New York Magazine Chronicles the Rise of Clay Aiken

New York Magazine today published a new interview with Clay today - January 28, 2008 - exactly 5 years since American Idol first introduced us to Clay Aiken.

There's A LOT of stuff in the article, and it is written very well. The full interview is available New York Magazine's website. Here are some highlights from the interview/article, titled "The Happy Hickster":

• On his celebrity status:

  Ever since Aiken placed second on American Idol in 2003, he gets recognized everywhere, always. “Even in New York. I was always told people in New York don’t care, and I think they probably don’t that much, but there’s a little bit of a different thing about Idol. I was with the woman who runs the ambassador program for UNICEF”—Aiken was appointed an ambassador in 2004—“so she’s worked with Katie Couric, people who are very recognizable, and she was one of the people who said that to me. And it was funny because a minute after she said it, as we’re walkin’ down the street, no fewer than five people said something to me. Just screamin’ from across the street! She said, ‘Ah have never seen anything lahk this in my life!’”

• On starring in Spamalot:

  Although Aiken can depend on the adulation of strangers, he doesn’t know anyone in New York and is worried he will be lonely now that he’s moved here to take a role in the Broadway musical Spamalot, based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “I almost cried on the first day on my way to rehearsal,” he says. “I’m here until May 4, and I’ve never lived alone before.”

• On Clay's political views:

  I have to wonder if Clay Aiken is prepared for New York City. It’s not that he’s stupid. He’s actually well-informed, really into the elections (sad that Joe Biden dropped out; Aiken has become a Democrat), and quite the impressive little charity worker.

• On issues facing the global society:

  “And I visit middle schools after I go to Uganda or wherever with UNICEF, but I rarely say, ‘Donate.’ I usually say, ‘Read about what’s going on in the world! There’s a war going on for twenty years in Uganda!’ The media doesn’t talk about this because they’re more concerned with Paris and Britney and…”

• On being a sex symbol:

  And while it is true that he is wearing a green sweater with yellow trim on one sleeve and pink trim on the other over a white shirt with bright-green stripes, it is also true that Clay Aiken is beloved, a bizarre sex symbol. He has been in People magazine as one of its Sexiest Men Alive. Despite the fact that Aiken is so widely assumed to be gay that Rosie O’Donnell accused Kelly Ripa of homophobia when Ripa recoiled at having Aiken put his hand over her mouth during an interview, there are women—a lot of them—who absolutely lust after him. So many women threw their underpants onstage during his first tour that on the following two Aiken tours, he had commemorative panties for sale at the concession stand. The pace of the panties has slowed recently, but the occasional pair still flies Clayward as he belts out “I Want to Know What Love Is” or “Everything I Do (I Do It for You).”
  

• On not being Justin Timberlake, bars & parties:

  “Let’s not fool ourselves,” he says with his eyebrows up in his arch, queeny way. “The truth is? There are people like Justin Timberlake, males who are cool on radio right now, and then there’s me. If I heard myself in a dance club? If I went into a dance club—which I never do—and I heard Clay Aiken come on, I’d roll my eyes and get out. But you know what? I’m fine with being kind of vanilla! It’s oh-kye!” In his book, Aiken says that it’s not just clubs but also bars he dislikes: “The only reason people go to bars is to get drunk and have sex. To me, bars are what hell is like.”
  
  He imagines his social life here will be “nonexistent, really. I’m not a nighttime person.” He does not plan on dating, and he is not involved with anyone. “Heck, no,” he says. “My dogs.” He has never had a romantic relationship with anyone, unless you count the girls he took to dances back in high school in Raleigh. “I just don’t have an interest in … any of that at all. I have got too much on my plate,” he says. “I’d rather focus on one thing and do that when I can devote time to it, and right now, I just don’t have any desire.”
  

• Reviewing Clay in Spamalot:

  In a Broadway musical, Aiken is perfect—he can throw that cheesy, octave-spanning man-voice of his around all he wants and hit all those honky gospel notes. It sounds great! He can slowly, slowly raise his arms in the air as he holds a note for 45 minutes. He can make his corny, cartoony facial expressions, and onstage, they’re utterly appropriate. Also, musical theater takes place in a land only slightly more erotically charged than Smurf Village, so here Aiken’s suppressed, indeterminate sexuality seems logical, usual, male. And he doesn’t seem hick. Partly because the twang is replaced by an equally theatrical Cockney and partly because he’s in a funny show. (The theme of his big number is “You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews.”) Every joke gets a roar. “When I’m up here onstage, I’ll be the idol of my age,” he sings, and the women go crazy. You can almost feel them sucked toward him by some unholy mix of maternal yearning and abject horniness.