on Idol sales and such, but just wanted to post the first-week numbers for Chris' Daughtry album: 304,000, good for No. 2 behind Jay-Z on the Billboard chart, and enough to outsell The Beatles' LOVE remix album, which sold 272,000.
That number also gives Chris the top Idol first week so far this year (Taylor and Katharine still have a chance to beat it, of course). Strong start!
It probably was for the best that Chris Daughtry didn't win American Idol.
Can you imagine him singing a coronation song such as Do I Make You Proud, Inside Your Heaven, or whatever the song was that Taylor managed to reject? The way things turned out, he got the 19/BMG contract anyway and seems to have got the green light to make the album he wanted to, writing or co-writing 10 of the 12 songs and going for the surname-only, quasi-solo/quasi-band, straight-out-of-a-mythical-Western identity of Daughtry.
I have to admit I was expecting something more intense, more toward the throat-shredding, tune-deficient hard-rock sound that Chris did his best to showcase on Idol (within the show's musical and sonic limitations).
Instead, Daughtry is a very airplay-friendly album of formulaic but tuneful contemporary rock, sung with fervor and restraint and considerable skill.
A track-by-track look, plus song clips and conclusions, follows.
As part of the weekly Listen Up album reviews, Edna Gundersen assessed the self-titled Daughtry album this week.
Here's a preview:
Ejected fifth-season American Idol finalist Chris Daughtry resurfaces in a generic and inoffensive rock band called Daughtry, which is short for FuelNickelStaindback. The singer has basically spared Ed Kowalczyk the trouble of having to record the next Live album. In power ballads and hard-rockers, Daughtry has a more palatable and natural delivery than he did in Idol’s strained TV performances, and his strong pipes and palpable angst should satisfy voters who kept him in contention.
To win converts, however, he’ll need something more distinctive than a talent show degree. — Gundersen
Download: Breakdown, There and Back Again Skip: Gone, Feels Like Tonight
Let’s review. Fading rockers Gilby Clarke, Jason Newsted and Tommy Lee take on poser Lukas Rossi, winner of the credibility-peeling Rock Star talent show.
They record a pile of vanilla-rock anthems and that annoying Underdog theme. They exude the genuine authority and menace of Dudley Do-Right. And they dub the band Supernova?
Black hole — six months, tops. — Gundersen
I just posted this comment from Howard Roark, but since it's in the Faith Hill queue, I thought I'd liberate it and repost it in its own right:
Ken, I assume you are all over this, but Daughtry is streaming their debut single on their myspace page, along with previews of some other songs. It's very Nickleback-esque, and I mean that in a good way.
Howard, clearly I wasn't all over it (big Faith controversy raging not only here but in the Listen Up blog, with about triple the volume (and venom) the discussion here has, so I've been pretty much a one-trick poster today), so thanks for the tip.
It appears that Chris' album will come out , to give it more of a band identity. Not a bad idea (certainly better than calling it Chris ); in fact, it might even help a little with the touchy decision-makers at rock radio, who are generally more inclined to give airplay to bands than solo artists.
Nov. 21 is still the release date, no title yet.
Really interesting reading the comments on Chris and Rock Star: Supernova.
Still hard to believe he auditioned for the INXS edition and didn't make it, because overall that was not such a stunningly talented group either (although with a couple of exceptions, most of the lamest singers were among the women). But he certainly would have been a serious contender this season.
Now that I've seen the third episode of RS:S, another area in which Idol is superior: the voters.
Can't believe I'm writing that, considering some of the boneheaded results from various Idol shows over the years, but at least so far, Idol voters did a much better job of eliminating the hopeless finalists than the Rock Star electorate has done.
I mean, Idol voters did give Kevin Covais an extra week, but they did dump him in week 2. We're three weeks into RS:S and two of the most pathetic excuses for a rock performer I've ever seen are still in the running: Zayra, who has no concept of singing whatsoever, and Phil, who didn't even make the bottom three despite the most ludicrously melody-free version of White Rabbit ever seen on television.
It's frustrating even watching the show when the voters (and band, most of the time) have such a seriously misguided idea about what rock singing should be. They might have voted Chris out by now for all I know. I'm tempted to give the whole thing up, but will probably stick around to see what happens.
Here's one of those pointless questions I like to debate in my head when I'm feeling particularly brain-dead: How would Chris Daughtry have done if he'd signed up for Rock Star: Supernova instead of Idol?
OK, first, I have no idea whether any of you even give a fig about Rock Star. I watch it sort of out of duty (and I Tivo it and watch on the weekends, so I haven't even seen week 3 yet).
It's pretty lame, with a host who likes to display her sleepwear on camera, her good friend, Dave Navarro, who sets new standard for blandness, and a truly motley crew of contestants -- the show has about eight weeks of winnowing out hopeless candidates before it can get down to the real battle.
Rock Star is superior to Idol in a few respects, which follow.
A little bit of pleasant Chris Daughtry news, as he played a show on a flatbed truck for the hometown fans.
My favorite part of the is where he's quoted as saying he has no idea how to play most of the songs he sang on Idol. Probably just as well, don't you think?
For the second week in a row, Chris registered more downloads than Taylor.
Daughtry's Wanted Dead or Alive track (from the Idols Encore album) sold 22,000 last week via downloads, compared to 27,000 the previous week. Taylor's Takin' It to the Streets sold 12,000, down from 16,000.
Remember, Taylor's actual single, which pairs Streets with the bloated ballad Do I Make You Proud, hasn't officially gone on sale yet, and should do pretty big numbers when it does Tuesday.
So it's not really a fair comparison, just an interesting one. And both, even with such relatively paltry numbers (top seller Shakira sold 267,000 Hips Don't Lie downloads last week), will be comfortably on next week's Billboard Hot 100 singles chart (don't have the numbers yet).
Demonstrating commendable innate wisdom, Chris Daughtry has that offer to become the lead singer of Fuel, replacing Brett Scallions.
(Chris apparently knows his onions.)
I'm going to be doing my own thing, Chris told the Charlotte Observer. Whatever that own thing turns out to be, it's highly likely to be more lucrative than joining a rock band that's on the downward part of the career spin cycle.
Chris was coy about his future in the weekly eliminated-Idol-finalist press conference, but offered a possible theory (one some of you have suggested as well) for his defeat: Maybe people thought I was safe and didn't vote as much.
Go for more on what Chris had to say to the nation's Idol-obsessed journalists.
My commiserations to the hordes of Chris fans posting comments.
Clearly he has a dedicated and passionate fan base, something that should serve him well when it's time to put out a record. (Though whatever happened to all those Diana DeGarmo fans?)
Along with the heartfelt anguish and the well-reasoned explanations, there have also been revivals of the same old conspiracy theories -- the producers conspired against Chris because they want someone else to win, the show is manipulating the availability of phone lines to skew the vote, the judges are slanting their commentary to favor the others.
(One of the most extreme: Simon deliberately slammed Katharine to provoke a sympathy vote so she would survive.)
I don't know -- everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, but it seems to me, a show that's under the microscope of media attention the way Idol is just can't afford to play fast and loose with its rules or even general fair play. Maybe, just maybe, Chris was really the least popular finalist this week.
Spoke too soon. Wow, Chris is gone.
Katharine does not deserve to survive, but will need a big comeback to survive next week.
And as for Chris, well, now he just may be able to keep his rocker credibility -- something that would have been very difficult if he'd won.
Year of birth song: I'd forgotten how dire Styx really were — Chris' opening bars of Renegade sounded like a bad Queen song (that's almost redundant), and it didn't get much better from there. Chris' vocal performance was tolerable, if cliche-laden, but the song is far from true classic rock.
(Is this kind of arena-rock claptrap what we want from our Idols?) Of course Randy and Paula (and Simon) thought this lame '70s rock posturing was hot. I'm starting to believe all the more paranoid types who think the judges and producers are doing their best to influence a victory for Chris.
Current hit: Of all the modern moan-and-groan rock bands, I find more to like in Shinedown than most, and I Dare You was a good showcase for Chris without requiring him to have an onstage aneurysm (although he seemed to get close). But was the flames-of-Mordor background really necessary? Judges didn't like it as much as Renegade, which is an indicator of old fogeyism, I think.
Much better song as far as I'm concerned.
Chris was left to save the night from utter tedium. No such luck -- perhaps the shlockiest song choice of the night, the record that singlehandedly destroyed Bryan Adams' rock credibility, Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman.
Could happen to Chris' cred as well.
Chris tried to inject a bit of grit into the song, but, flanked by Spanish guitar players, his performance had more built-in cheese than a Kraft singles pack.
All three judges are thoroughly deluded on this one, by the way.
Chris picked one of the more recent standards, Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World, which has been done in punk versions (Joey Ramone, I think). No such boldness for Chris -- very straightforward version, and he even dressed up a bit, as if he had a vested interest in his performance.
The performance was OK, nicely understated, though not as stunning as the judges seemed to think.
But the song is not what you'd want to hear from Chris ...
or really, after a million TV commercials using it, from anyone.
'What If' Chris had picked a decent song?
Chris, after being given an opportunity to acknowledge that he had used Live's arrangement of I Walk the Line last week, then displayed execrable taste in choosing What If by America's most uselessly blustering rock group of the last 15 years, Creed. He executed it well, but if that's what we have to look forward from Chris, count me out.
Live, from Hollywood, it's Chris Daughtry!
Man, nothing gets by you eagle-eared Idol followers. Not having paid any attention to the group Live for the last several years, I had never heard their version of Johnny Cash's I Walk the Line. But after checking it out, I can confirm what so many of you clearly already know -- Chris copped his arrangement of the song last night from theirs, pretty much note-for-note.
That doesn't make him a musical criminal.
The main question it raises is why, if he was so open about borrowing the Red Hot Chili Peppers' version of Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground last week, he didn't admit he was using the Live arrangement last night. And for all we know, he did admit it but they didn't use it during his pre-performance clip.
So he appeared to get credit for doing something bold and original when all he did was something bold -- turn a cherished country classic into something melodically unrecognizable.
You could also jump on the judges for not knowing the Live version and giving him all that credit, but I'm sure not going to do that when I didn't recognize it either.
Lesson going forward for the show in general: Full disclosure might be a good policy.
I'm curious, almost in a trainwreck sense, to see how his '90s rock vocal style collides with the primeval rock of the '50s.
For instance, he could do a really angst-ridden, tortured version of Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues.
(Now that I've said that, he'll cross me up and perform a ballad.
News RSS