Brain Break: At Last, Mr. Hicks. We Meet Again.
April 27, 2008 by Alicia Sparks, Mental Health Notes
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
I think I’ve found a Brain Break topic that has absolutely nothing at all to do with mental health – finally!
What is it?
2006 American Idol winner Taylor Hicks and his awesome performance of the National Anthem at the Talladega Superspeedway earlier today.
Forget the fact that Dale, Jr. is currently owning the track right now (well, switching off with Stewart and Johnson – it’s hard to keep up as I type this!) which in itself has me ecstatic.
I haven’t even seen Taylor Hicks since he won American Idol. (He wasn’t my favorite pick to win until Bucky and Chris left, but still, I was a fan.) It was a nice surprise to see that salt-n-pepper head bobbin’ around again.
Of course, if Jr. wins the race, it’ll be even nicer…
How are you all giving your brains a break this Sunday?
The above image belongs to caswell_tom and is being used according to these Creative Commons attributions.
Taylors performance today was awesome, I have kept up with him and he has been a busy man. Did you buy his first album, titled Taylor Hicks? You can get it at amazon. I liked it tho some thought is was a little too pop and not soulful enough. He is in the process of making a new album right now which I think will be a better one.
He did two tours after the AI summer tour and his live show are just fantastic. He has a great band, his harp is to die for, and he has such a knack for arranging music. You didn’t see his performance on The View last summer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s060bg5kjN8
I enjoyed hearing his voice again so much today! Wow, thanks for sharing the You Tube link – that View performance was good, too (and no, I hadn’t seen it)! His voice is so refreshing to me. It definitely sounds as if he’s stayed pretty busy, which is really good to hear. I guess it’s just because some of the others (especially from that season) are so constantly in our faces (Chris, Bucky, Kat, Kelly) that I was mistakenly under the impression that he’d kind of fallen off the face of the earth because he wasn’t being crammed at me left and right. Thanks again, Susan!
I’ll bother you just once more, I can sure see how you could get the idea Taylor had disappeared if you don’t make a special effort to look for him like I have. Its not been an easy road for him. You may know that he and the record company parted, they didn’t think he sold enough, although he was certified platinum and has probably sold a million by now. That would be wonderful by most peoples standards but the AI winner is supposed to sell several million. And he should have ,but there were problems of all kinds. Some of it may have been his fault, he is pretty independent and they had a dispute of some kind about what the single should be. Then it seemed like the record company just did not support him like they should have for radio play. I think it was pretty amazing that he sold as many as he did given all that happened. His promotion was just not good. If you’ve paid no attention you probably don’t know that Simon Cowell and Nigel Lythgoe(one of the higher ups at AI) have said all kinds of bad things about him , that he really wasn’t that good , that he shouldn’t have won. No other idol has ever been treated the way he has. For a while they didn’t even show his picture with the others on the show. Its been really strange, who knows what all happened. One good thing for him is that he sold a lot of his first two independent albums. Hes been writing with some really good people but he is pretty much on his own with this second album, it won’t be easy. He made a dvd of one of his live concerts. It was on hdnet tv just tonight. Its really good. I hope he releases it soon. He’ll be at the Kentucky Derby next week. He is going to do a 2 week jam band cruise with some festivals last of May. Hes going to do the Sgt Pepper revue in Wash D.C. this summer. Says he will be back on tour in the fall. He also was on the final of Asian Idol. They just loved him there and he did a few shows in the Phillipines. Hes quite a good golfer and has played in several celebrity golf tournaments. Seems to love that. I wanted to send you one more vid so you could get an idea of what his live shows are like. This is one of his songs that he wrote and I have heard him do a very pretty, soulful version of it, but he does almost everything several different ways. If you have time, look around vimeo and check out some of his other vids. There are some really good ones. I’ll leave you alone now, I just really do think he is so good.
http://www.vimeo.com/348811