Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Tickets remain for all four upcoming American Idol Season 10 summer tour stops in this area.

But if you’re thinking about going, you might want to get your tickets soon.

Billboard’s BoxScore for the past month includes five Idol shows from the past month among the top 50 concerts in terms of gross receipts, and all five were sellouts.

That included shows in Nashville, Tenn.; Raleigh, N.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Duluth, Ga.; and St. Louis, Mo.

And USA Today’s Brian Mansfield reports that at least eight of the Idol shows have sold out so far. And that through 14 dates, 97 percent of the tickets had sold.

That, folks, is a remarkable turnaround.

A year ago at this time, I was writing about Idol summer tour gigs being canceled because of poor sales. And reading about drapes being hung in some venues to hide all the empty seats.

It might also bode well for album sales when this crop of Idols gets around to releasing original music.

I’m still a little surprised the EPs released a month ago featuring Idol highlights from Scotty McCreery. Lauren Alaina, Haley Reinhart and James Durbin are doing so well.

Last week, they were 20, 74, 70 and 69, respectively on the Billboard 200, and they’ll still be on that chart this week. Despite the fact that most of the songs on the EPs were previously available for download during Season 10.

The Idol shows in the area start next week with shows in Pittsburgh on Wednesday and Baltimore on Thursday. The Idols are in Phily Aug. 17 and D.C. on Aug. 19.

When I checked Wednesday afternoon, premium seats were still available for the shows in Baltimore and D.C. Only the cheaper seats were still available for the other two shows.

For links to ticket information, click on the Idol Concerts link above.