She might have finished in 20th place, but that’s not stopping Leslie Hunt. Find out what this Idol contestant has been up to since being voted off — and what she thinks about her former opponents in the Top 4 — in this special interview with Idol Chat Editor Brandon Garcia.
By the end of the month, American Idol will have crowned a new superstar in the pop music industry.
While Melinda Doolittle, Jordin Sparks, Blake Lewis or LaKisha Jones have three weeks left to duke it out for that title, one thing’s for sure: Your next American Idol will not be Leslie Hunt.
Up against a field of wannabe Dreamgirls and faux hipsters, the waifish strawberry blonde with the husky voice failed to pique the interests of Idol voters back in the semi-finals. Simon Cowell correctly predicted her take on Nina Simone’s jazz classic “Feeling Good” — complete with scatting — would get lost among her opponents’ “bigger voices,” and Hunt was sent packing.
She’s left with a bittersweet feeling as Season Six draws closer to its finale. On one hand, she’s happy to see fame and fortune within reach of the remaining contestants, several of whom she’s quick to call friends.
Still, there’s the nagging feeling of missed opportunity — and the familiar reminder that success isn’t always deserved.
One of the final four in particular “hasn’t paid a single goddamn due,” Hunt says.
Who? She leaves that to speculation: “Can’t burn bridges when you got voted off the second week.”
But Hunt’s not one to mince words. Her Idol journey might have ended with a whimper (or a scat), but Leslie Hunt is all about honesty.
“No compromises.” Not anymore.
“Everyone said, ‘Sing songs people know,’” Hunt said. “I should’ve gone with my gut.”
Hunt regrets not selecting edgier songs that fit her own offbeat stylings, like tracks from indie rocker Leslie Feist or Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity,” which she ultimately handed over to Blake Lewis.
Instead, she picked out songs that were more at home on the standards-worshipping show, like Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman,” which had previously won her first prize in a “weird Cruise-Ship Idol” competition.
“I thought I could be a good actress,” she says. “I really just wasn’t. It was just, like, really stale.”
Blame her early exit on too much rehearsal time: “By the time I actually did the song, I’d (already) done it so much.”
Or blame it on unfamiliarity: The 25-year-old dog walker from Chicago was perhaps the first contestant on the show never to have seen a single episode beforehand.
But inexperience certainly was not the culprit. Hunt has been a performing musician for the past 11 years. Her first gig was in a Led Zeppelin cover band in junior high, and she’s currently back together with jazz outfit Mark Twang. A pianist since the age of 4, she only recently began to find her footing exclusively as a vocalist.
“I’m not so, so comfortable without my piano, having that exchange between my hands.”
Before American Idol, Hunt dabbled in the professional recording industry, having cut a few demos for Sony with a “real ’80s, ‘Eye of the Tiger’” producer. The “ultra-commercialized veneer” of those records didn’t fit.
“(The producer) tried to whore me out as much as possible,” she freely admits.
So why turn to Idol, the mainstream of the mainstream?
“The approach that I’d been taking [toward a career in music] had been slow and painstaking,” Hunt explains. “I needed a jumpstart, just for ‘believe-in-myself’-wise. What better validation than having 100,000 people audition and making it?”
Things started off well.
She flew off to Los Angeles in August 2005 to try out for Season 6’s very first audition — the “cattle call,” where thousands upon thousands are rejected and a limited few are advanced toward the executive-producer rounds.
“I think I have a pretty interesting voice, kind of deeper and raspier,” which she credits with getting her through the brutal initial rounds and into an audience with Simon, Randy and Paula. It was smooth sailing from there, she said.
“We all had a really good vibe. I’m literally in there for 20 minutes just, like, bull****ting with these guys.”
“Simon said, ‘Can you teach Paula how to sit?’”
Hunt got an early windfall among Idol blog fanatics when Fox aired a very early clip of her audition months before the show started.
“They called me the ‘Baby I Love You’ Girl.”
But the early luck didn’t last.
Hunt was eliminated on March 1, along with Alaina Alexander, A.J. Tabaldo and Nick Pedro, while questionable talents like Sanjaya Malakar and the tabloid-friendly Antonella Barba remained.
“I hated Antonella with every bone of my body,” Hunt said. ”It got to the point where it was debilitating. I had violent dreams about her.”
While she didn’t click with all of her opponents, Hunt did walk away from the show with at least one new buddy.
“I made really good friends with Gina Glocksen,” the magenta-haired rocker chick who finished in ninth place. “Our boyfriends are friends. I got wasted with her a couple of nights ago.”
And while Hunt missed out on Gwen Stefani Week and meeting her beloved Tony Bennett, she’s not fretting.
“I don’t need to have a blowout rock career,” she said. “I don’t need to ever be on the red carpet as long as I live. I never was in it for that. It’s important for me to have kids who don’t have to live in their mother’s shadow.”
She’s been busy “writing a ton of music with my dogs” and reuniting with her jazz band.
“I’ve written songs about temptation and addiction, heartbreak, someone that wants me to be a polygamist,” she said — not quite wholesome anthems like “A Moment Like This” or “Inside Your Heaven.”
The lyrics of her Idol swan song might’ve been more prescient than even she imagined:
“It’s a new dawn/
It’s a new day/
It’s a new life for me/
And I’m feeling good.”
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Check out Leslie Hunt’s MySpace page.
