"American Idol" Runner-Up Blake Lewis Dropped by Arista

The post-American Idol curse continues, as season six runner-up Blake Lewis revealed in an interview that he has already been dropped by his label, Arista. Lewis signed with the label last August and released his debut album Audio Day Dream in December. The album has sold roughly 300,000 copies since and has not charted any singles. In the interview with Maximum Threshold, Lewis expressed that he never really wanted to sign with a major label but that his second place win behind Jordin Sparks required it. It's been a rough stretch for Idol contestants not named Clarkson, Underwood, Daughtry and Cook: Both Taylor Hicks and Katherine McPhee, season five's winner and runner-up, were dropped from their respective labels after eighteen months and season two champ Ruben Studdard was dropped from J Records for falling "short of expectations."

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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