Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Look at Michelle Delamor and you’ll see a fashionable 22-year-old who looks the part of an R&B diva.

On Wednesday night, Michelle was standing on the American Idol stage, looking very fashionable again, and singing “With Arms Wide Open” by the rock band Creed.

Michelle admits now that she wondered whether she had selected the right song. And thinks the choice might have spelled her doom.

“I did. I really did question it,” she said Friday afternoon, the day after being eliminated from Idol’s semifinals.

“I think part of what messed me up a little bit is I questioned it before I got up on stage. When you question what you’re singing, it’s going to show.”

So why choose a rock ballad when that obviously isn’t her style of music?

Well, the lyrics seemed to fit with what was going on in her life at that moment, Michelle said.

And, besides, there was that advice from the judges.

“The judges all said I needed to take a risk and do something they wouldn’t expect me to do,” she said, referring to the critiques after her week one performance of Alicia Keys’ “Falling.”

Creed fit the bill.

In hindsight, though, Michelle admits she might have been better off singing the song she had chosen for next week, the Beatles’ “Come Together,” a tune also covered by her idol, Michael Jackson.

“I think I tried to go too much by what the judges said,” she admits. “I should have tried to stay true to who I was as an artist.”

The gal from Miami was a bit of a mystery contestant on Idol this season. Except for her group number during Hollywood Week, viewers saw very little of her.

Michelle said that didn’t particularly surprise her and downplayed the notion that it might have cost her votes.

Back in Miami, she was working in retail and conducting a children’s choir at her church.

“I kind of have a normal lifestyle back home, no tragedy or anything. That doesn’t make good TV,” she said of her lack of airtime.

For now, she plans on staying in Los Angeles and pursuing a music career rather than returning to Miami.

Given her fashion sense, fans won’t be surprised that a clothing line might be in her future as well.

“I’m going to do everything I can to make something big come of this,” she said of her Idol exposure. “I promise, you guys will see me at the Grammys sometime soon. I’m going to make it.”