Houston Chronicle: "Clay Aiken embraces his inner dork"

Here's the Houston Chronicle interview we were promised earlier this week. Head over to the Houston Chronicle website to read the interview in full. Here's a preview of what Clay said... note the response he gives after being asked about ATDW... wow Clive Davis is an absolute smut!!

An affable Aiken took time to talk about his future as a talk-show host (maybe), turkey basters (keep reading) and how Claymates saved Jericho from TV extinction (seriously).

Q: Do you feel that Aiken love in Texas?

A: Texas is really a tough market for pop. I think sometimes the fans don't understand, and they think I hate Texas. I love Texas. It's just people there don't love me that much. You want me to come, you've got to come to the show!

Q: Any songs that didn't make the cut on A Thousand Different Ways?

A: Things other than covers. Sorry, I'm being way too honest today. How do I say this politically correctly? I was strongly encouraged by other sources to do an album of covers. There was the feeling that it might be successful because there'd been success with Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow doing covers. I guess the argument against that would be I don't have the reputation that Rod Stewart has. I really don't have the credibility that he has, so there's no reason for me to do them.

Q: Do you like the disc at all?

A: It did turn out to be something I was really proud of. My mom's always told me, 'Take lemons . . .' I think we really did that.

Q: Do you hear anything on Top 40 radio that you can relate to?

A: This Rihanna girl — she's got a great voice. I really think she deserves to be where she is. . . . (But) what happened to Whitney Houston on the radio? Not literally — let's not go there — but what happened to that kind of stuff on Top 40? I think nowadays radio doesn't care how good someone sings. They just care whether or not people can fake having sex while standing up dancing to it. That's all they want.