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    One on One with Booted Idol Brandon Rogers

    Posted by Laura Saltman March 16 at 06:41 PM | Comments (1)

  • Here is my take on Brandon after interviewing him this morning. Forget the singing the career. MTV, BET, VH1, TV One... one of these networks should hire him to host a show. I don't think on the show he was given much opportunity to showcase his personality but with me he was full of life. I can just see him standing in the MTV studio reading the teleprompter and introducing guests.

    This of course would be a much better idea than going to back to say, Blockbuster Video in Pasadena, CA where he once worked as an assistant manager (thanks to his mom who works in the corporate offices in Texas). Brandon jokes, "I will say, I love you Blockbuster... but that blue shirt with the yellow collar is the worst and you know it."

    There is no chance he would ever go back to that job but he did tell me with a big smile, "I'd sing for a Blockbuster Video commercial!" At least give the kid a lifetime supply of free video rentals!


    Brandon told me he is already enjoying the perks of fame. He went to dinner last night with his family and was shocked by the reaction to his being there, "People were just really supportive of me, telling me how much they hated to see me go and one person asked me to sing 'Happy Birthday' to their daughter and I went over and sang a little bit and everyone cheered. A really nice guy offered to buy my meal for my family and then another person offered to buy a whole round of drinks for the table. It was a surreal experience and I was actually almost choked up at the time that someone would be that nice to me."

    Brandon has been saying he knew his goose was cooked the minute he forgot his words. It wasn't going first and nerves that got the best of him though, "I really want people to know I wasn't nervous. I was actually so excited to go out there. I was like 'oh my gosh. Big stage! Big stage!'"

    I asked if he was waiting in the wings all night hoping one of his fellow contestants would mess up. He says absolutely not, "That to me is the best part of the show, is the fact that we were all so supportive of each other. Nobody wants to go further on in the show because someone made a mistake. Everyone wants to win because they want to win. They want America to vote for them because they are the best, not because they are not the worst."

    After the show he had a long conversation with Simon Cowell, "He just was really supportive of me. He was like 'you know you are better than going home in the twelve spot.' He really was rooting for me this whole season to step up and explode on stage and I didn't pick the songs that would allow me to do that."

    Some fans have been complaining this year that this season's crop of singers are boring and that the show has lost it's edge. From what I hear from folks involved with the show, up until the contestants took the live stage they felt they had gathered the most talented group of singers to date. Unfortunately, so far many of them have not stepped up to the plate and really showed their true talent. They believe, behind the scenes, that it's because this group more than any other has so many professional singers who are there strictly for the recording contract (while in past seasons it's been more about the fame). I asked Brandon about this and he agreed, "This show is more of a competition. I think that's good. I think that it's all better for the show that there is people who really are hungry for the music and not just notoriety or fame."

    Unfortunately, Brandon never got the chance to sing his final song as the show cut to commercial before he opened his mouth to sing, "I knew before the elimination, during the commercial, somebody had said we are a minute and half over. I was like 'wow my song is a minute and a half. we'll see how we will fit that in.' It's fine but I wish people would have seen probably my best performance on the entire show. That's always how it is either you are broken up in tears or you go and put out the best performance you ever did in the show. It's just the nature of having that weight off of your shoulders, of I can actually sing this and not get judged and critiqued"

    He'll get the chance to sing his swan song on the Access Hollywood stage this afternoon though. Check out Access Hollywood on Monday to catch Brandon's performance!

Comments

Brandon has the best smile I have ever seen. He is well spoken and charismatic. Access Hollywood should scoop him right up. Don't let him get away. I should know. I am a recently retired school teacher of 35 years

Posted by: Bobbi Green | March 19, 2007 08:19 PM


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