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by R.J. Carter Published: February 5, 2006
Christine has been singing since she was just a little girl. She gets it from her mom, who -- with Christine's uncle and some friends -- sang in a band. So singing in talent shows and school functions just came naturally to the girl from St. Peters, Missouri. When the first season of American Idol aired, Christine was only thirteen -- just a few years shy of the minimum age requirement. Last year, however, when she turned sixteen, Christine hit the auditions in St. Louis, ready to show her stuff. Unfortunately, she didn't make it through the first round of auditions that year. This year, however, seventeen-year-old Christine endured the trials and tribulations of the audition process once again, this time travelling to Chicago, armed with more practice... and a special gimmick to appeal to the cameras. How many rounds of auditions do you have to go through before you make it up in front of Simon, Paula and Randy? You have to go through two rounds. There's the big round where you see the fifteen thousand people who go through producers. If you make it through them -- it's like 300 make it through them -- you go to the executive producers, and whoever makes it through them goes in front of Simon, Randy and Paula. Obviously not everyone who gets past these two rounds is ready for prime-time. Do you think those performers who can't sing at all know they can't sing? Oh yeah. It's a television show, and everybody gets a laugh out of it. They do end up sending the good people through, though, to Hollywood. Well, not all of them. Your audition was a decent performance, I thought. Well, they don't send all the good people through. I think they make mistakes. But they don't send bad people through to Hollywood. I was shocked with the guy who was jumping up and down and screaming, though. That was a little confusing to me. So when the people who can't sing are finally told by the judges that they can't, they're not shocked or surprised? I think they are. I think some people are there just to be on TV, but I think some people really do think they're good. After a person has been sent packing by the judges, we sometimes see them again in a show wrapup, singing a completely different song (sometimes in a group with others) in a video montage of different versions of a popular audition song. What that is -- Whenever I made it through the first round, they send you to a room with about twenty other people. This is a process immediately after you've made it through the first round. They give you a sheet of paper, and at my audition sitting it was "Moulin Rouge". And all it is is the words to the song and you have to remember how the song goes. The dress -- that striking, memorable, everyone's-talking-about-it prom dress. There's a story behind it, and thanks to the Dave Glover Show on 97.1 Talk and the Jeff and Thom Show on KPNT - The Point, the folks in St. Louis know what the story is. But for our audience at The Trades... one more time, please. It's actually a prom dress I got to go down there. I kind of froze whenever I got into the room and said that it was a prom dress, but the reason I wore it was because I actually proposed to Ryan Seacrest while I was there. It looked like a wedding dress, and that's what gave me the idea, and it was basically to be funny -- but they didn't show it at all on the show. A lot of people think that I shouldn't have gone with the prom dress. They're like, "You may have made it if you hadn't worn the prom dress." But I just tell everybody that I wouldn't have made it onto TV if I hadn't had the prom dress on. Everybody had to have a story. Did Ryan accept? It was a really confused reply. At first he said, "No, I'm taken," and then he got a look from a producer and then he was like, "Oh, well, I guess we're getting married." You sang Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" for your audition, and Simon Cowell said he hated everything about it; he said, "Don't bother," when you said you'd try again next year. Is he naturally that grouchy, do you think, or was it just his time of the month? I don't know. I thought that was weird, because I felt like he wanted to dislike me when I walked into the room, because he was overly hateful. I guess he thought I was going to be a horrible singer, like I was there to get attention. I don't think I was a bad singer to where you would say, "Don't come back." He didn't say anything bad about my voice, but yet he still told me not to come back next year, and I thought that was really weird. These confessionals -- that's the technical term, I believe -- these are filmed right after the Randy/Paula/Simon auditions? They have them before and after. They make you sign a paper saying that you'll come back after your audition, no matter how mad you are, and give a confessional. They will follow you out of the building and bring you back in. They (also) have a confessional before the audition: "Oh, I'm ready! I'm going in!" You're all upbeat, then you get shot down and you have to go back. Some of the times I'll get fooled into thinking someone's making it in, because we'll get this mini-biography film of a contestant; and I'll think, "Oh, this person must have made it in, else why bother with all this?" And then... the person doesn't make it. I don't understand that either. I thought that those would be the local winners -- because there are local winners from different cities that get sent to the auditions. The news cameras from their towns come and videotape the whole experience, and actually go through the whole audition with the person. So I think that's where they get the local footage from. They might go back and do the whole home footage thing, but I think it's probably local winners. So what have you been doing now that you've come home? Do people recognize you? Are you getting any offers? I know there's at least one potential one pending out there for you. Well, I did a couple of interviews with some people. I did an interview with 105.7 The Point, which is a radio station in St. Louis. I know I might be working with them. I also work with a lot of local producers, trying to make a demo. I go to school, I have a job -- that's pretty much most of my time. I'm really just trying to get more practice, because I still am young -- Paula was right, I don't have a lot of experience, and I didn't realize that I wasn't quite ready for that, and now I'm just trying to get as much experience as I can. You're cutting your own demos, or doing backup for others? I know a lot of rappers -- St. Louis is pretty much the home of rappers. I'm working on choruses with some of them, and I also have producers who are trying to help me get a demo for myself. And American Idol did open that door for me, because a lot of people were willing to take a chance now that weren't before. Are you going to be watching the show this year? Yeah, I've been watching it. My mom lives in Illinois and I drive out pretty much every episode to watch it with her. |
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