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Clay Aiken

If you love or hate American Idol, you cannot deny it's a genuine phenomenon and second season runner-up Clay Aiken is a big part of it. While Aiken lost out to Ruben Studdard by 134,400 of the 24 million votes, at times it was hard to determine who the real winner was. Aiken appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone a month before Studdard. His first single, "This Is The Night," backed with his cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," debuted at No. 1, one position ahead of Studdard's "Flying Without Wings," when both songs bowed on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2002. Not bad for a 24-year-old former camp counselor from Raleigh, North Carolina. During the American Idol contest, Aiken managed to garner the attention of children and middle-aged housewives with his crooning, creating near Clay-mania in the process. He even managed to nearly bring celebrity judge Neil Sedaka to tears with his version of the Sedaka-penned Carpenters hit "Solitaire." While Aiken preferred to keep much of his past private during the American Idol run, he did open up in his Rolling Stone interview. He revealed he's a church-going Baptist who attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he majored in special education. He co-founded the Bubel/Aiken Foundation,... Next

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