So much to cover in this post! In June 2009, Kris signed with his first record label and continued his press and appearances as the newly crowned Season 8 winner. This post will have the highlights, and for those of you who have never watched some of these, maybe some new things! Included: an appearance with Smokey Robinson at the big 2009 Walmart shareholders meeting, the NBA Finals anthem, the Huckabee show and the 5-part Idolatry interview. Lots of videos and some mp3s for the completists! Read on after the break...
So it's May 21, 2009, and Kris Allen just won American Idol.
Now it's time for him to do a TON of press. Back in 2009, American Idol was still a BIG thing and the finale, with its "upset" winner, got a lot of attention. In this post, we'll look back at some of those interviews... Full disclosure. May 2009 was a busy time in my life, and while I made time to watch Idol, in a lot of cases, writing this post will be the first time I watch most of these interviews! Hopefully for those of you who have seen them before, you'll enjoy some fond memories or pick up on some new items. I also have a lot of mp3s of live Heartless and No Boundaries in this post. So sit back, and check out all the media from May 2009 after the break. And if I missed anything from May of 2009, please comment and I'll add to this post!
Our look back at 2009 has reached a big anniversary! On May 20, 2009, Kris Allen won American Idol Season 8. If you've been reading the Season 8 lookback posts (linked at the bottom of this post if you would like to), you might agree with me that this wasn't as much of an upset as Idol and the media like to portray it as being. While Adam Lambert certainly was a talented and extremely memorable contestant, Kris put together a solid and consistent run of great song choices and exceptional performances, coupled with an ability to straddle genres.
Future posts about 2009 and Kris will cover the post-Idol frenzy of media, the Season 8 Idol tour, and the making and release of KATA, but in this post, we'll fondly recall the last two Idol episodes of 2009. Onward for lots of videos, photos, mp3s and memories!
We've reached two of the best episodes in American Idol history in our lookback at Kris Allen's 2009. It's top three week and Kris, Adam Lambert and Danny Gokey visit their hometowns and duke it out for the chance to be a finalist for the title of American Idol 2009. Let's get right to it, because this post is going to be JAMPACKED with videos and mp3s!
On this date in 2009, Kris Allen made his hometown visit to Conway, AR as part of top three week on American Idol and the day became known as "Kris Allen Day."
A jam-packed post about top three week is coming your way in a few days, but it was so jam-packed, I decided to make a special 2009 lookback post at the hometown visit! Read on for videos, photos and mp3s...
The show begins with Ryan asking, "Who will set the standard?" Whoa, the finale is three weeks and there are so many votes, they needed to add a second phone number for each of the top five! The theme is "standards from the rat pack" and the signs are out! There's a lot in store for us!
Last week in our season 8 rewatch, "just when we thought all was lost, Idol history was made," and Matt Giraud was saved. But now the stakes just went up, because it's disco week and two contestants go home. Only people who don't know Kris would see this as a problem. Yup, he does another fantastic performance in this week's re-watch! This time "shopping in the women's department" and covering She Works Hard for the Money by Donna Summer.
So shake your tailfeather and check it out after the jump!
Last week we danced with Kris Allen to top 8 of American Idol Season 8 and well, he fell slowly but survived to Top 7 week (the first of two; we'll explain in the results part). This week, he's going to croon Falling Slowly and get back on track big time! It's movie week on American Idol, so dim the lights and check it out after the jump!
Well we've reached it. The week we all knew was coming. Kris' worst week on American Idol ever. (Top 8, Year You Were Born (which for Kris was 1985). In a year that yielded a bunch of amazing songs, Kris chose Don Henley's All She Wants to Do is Dance and well, he'll never do that again.
Someone tweeted me to ask "Do we have to do this week?" My answer: Yes, but let's have fun with it! Onward! (The results show is full of good stuff!)
It's top nine week in our lookback at Kris Allen in 2009, and the top nine idols must sing a "top download." Kris goes with the 1971 Bill Withers song, Ain't No Sunshine, and he aims to "make a moment."
This was a great week for Kris and for the show in general. It's such a good week for him this time out that he ends up reprising the song during the top two week. Check out my recap and all the videos and extras after the break!
We're up to the top ten of American Idol Season 8 in our look back at Kris Allen's 2009. Having achieved the objective of making the summer tour, the ten finalists for American Idol now had to try to do enough to score a recording contract and hopefully, at the end, win the show. It was time to start pulling ahead of the pack. The theme was Motown week and we were in for some amazing and/or memorable performances by Kris Allen and other contestants, which you can watch after the jump (and as always in these posts, I'm including some goodies to reward those who read them)!
It's Opry week and St. Patrick's Day on Season 8 of American Idol 2009! This was a great week for Kris, bringing us for the first time his amazing cover of To Make You Feel My Love by Bob Dylan, although to get it into country week, it was technically covered by Garth Brooks. Kris' cover is more like Adele's version. Anyway! It works! Like Ryan says, after the break...
With the wild cards added, and the top 12 expanded to top 13, Idol Season 8 had selected its finalists for 2009. Now it was time for the real shows to begin and the fans of the real singers to enjoy the performances and start picking a favorite. The theme for top 13 night was Michael Jackson night, and as Paula put it, no one knows Michael Jackson songs better than Kris Allen, who had already performed Man in the Mirror for his group night semi-final selection. More behind the jump...
Ten years ago, the best Idol group ever appeared on our TVs. I'm talking about Group 2 of American Idol season 8 of course. This group went on to have four of the top five contestants in Kris Allen, Adam Lambert, Allison Iraheta and Matt Giraud, and adding in Megan Joy Corkery, five of the top ten. As a whole, it had a lot of favorites, and just winning the three spots from this group was a good predictor of the final outcome. It's an episode I'll rewatch pretty frequently. Check it all out after the jump (lots of goodies)!
It tells you everything that I have to rewatch these two episodes to do this post! I remember a lot about them, but not Kris in them. Idol was REALLY hiding him!
Hollywood Round 3
The Hollywood Round 3 episode is an interesting recap of the selection process day. During the day, the contestants are divided into four rooms - three of the rooms will make up the top 36 and one room will get cut. You'll see Kris at 3:23, followed by packages highlighting his roommates Adam Lambert and Matt Giraud. Around 6:25, there's Kris applauding Matt's excellent rendition of Georgia on My Mind.
This is followed by packages on Danny Gokey, Scott MacIntire, Jorge Nunez, Lil Rounds and some other final 36 contestants. There's some room shenanigans, Matt praying that all the favorites being in his room means a good thing, and Tatiana! She was a crazy one but I actually thought she did sing well enough to make top 36. Then they of course have a long package on Nick Mitchell (another joke contestant, but unlike Tatiana, painfully un-entertaining.) What we don't see: Kris Allen apparently just doing the best version ever of Everything by Michael Buble. (We'll get to see a snippet in a future episode and Kara tells us this.) Kris fans have begged for years to see full video of his round 3 performance, but no luck.
We do get to see Kris sweat it out when Idol producers have some fun torturing contestants by moving diva Tatiana del Toro from group room to group room, causing the entire room to think they are getting cut. She ends up in room 4, Kris's room. A few more finalist highlight videos are shown, followed by the judges breaking the good news to rooms 1 and 2 and the bad news to room 3. As for Kris, in room 4 with Tatiana, we hear Ryan intone at 38:48, "their chances of continuing have just become slimmer."
Poor Kris
Paula, Kara and Randy start their fakeout by pretending that these contestants were on their way out, Tatiana starts to freak out, and as for Kris...
I mean, c'mon, poor Kris
Matt Breitzke raises his hand to interrupt the nonsense and clarify if it's a yes or no. Paula says it's yes. They are all elated... Jackie Midkiff, Cody Sheldon, T.K. Hash, all the Idol season 8 greats... you guessed it, they show Kris but they don't say his name, although he does do a happy dance.
Top 36! The Green Mile
Idol went a little differently this time around. They needed to trim the finalists down from 54 to 36, and had some of the close calls compete directly against each other in sing-offs. Kris did a sing-off. It was not shown. You'd have no idea from this episode that Kris was in any danger at all.
The first time I watched this, of course, I was just watching to see who was in and hadn't picked a favorite yet. And of course for the Tatiana nonsense (check out Nathaniel Marshall and Matt Breitze's reaction to Tatiana making it. :))
On repeat viewings, I noticed that Kris gets very little spotlight in this. He's paired in a segment with Jeanine Vailes, Anne Marie Boskovitz and Kai Kalama, that basically shows them all getting the good news and then coming out and hugging friends and family. Kris gets picked up and spun around by Papa Allen while Mama Allen beams. It's about 1 hour and 12 minutes into the episode. Later on you'll spot Kris at the end while Ryan Seacrest announces that "this is the top 36" and then of course, the fun dance that Idol used to make the contestants do.
And for those of you who just want to cut to the chase, here's Kris making Top 36. (Notice you see the guy he did the sing-off against in the background when Kris hugs his dad. I think his name is Kenny. If you remember him, let me know his name in the comments.)
Back for round two of our look back at Kris Allen's winning season of American Idol in 2009 and the excitement of his first album. I'll be recapping the episodes and subsequent doings in order.
This incredibly useful list of Idol episodes reminds me that rounds 1 and 2 of Hollywood week of Season 8 aired February 3 and 4, 2009. We didn't see much of Kris, to be honest. As a Idol fan from season 1 to the present, I recall that as it always does, Idol highlighted the few people they already knew would go far and wanted you to vote for.
The judges were impressed and all four were sent to round 3, which we'll relive next week! In the meantime, I did find videos of Hollywood week round 1 and the whole group night episode. Enjoy!
In the ensuing years, Kris continued to perform I Want You Back. With his band, he mashed it up with his original song Everybody Just Wants to Dance:
And in a show in Michigan, he reunited with Matt Giraud for one night to bring White Chocolate back!
So have a piece of White Chocolate and come back next week when we'll enjoy some crazy Idol editing in Hollywood Week 3 and the infamous "green mile" episode!
Just looked at the Kralendar and gasped! Tomorrow, Monday, January 21, 2019, will mark 10 years since Kris Allen's Louisville audition for American Idol first aired! Crazy!
Since Kris is in writing/recording mode at the moment and news is slow, I'm making a blog executive decision and we're going to go down memory lane for 2009 throughout this year, week by week! I think this will be fun and hope that you'll all chime in the comments with your memories too! (In case you need to refresh yourselves on the whole season, here's a great wiki on it!) I'll be adding in my memories and reactions as I recall them to each week's episode of Idol, that great summer of 2009, and the excitement of anticipation for Kris Allen The Album (KATA as Kris fans call it).
So let's get started with the Louisville audition episode, which was taped in 2008 and aired on January 21, 2009. Kris appeared toward the very end of it. I'll be honest, I was more struck by Matt Giraud's audition (helped along by Idol supplying back story from Matt).
As for Kris, the judges were actually pretty critical, but then all put him through. Viewers didn't see that, as his full audition was heavily edited. In the version that aired, he was lumped in with three other good singers, with narration from Ryan Seacrest, "the judges hope some winners will emerge..." We see Kris sing a few bars of A Song for You well. And the Ford logo was super-imposed over Kris with the motto, "Who's got the drive." Subtle stuff there from Idol. Check out these videos to see Kris's full audition, compared to what actually aired.
As Kara says in the unaired version, though, "You know what? You're going to Hollywood!"
I kind of slept on this one. I thought we wouldn't get anything out of it. Shows what I know!
Kris joined fellow idol Fantasia to perform at a Dallas-based awards show: The Women That Soar awards, The event was taped for later airing on TV (in March 2019). We know he sang Live Like We're Dying:
After the event, Kris was in his feels! And decided to do his first ever live Instagram. I happened to stumble on it and it was fun. He answered questions, gave some props to the fandom and performed his new song Safe Harbor. (Which he officially performed live for the first time the other night in Nashville but we have no video. Lucky Idol Tour VIP attendees actually heard it a few times this summer as he worked it out.) Most important, he announced he's got new music coming soon!
Not the first time Kris has brought a hurricane to DC (definitely click that link, the video is funny), just saying. I remember driving home from this show as Hurricane Sandy hit. We did get lucky this time with Hurricane Florence; however, the remnants are scheduled to hit DC on Monday. My best thoughts to anyone in the Carolinas reading this.
September 16: Warner Theatre, Washington, DC - I did make the show! It was fast-paced and a lot of fun. We had a Periscope and another Kris fan took some videos. I'll keep adding them to the post as he uploads them (Thanks Eric!) You know DC always #givesgoodlist!
Updated September 17 with my thoughts and the videos (after the break)! Hope Kris and the Idols don't have travel issues today. Florence is in SW VA and the outer bands are going to give DC a lot of rain. My thoughts are with all of you in the Carolinas.
