Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Steven Tyler might be debuting his new video Thursday on American Idol, but I’m a whole lot more interested in the return of Jordin Sparks to the Idol stage.

She left it as the season six champ, at age 17, the youngest winner ever on the show.

She’s 21 now and about to release a new single, a dance anthem called “I am Woman.”

Which coincides with her loss of about 30 pounds. Which coincides with her decision to send out a twitpic to fans of herself posing in her mirror in a bikini. Which coincides with her decision to don a figure-hugging black dress for the cover of her new single.

And which follows her appearance at the Kentucky Derby Saturday, where she sang the national anthem.

Clearly, Jordin is prepared to project a more mature image with her upcoming single and album.

She discussed as much in a recent interview with aol.music.

“I turned 21 in December, and it was really funny because I was sitting and thinking about it and I thought, ‘You know what? Most people still have me carved in their minds as the person I was the last time they saw me,’ which for a lot of people was on ‘American Idol’ when I was 17. And I won, and I was the youngest winner ever and still am. A lot of people still have that in their heads and I’ve been greeted with ‘Oh, how’s school?’ and things like that.

“So I said, ‘OK! Let’s just evolve a little bit and grow up a little bit,’ and my people see that. It’s not like I’m trying to be like ‘I’m a woman now. I can’t do anything that has to do with being young,’ but I’m in that transitional phase of going from a young lady to a woman and discovering who I am and being proud of that. I just want to show that more than anything.”

And she clearly isn’t prepared to turn her back on everything young.

This single follows the recent release of “The World I Knew,” a song she did for the soundtrack to the Disney nature film “African Cats.” The video is wholly wholesome.

And Jordin is also gearing up for the New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys summer tour.

The tour includes stops at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., on Friday, June 3, and the Wells Fargo Center (formerly the Wachovia Center) in Philadelphia on Sunday, June 5.

For the entire AOL interview, where Jordin talks about that twitpic, acting on Broadway, the summer tour, her romantic life and more, go here.

To hear her new single, just hit play below.