The last time I was in Atlanta, I was 16 years old and my buddy Josh's sister pierced my ear with an old earring she'd filed to a dull, dirty point. (Kids, go to Claire's at the mall. Trust me — I ended up looking like the Elephant Man for a couple of weeks.)
That trip ended with a group of spring breakers destroying the hotel room Josh's adorable grandparents got for us while we were next door partying with a security guard with crazy eyes who called himself "Jake the Snake" and who, two days later, ended up getting in a Mace fight with the boyfriend of the two runaway teenage strippers we'd befriended. (True story, by the way. I swear.)
But this was going to be a totally different kind of trip. For one, I was flying this time and not driving in Josh's beat-up Honda. And second, I was invited by the Gospel Music Channel to come down to A-Town today to be interviewed for a one-hour documentary called "From Idol to Inspiration," which will air on the network April 23, right before the annual Dove Awards, the Grammys of the gospel world.
You see, they'd read my story on the connection between "Idol" and religion and thought I'd be the perfect person to talk about how and why so many of this year's finalists have a connection to the church.
GMC is housed in the Wagon Works building in East Point, Georgia, which used to churn out, yes, wagon wheels in the 1800s, and it's next door to the Buggy Works, which supplied the buggies those wheels were slapped on. It was also, someone told me just moments after I arrived, the staging area for Operation Desert Storm, where soldiers queued up just outside the building to leave for Iraq.
As I sat in one of the founders' offices, by total coincidence, a video from season-six "Idol" finalist Phil Stacey, for his debut single "If You Didn't Love Me," came up on the TV in his office tuned to GMC. I was trying not to freak, but that seemed like — OK, not a sign from above, but a totally weird coincidence anyway.
I was ushered into the network's production studio, which is the setting for the channel's regular "Unplugged"-style series "Revealed." The small room had exposed brick walls and a grand piano, was rigged with tons of lights and featured a series of steel scaffoldings along one wall where an audience sits for the tapings. If you're a Christian-music fan, seeing one of the network's big artists in this classroom-size space must be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The walls leading up the studio were lined with signed CDs from acts I've never heard of, like Hawk Nelson and Julissa, and when I popped into the green room, just to check it out, it looked a lot like the usual artist hangout spot, with cow-print ottomans, leather couches, a Wii and a DVD player. Oh, and it also had "Guitar Praise," a version of "Guitar Hero" that features songs from Christian artists like TobyMac, Petra, Israel & New Breed and Casting Crowns.
As I sat around for a couple of hours while the cameramen tinkered with the cameras, I got a small taste of what it feels like to be an artist stuck in the long limbo between arriving for the interview and actually doing the interview. In the meantime, everyone was on pins and needles waiting for season-five finalist Mandisa to call back and reschedule her interview.
The interview itself took about 40 minutes and consisted of veteran TV producer David Lewis asking me more than a dozen questions about how I stumbled on the "Idol" and religion connection, why I thought there were so many people of faith on the show and what, if any, impact that might have on the results this year or on the show going forward.
I'm not used to being on that side of the camera, and it felt weird to be all mic'd up under the hot lights and try to remember that trick I'm always asking artists to do, which is repeat the question I just asked them in their answer.
But, sitting there and thinking about "Idol" way more than I usually do (which is way too much to begin with), I realized a few things about this "phenomenon" that I by no means discovered, but just stumbled upon while trying to find a new angle on a show I've been covering for MTV News almost since day one: the people of faith who are on "Idol" are there because, in some ways, they were, quite literally, born to do this.
Like Aretha Franklin or Ray Charles before them, these singers grew up in the ultimate proving ground for a singer trying to find his or her voice: the church. Singing in front of an audience and learning new songs every week is practically a boot camp for a show like "Idol," and the string of church-bred winners and contestants (Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Mandisa, George Huff, Chris Sligh, etc.) got as far as they did on the show because they used those lessons they learned in church on a show that has become like a pop-culture religion.
Look for me on the show. And watch your back, Sway: I'm comin' for ya.