Idol Chatter & Voice Views

If Lacey Brown looked at peace with her elimination from American Idol Wednesday night, that wasn’t necessarily the case.

It’s just that she had gotten used to the idea.

“I woke up yesterday and had really the strangest feeling that I was going home,” the 24-year-old from Amarillo, Texas, said. “Something was off.”

It wasn’t that the judges had savaged her performance of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.” Some of the judges’ comments were among the best she’d gotten in four weeks of live performances.

“I can’t even describe that feeling,” she said. “It wasn’t a downer moment for me. It was just a feeling I had. I wish I had been wrong about that feeling.”

Turns out she wasn’t. Lacey became the first contestant bumped from the Idol finals, two spots shy of qualifying for the Idol summer tour.

Asked to venture a guess about why she was eliminated, Lacey said it might have had something to do with the songs she selected.

She’s a happy, bubbly person, Lacey said, and the judges seemed to expect her song choices to match her personality.

“I think they kept asking for energy in my songs. I kept trying to give it. And they kept saying it was a sleepy performance.

“The issue that I was having is, I really love to sing ballads,” Lacey said. “I love telling a story with a song. I love the emotion of the song. I’m very artsy, so that side of me comes out when I sing. So I think I kept picking songs I really love to sing and that I felt and maybe it didn’t transfer as well on-stage wise.”

So Lacey sang “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks, “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer and “The Story” by Brandi Carlile. And, instead of rocking out to the Stones, she choose a very soft opening for her rendition of “Ruby Tuesday.”

“But I wouldn’t have changed any of it, because that’s who I am. Even though I’m a bubbly, happy person, every song I sing isn’t going to be up tempo.”

Going forward — and Lacey plans to continue to pursue a singing career — she sees herself singing an pop-folk mix on an album. She says she’s looking forward to writing music that fits her voice.

“I’m a very different artist. I have a very different voice that’s not suited for a lot of different genres,” she says. “I just want to give people a chance to hear something fresh and new and different.

“There’s not a lot of voices like mine on the radio. I kind of take pride in the fact that I’m different. I try to embrace that.”

Be sure of this, Lacey has no regrets about trying out for Idol again in season nine.

Last year, she made it past Hollywood to the judges’ mansion episode before being booted in favor of Megan Joy.

“I’m one of those people who gets very competitive,” she says. “I decided it’s way too much fun not to try it again. I’m really glad that I decided to come back. That wasn’t a hard decision at all. Everything about this has been a blast for me.”