Idol Chatter & Voice Views

A little confession: I was not a Lauren Alaina fan during season 10 of American Idol.

One of my main gripes with the show is the way producers pick their favorites, then foist their favorites on us every chance they get, not even pretending to play fair.

Lauren Alaina Suddeth was one of those contestants in season 10. Young (15) when the show wanted to go young. Full of spunk and personality and vocal potential. But way overhyped.

I mean, she’d barely finished her first song for an Idol audience when Randy Jackson proclaimed her a cross between Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. Really, now?

And when Lauren began to wilt under the Idol pressure once the finals began … well, it made rooting for someone else — say a Haley Reinhart, from whom so little was expected — all that much easier.

Lauren released her debut album Tuesday. It’s called “Wildflower.” I’ve listened to it four times so far.

Count me among the Lauren Alaina converts.

For starters, whoever picked the rowdy “Georgia Peaches” as the lead track on the album deserves a pat on the back. Lauren grabs you by hand, tugs and says, “Come on, let’s have some fun.”

And it isn’t an empty tease because she continues to please with up-tempo songs like “Growing Her Wings,” “She’s a Wildflower” and “One of Those Boys.”

Occasionally, she goes a little sharp and shouty. But, hey, this is a 16-year-old Georgia Peach just having a good time.

And when she slows things down … well, you can’t help but love the sincerity of “The Locket” or the tone of her voice on the first verse of “Dirt Road Prayers.” The latter is the album’s designated “religious” song. Every Idol country album has to have one. I was fooled into liking it before realizing it was the album’s designated “religious” song.

Therein lies part of the charm of “Wildflower.” Go ahead and cringe, Idol fans, because, like it or not, I’m going to compare the debut albums from Lauren and season 10 winner Scotty McCreery.

Hey, it’s natural. They’re both teens. They’ve both released country albums. Within a week of one another, no less.

Scotty’s sounds like country by formula. Like someone decided he needed a song about moms, a song about religion, a song about small towns, a song about trucks. So they served up the songs and Scotty performed each one quite capably. No more. No less.

Lauren covers much of the same ground on her album. And does a much, much better job of selling her 12 tracks.

And though she’s the younger of the two, her album comes off as more mature.

Compared to Scotty’s G-rated outing, she sings about French kisses and “shorts getting shorter” and about how she’s not about to be another notch on some guy’s Facebook wall without ever crossing a line that screams “too extreme for just 16.”

If Nashville can embrace another Idol blond alongside Carrie Underwood and Kellie Pickler, it might have found a real winner in the show’s season 10 runner-up.

Download worthy: “Georgia Peaches” (the next single, out Oct. 24, great song), “Growing Her Wings,” “One of Those Boys,” “The Locket.”

Avoid at all costs: “Like My Mother Does” because the first single sells the album short. At least half the tracks are much, much better.

Grade: B.