Well John Tesh released a couple of Christian albums on the same label as Jaci Velasquez and Rebecca St. James.

Syrup-y ballad-y crap for singers who aren't songwriters.

"10 different songwriters who made the short list last year had prior working relationships with either American Idol judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, American Idol bandleader Rickey Minor, American Idol Host Ryan Seacrest, a former American Idol finalist, or Fox Television."

What? And they still are crappy songwriters!

That was a notoriously catchy song. I ended up singing it for days afterwards...

I mean, it was better than Paula's latest single...

That would be blessed relief, if I have to see him in another one of those low cut v-neck tops which show off his man-boobs I'm going to lose my lunch.

Thanks for that information. That really sux...but nothing about AI surprises me anymore.

Wow..This is some pretty disturbing news.

It's hard to believe that they can get away with this.

This makes me so mad!!!!

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Ooops my 2year old daughter seem to agree..lol

I was real excited entering into the contest. I finished writing the song a few days before the deadline and had only 1 day to record it. It came out so-so, but I thought the song itself came across. Many told me the song had a great chance - if not to win - to make the top 20.

The contest explains that you don't need a professional recording - just play guitar and sing into your computer, then record it as an mp3. Then I heard the 20 songs that were chosen. All pro quality productions. However, I was unimpressed with ALL of the songs (in the context of the competition) and am finding it really hard to believe that from all the submissions, these were the best they could come up with. Regardless, they'll really whoop the song up on the finale and force feed it to the public. I already pretty much know which song will win this year from that list.

It's clear that the submission guidelines is just a bunch of malarky. Not to mention that from thirteen 2007 song submissions, the songwriters had a prior relationship with someone from the show (be it Seacrest, Jackson, or even Ricky Minor from the band. And there were 25000 submissions last year. I entered on the final date, and from the invoice, it appears there were about 10000 this year.

Also worth noting: you can still see the song submissions from last year, along with the songwriter's bios online somewhere. This year, there are no bios, just a music player, song title, lyrics, and rating system. So the writers are not being revealed. In fairness, I don't know if that page I'm looking at from 2007 was put up after the contest - but if so, what's the point?

Anyway, I'm really dissapointed about the whole thing, and it's sad to see how much the music business continues to spoon feed the public with their own agenda. I learned long ago it's "who you know". Why should I have expected anything different?

This "scam" needs to be exposed at a higher level (such as on 60 Minutes).

As far as the talent contest goes, how Christie Lee Cook has outlasted Michael Johns and Chickezie is a mystery to me.

AI is toast.

What do you all think are the best few songs? and the worst few? I think some of the worst are "dream big" and "we're gonna make it"