Who would have thought in 1981 that the influence of soft-rock kings Chicago would still be felt in 2003? In interviews, twenty-four-year-old Clay Aiken cites Chicago singer Peter Cetera as a vocal idol, and the painstakingly measured ballads collected on his debut, Measure of a Man, make that clear. For everything wrong with Aiken — his unremarkable phrasing and delivery, his old-man self-importance in a young man's body — he's adept at this school of middle-of-the-road bombast. He gets perhaps a bit too wistful on "Shine," which borrows liberally from the Chicago standard "Hard to Say I'm Sorry," but when one's whole career is a homage, it's hard to know when the line has been crossed.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.