Clay and AI2 Rewind -- Looking at Pictures From Four Years Ago

Many of us have already enjoyed watching the first show of American Idol 2 Rewind (New York tryouts), narrated by none other than our own Clay Aiken. If you are like me, I hadn't even planned to start watching AI2 Rewind until the Atlanta auditions...until I heard Clay would be narrating it. All of a sudden those first couple of audition shows sounded a lot more interesting and fun to listen to..uh, er, to watch.

Listening to Clay narrate and watching these shows from the second American Idol are especially fun for me. I didn't get to watch the first half of AI2 the first time around. I didn't watch the first season of AI because I thought it was just "some of that awful teen music that was being played". So why would I watch the second season? Until I found out that a "hometown girl" had made the final 12. That would be Kimberly Caldwell, who is from the Houston area. "Hmmm," I thought, "Maybe I'll watch a couple and root for the hometown girl." Well, all it took was watching the first show to hook me on the skinny southern guy, who I had heard from being on America Online was a nerdy guy with a great voice. That's all I knew about him other than that I had seen a picture of him online at AOL that looked to me like he had stepped right out of the 50's or 60's, and he always came in 2nd place when the AOL voting took place...2nd place to a guy named Ruben Studdard who I knew nothing about either. (2nd Place...seems the AOL members knew as little as the American Public knew about who should have come in first place!).

By now, CDD readers know that I love doing article series with lots of pictures in them. So for the next two or three times, I thought we would look back at some pictures of Clay from AI2 first time around. Not the pictures of him on stage singing. We looked at those not long ago in yet another series! But just hanging out type pictures of him. These AI2 Rewind shows will bring back some great memories, so let's bring back a few more memories with some pictures of our man Clay.


He may have missed making it in Charlotte, but he showed everyone that he doesn't give up easily!


Clay talks to the media after trying out for the three judges in Atlanta.


They liked me...I can't believe they liked me!!


No, I'm not trying to tell yall that I am "square"!