Season 3
This time, three new venues for auditions were added to the list. These were Houston, San Francisco and Honolulu, Hawaii. Auditions were held in 2003 after season two finale. Season three started airing from January 19, 2004. For American Idol Three, judges started auditions from New York City. Then they moved to Atlanta, then Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and ended in Honolulu. But alas, only thirteen people got selected from Houston and judges found no talent in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The sixth episode was enough to raise your eyebrows, and to say Oh Crap! Because you would find worst performers, in fact no performers at all in that episode.
During these auditions, for the very first time, a contestant got arrested. It’s Matt Gamble of Philadelphia, he sang Celina Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” and was intimated immediately that he couldn’t go to Hollywood. He became furious at this and started abusing judges, breaking lighting equipments and thumping violently over judges’ table. Though nobody was injured but judges took a few hours break after this perturbing incident.
Another worth mentioning and amazing thing about this season was Jennifer Hudson. The ‘Sex and the City’ fame Golden Globe Award and Academy Award winning actress was discovered on this show. She was among top eight and most of people were expecting her to win. But she and two other contestants, rocker, John Peter Lewis and crooner, John Stevens were unexpectedly eliminated putting authenticity of the show under doubt.
This season garnered maximum votes approx. 360 million compared to the previous seasons. Out of 117 finalists chosen from auditions only 87 got through to next round. Later this number further went down to 32 and finally a group of twelve people got selected for American Idol race. They battled several rounds and then from episode 21, they began to eliminate one contestant in every episode.
American Idol got its final three after several weeks of sobbing and disappointment after eliminations. These final three were Jasmine Trias, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. In the final week public voted out Jasmine Trias and Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo started sharpening their singing talents for their final battle. And eventually, on 26th May, 2004, the most awaited season finale came and earning 65 million votes, for the first time in American Idol history, Fantasia Barrino won the American Idol-3. On this glorious event previous American Idols performed their hit songs from their albums.
