Idol Chatter & Voice Views

If ever a contestant was blessed and haunted by the same single American Idol performance, it was Andrew Garcia.

His acoustic version of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” on the first day of Hollywood Week won praise from judges. It established Andrew as a season nine front-runner.

One YouTube version of the song has been viewed more than 2.4 million times.

Unfortunately, Andrew was never able to recapture that magic once the live shows started.

And while he finished eighth or ninth — Idol is unlikely to reveal whether he or Katie Stevens had the fewest votes from Tuesday’s performance show — everything Andrew did after “Straight Up” seemed like a letdown.

Not that Andrew was complaining during his Thursday conference call with the media. After all, he has an American Idol summer tour to look forward to.

Nor did he hesitate to explain how “Straight Up” came to be. Not with such widespread acclaim for that performance.

“Looking through the (song) list, I saw ‘Straight Up’ and I thought, ‘You know what? She’s not on the show any more. I can do my little twist on it and see what happens,'” Andrew recalled of Hollywood Week. “It took off. It went crazy.”

Andrew says that’s what he felt he did best on Idol, taking relatively current songs and putting an acoustic twist on them. He did it again with Chris Brown’s “Forever” on Soul/R&B Night two weeks ago, when he got his most favorable reviews from the judges since the finals began.

Of course, someday soon, Andrew’s looking forward to recording his own music, not covering someone else’s.

And his musical career looks a little brighter since Idol.

Prior to the show, he was a stay-at-home dad, performing gigs on the weekend for maybe $400 a night.

So if he didn’t seem devastated during Wednesday’s results show, that might be part of the reason.

“I didn’t expect to go as far as I did with this. It’s amazing. To be on like the top nine, is incredible. I’m so blessed and thankful that I even got that far.”

Other topics Andrew touched on during his exit interview:

* His friendship with Lee DeWyze: He called Lee his “brother for life.” They hope to write music together on tour.

* The fact that the save wasn’t available Wednesday because it had been used on Michael Lynche the week before: “The save … they (the judges) couldn’t have made a better save. That guy’s a warrior, and I love that guy.”

* The judges in season nine: Andrew says he thinks they’ve been tough. “They’ve being really hard this year. I don’t know why, but they’re being really hard on the judging.”

* The comments from Simon and Adam that he came across as boring: “On stage, I was focused more on just performing. They talk about personality, they don’t really hang out with me. If they hung out with me, they’d love me. Guaranteed.”