Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Haley Reinhart has released a cover of Piece of My Heart, one of the songs she performed on American Idol.

For those who don’t remember, it’s one of the songs Haley covered en route to a third-place finish on American Idol Season 10.

“Flashback to where it all began,” Haley, 29, writes on Instagram. “I don’t post about Idol all the time, but I’m proud of my roots, and we all gotta start somewhere!”

Haley also happens to be the perfect example of how viewers — and contestants — are being shortchanged on the current season of American Idol, where producers think it’s fair to go from a Top 20 to a winner in four weeks. And on recent spring seasons of The Voice, where producers think three shows is enough to produce a winner.

Back in Season 10, Haley, 20 at the time, put together one of the all-time great Cinderella seasons on
Idol.

But it took time. Time for her to find her groove. Time for fans to catch on to the magic in those sultry, smoky vocals of hers.

The first two weeks of the finals, Haley landed in the bottom three, one of the contestants in danger of elimination.

It happened again a couple of weeks later.

But never after that, thanks to the popularity of her duets with Casey Abrams and thanks to performances like “Piece of My Heart,” “House of the Rising Sun” and Led Zeppelin’s “What Is And What Should Never Be.”

Who remembers the latter? Haley fell flat on her bottom climbing a flight of Idol steps mid-performance. And never missed a beat.

And I still think she should have won Season 10.

Regardless, a decade later she’s been the featured vocalist in three national ad campaigns, has four albums to her credit and would have to be counted among the American Idol success stories.

And much of the credit goes to a format that allowed her time to blossom on Idol.