It was also the year that Jennifer Hudson was eliminated in 7th place.  I remember not being about to believe she was sent home and I wondered what was wrong with the public but she got her revenge by winning an Oscar award for her performance in Dreamgirls. 

Since the show Fantasia has released two albums (Free Yourself and Fantasia), has been nominated for awards and appeared in The Color Purple (April 2007 to January 2008) on Broadway.  She is expected to release a third album sometime this year.

Diana released one album, Blue Skies (2004), appeared on Broadway in the musical Hairspray (September 2006 to February 2007), performed at Carnegie Hall (April 2007) and finally made the career-changing decision to appear on Gone Country.  She released the country music track, “Right Back Where We Ended” and has won rave reviews in the genre.

Here are the Top 10 from season three.  I remember really liking Matthew Rogers so I’m happy he’s now the host of the Discovery Channel’s “Really Big Things.”  Who did you like from this list?

• Fantasia Barrino – Winner
• Diana DeGarmo – Eliminated May 26, 2004
• Jasmine Trias - Eliminated May 19
• La Toya London – Eliminated May 12
• George Huff – Eliminated May 5
• John Stevens – Eliminated April 28
• Jennifer Hudson – Eliminated April 21
• Jon Peter Lewis – Eliminated April 15
• Camile Velasco – Eliminated April 7
• Amy Adams – Eliminated March 31
• Matthew Rogers – Eliminated March 24
• Leah LaBelle – Eliminated March 17

image: Newscom

Post from: Idol Stalker

One of the things we found out in last week’s show as Fantasia was the special guest was that she is going to stary as Celie in the Broadway production of “The Color Purple“. I think this is a great move and will hopefully expand her arena for fans and show the world that she is very talented outside of just singing hip-hop. Anyone remember “Summertime”, one of my absolute, all-time-favorite Idol moments.

Post from: Idol Stalker

This was the most important section of information for me:

Thursday’s show also featured a performance by third-season winner Fantasia Barrino, who announced she will star as Celie in the Oprah Winfrey-produced musical “The Color Purple” on Broadway. She will join the show April 10.

One bright, young hopeful to watch is LaKisha Jones, a 27-year-old single mother from Flint, Mich. “I’m very tempted to say to 23 people, `Book your plane ticket home,’” Cowell said on Wednesday’s show, after her commanding take on “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”

(Jones isn’t going anywhere — not for a while, at least.) “American Idol,” now running three times a week, will return to a twice-weekly schedule next month for the elimination of the final dozen.

‘American Idol’ viewers cut 4 singers

Post from: Idol Stalker

The only thing interesting is seeing all of them perform the group songs. The hardest workers in all of this though are the sound guys that are managing the mix for 24 different vocalists with very different volume and power.

HEY! Paul Kim has shoes on!

24 is just a huge group. I like it, but it just seems odd.

— Commercial Break —

Surprisingly they are jumping right into the eliminations. I like it. Interesting that they have the parents in the green room.

Safe: Brandon Rogers, Sundance Head, Chris Richardson, Nick, Blake

Paul Kim is going home. I liked him, I liked his personality, but he just didn’t deliver when it really counted.

I hate it when they ask them to sing after they’ve been voted off. Not sure what else they’d do, but man that’s got to be the hardest thing ever. Then again, maybe it’s not, no pressure, let it all out and go out with a bang.

— Commercial Break —

Next up are the girls.

Safe: Jordin, Stephanie, Sabrina, Leslie (BIG SURPRISE FOR ME!), Melinda, Antonella (ANOTHER BIG SURPRISE!)

Antonella isn’t gone and that surprises me. She’s going on looks so far, her singing wasn’t there. They called up Amy Krebs and she’s going home. My wife called that one since the opening of the show. Good job.

— Commercial Break —

New game called the American Idol challenge using your cell phone. $10,000 prize up for grabs and you can enter at www.americanidol.com

Fantasia comes out and confirms a big change in her career. She’s going to be staring in the Broadway play of “The Color Purple”. She’s singing “I’m Right Here” and is doing an amazing job! She’s got so much strength and power in her voice it’s great to hear her sing like this. I’ve not been a big fan of her hip-hop work, although I appreciate that it’s good. I just don’t think it highlights her true strengths and abilities as a great singer.

— Commercial Break —

Next round of eliminations for the girls.

Safe: Haley, Lakisha, Gina, Alaina

Nicole goes home! That’s another shocker for me. I don’t think she did a good job singing, but I don’t think she was close to the worst performance either. I don’t think she connected with the audience and the viewers like she needed to in this performance. I believe this one could really be blamed completely on the song choice.

— Commercial Break —

2nd round of eliminations for the guys.

Safe: Chris, Phil, Jared, AJ, Sanjaya!

UPDATE: I seemingly forgot to let everyone know that Rudy Cardenas was eliminated. I was so surprised it wasn’t Sanjaya that it really threw me off. 

Okay, I’m doing a horrible job on my picks for elimination. I can’t believe Sanjaya is in the top four guys. Paula really likes Rudy and said his vocals were great, falsetto was amazing and his pitch was perfect.

The recap of the four contestants journey and the song “Home” by Chris Daughtry is being played. It reminds me that “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter was the huge, surprise hit last year because of it’s playtime on American Idol in my opinion.

That’s it for the evening. We’ll see you next week as we eliminate another four contestants.

Post from: Idol Stalker