Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Nick Fradiani, American Idol’s Season 14 winner, will release an independent EP Friday.

His six-song “Where We Left Off” EP will be out Friday. He’s already released the lead single — “I’ll Wait for You” — and the accompanying music video, which you can check out below.

I won’t be at all surprised if the new EP is more impressive than “Hurricane,” his first post-Idol release.

After all, it’s worked out that way before. Season 8 winner Kris Allen and Season 9 winner Lee DeWyze both made their best post-Idol music once freed of major label interference with their sound.

And in recent interviews, Nick has left no doubt that he feels more invested in the new material he’ll be unveiling on “Where We Left Off.”

“This record means a lot more to me than the last one because I was so much more entrenched in it,” he told GLSM.com. “I produced it. I wrote it, with no more than one or two other writers.

“Sometimes you get into that, and I hate to use the words big machine, because that was my old record label, but you get into a room with a shit ton of writers and I kind of felt that I got lost in it a little bit, that I took a backseat. Even though I was older, I was still new. And nobody knows what you want to do more than you.”

Nick Abraham, Nick’s former bandmate in Beach Avenue, co-produced the new EP. He also produced the title track on “Hurricane.”

In spite of all the big label meddling with Nick’s sound, his “Hurricane” album was far from a commercial success. In fact, it debuted at number 121 on the Billboard 200. The first 13 winners of American Idol had all debuted in the Top 24 on that chart.

But that’s history and Nick’s looking forward, telling GLSM.com that he released “I’ll Wait for You” as the lead single because it’s indicative of “the music that I wanted to make, but didn’t make, or wasn’t able to, over the last year. I love the process of making that song, the way it made me feel. It sets the tone for the rest of the EP.”

Nick will be touring to support his new music. In fact, he’ll be stopping at the Pearl Street Warehouse in Washington D.C. on Nov. 4 and World Cafe Live in Philly on Nov. 30.

You can check all the tour dates on his Facebook page.

Here’s that new music video.