Look What Clay Has Done Before American Idol Redefined Him

When I first saw Clay Aiken on American Idol, I knew he was someone to keep an eye on. So I did, as much as I could, but he didn’t get a lot of air time between the initial auditions and the Top 32. So it wasn’t until his knock-out performance of Open Arms in the second week of semi-finals that I really fell for him. In the next three weeks, I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to find as much out about him as I could. But after his Wild Card performance, the list of websites dedicated to him began to steadily grow. Perhaps the most valuable discovery I made was a list of songs he had recorded for two demo albums. At this time, I have had no success in acquiring those albums, entitled Redefined and Look What Love Has Done. They had very limited availability, and I do not know whether there are any plans to re-release them. It is possible to purchase copies from E-Bay, but they run as high as $200. However, all of the songs from the demos are widely available on the Internet and well worth checking out. What follows is a list of Clay’s pre-American Idol recording efforts.

Redefined

1. Still the One
2. I Know How the River Feels
3. Go the Distance*
4. Love of My Life*
5. Open Arms*
6. More to This Life
7. In Not Of*
8. Not Supposed to Love You Anymore
9. I Will Be Here
10. Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me
* Does not appear on Look What Love Has Done

Look What Love Has Done

1. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
2. Look What Love Has Done
3. Still The One
4. More To This Life
5. Dream Lover
6. I Know How The River Feels
7. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me
8. She Said Yes
9. I Will Be Here
10. My Girl
11. Not Supposed To Love You Anymore
12. Unchained Melody
13. Blood Will Never Lose Its Power

Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me - I like this song to begin with, so that doesn’t hurt. This was the song that turned Clay from Underdog to Teen Idol when he blew America away with it on the Wild Card round. His performance on that show was so terrific, I think he even outdid his studio version. Just a perfect rendition. Nonetheless, his studio version is very nice, extremely smooth and dynamic. His perfect enunciation came in handy for me here as there were a few lines I could never quite get listening to Elton John, but with Clay every word was unmistakable. I’m not crazy about the instrumentation on this track. I love the piano, but it sounds rather hollow, as though something is missing. Nonetheless, Clay does a great job with an old favorite of mine, and it’s one of my favorite of his demo recordings. “But you misread my meaning when I met you, closed the door and left me blinded by the light. Oh, don’t let the sun go down on me. Although I search myself, there’s always someone else I see. I just allow a fragment of your life to wander free.”

Look What Love Has Done - This is a nice song with which I was unfamiliar prior to hearing Clay’s version. Clay’s specialty seems to be romantic ballads, and this one fits that mold pretty well. A guy singing about how love has changed his outlook on life: “Was that lightning striking where I stand, or did you just reach out and take my hand?”

Still the One - This is one of the most upbeat songs in Clay’s catalogue. He shows that he is just as comfortable with an uptempo number as with a slow and pretty song. It’s one of his most fun tracks, and I imagine that as he was singing it he was grooving a bit to the beat. He sounds like he’s having a great time. “You’re still the one that turns my head. We’re still havin’ fun, and you’re still the one.”

More to This Life - Clearly a Christian track, this Steven Curtis Chapman song is fairly upbeat and asks listeners to remember that there is something beyond our realm of everyday mundane experience. Another unfamiliar song to me, it’s a nice gentle reminder to keep God in mind in spite of whatever struggles you may be facing. “There’s more to this life than livin’ and dyin’, more than just tryin’ to make it through the day…more than these eyes alone can see…”

Dream Lover - A classic oldie, often played on our local oldies station. It’s a pretty simple song, kinda snappy, about a guy dreaming his life away about a girlfriend who does not exist. He sounds pretty young in this song; his voice seems like it maybe hasn’t entirely settled itself in yet. Just a quick, fun tune with a couple of distinctive Clay touches, mainly extended notes in certain places. “I want a girl to call my own. I want a dream lover so I don’t have to dream alone.”

I Know How the River Feels - I’m a big fan of folk music, and a good friend of mine likes to tease me about it. Last year, she decided that my favorite musical instrument must be the mandolin; it just sounds like a folkie instrument, I guess. So I was amused when I heard this track and noted the pronounced presence of a mandolin. Also a new tune for me, it’s another slow love song with a very natural sound to it. The chorus includes some nice harmony as well. “Now I know how the river feels when it reaches the sea. It finally finds the place it was always meant to be.”

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me - He sounds young in Dream Lover, but that’s nothing compared to this. Am I just imagining this? I think he sounds about 16; his voice seems higher and even a little squeaky at points. The interesting thing is that both of these songs are on the later CD, not on the first. I presume they were all recorded about the same time, in Clay’s early 20s. So I don’t know why he seems so much younger here; maybe he’s just trying to convey youthful naivety in these two songs. At any rate, I like this track a lot. I always thought the song was much older, perhaps from the 30s, but it apparently was from the late 50s or 60s. It has a sort of overdramatic simplicity to it that is very endearing, and the internal rhyme is pretty nifty. “Kiss me, kiss me, when you do I know that you will miss me, miss me, if we ever say adieu…”

She Said Yes - A very slow and sweet country song, and also a new one for me. It only has two verses, but they parallel one another nicely. First, it’s a shy young man working up the nerve to ask a girl to dance; later, it’s that same man asking, this time with much greater conviction, that same lady to marry him. Clay does a really nice job with country tunes, and this gentle tune shows off his lower range and suits him well. “They won’t let go; it’s beyond their control. They lit a flame with the match God had made when she said yes.”

I Will Be Here - I have a hunch I heard this song before I encountered Clay’s version, because there was something very familiar about it. Also by Steven Curtis Chapman, whom Clay has identified as a favorite artist, it’s a gorgeous love song, one which I believe he has performed at a number of weddings. Very quiet and contemplative, soft enough throughout most of it to be a lullabye, and deeply religious in nature as well. This is definitely one of my favorite of Clay’s demo tracks, and I’m very glad to have discovered it. “You can cry on my shoulder; when the mirror tells us we’re older, I will hold you… I will be true to the promise I have made to you and to the One who gave you to me.”

My Girl - Another very upbeat song, one of the most well-known songs on his demo albums. Again, he’s in his stride, sounding like he is having a grand old time and adding his trademark extended notes to the chorus to add his own flavor to the song. It’s hard to beat the Temptations, but Clay gives them a run for their money! “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it’s cold outside I’ve got the month of May. I guess you say what can make me feel this way? My girl!”

Not Supposed to Love You Anymore - Another country song I never heard of before. Clay does a great job here of sounding like an anguished fella who has lost the love of his life. He’s going through a divorce, and instead of feeling liberated from a woman who doesn’t appreciate him, he can only feel misery because of what he has lost. “I shouldn’t care or wonder where or how you are, but I can’t hide this hurt inside my broken heart.”

Unchained Melody - Each of the American Idol semi-finalists had to fill out a questionnaire answering a number of questions about themselves. One was their favorite song to sing. When I saw that Clay’s favorite song to sing was Unchained Melody, I swooned along with several hundred other gals and kept my fingers crossed that he’d sing it in one of the last two shows, assuming (as I did) that he would get that far. I figured he was saving it for a big finish, which he basically did; it was his final song on the second-to-the-last night, and he blew everybody (except Simon :( ) away. What’s more, he revealed that this was his mom’s favorite song. Awwww!!! The difficult thing about this song is that the Righteous Brothers produced the definitive version of Unchained Melody, a perfect record. I do not believe it can be improved upon, and that includes Clay. He nonetheless does an admirable job, plowing through the song with gusto. He does perhaps make it a bit too “snappy,” as my brother complains, but it works. I love his version except for one small grumble: almost every time he says the word “to,” it comes out sounding like “tOW,” which is rather grating on the ears. He seems to have worked on this, though, as his live performance of the song is virtually free of this ideosyncracy. This is one of the greatest love songs of all time, and it’s great to hear Clay take a crack at it. “Oh, my love, my darlin’, I’ve hungered for your touch a long, lonely time. And time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much. Are you still mine?”

Blood Will Never Lose Its Power - This song, another I had never heard before, has a definite Gospel feel to it. It’s another clearly Christian song talking about the redemptive power of Christ and how it remains just as strong no matter what. Upbeat and full of conviction, it’s a nice song and has a sound that is unique to his demos. Also accentuates one of his vocal oddities: he has a very odd way of saying words with an “o” in them. In this case, the “ou” in “mountain” sounds more like a long “a,” but only for a split second, producing a very strange vowel indeed. Just one of Clay’s lovable quirks… “It reaches to the highest mountain. It flows to the lowest valley. The blood that gives me strength from day to day, it will never lose its power.”

Go the Distance - When I first saw that Clay sang this song, I was psyched because I think the theme song from Hercules is one of the prettiest in the recent Disney canon. I was really looking forward to hearing him sing it, so I was disappointed to discover that this was a totally different song that happened to have the same title. I still like the Hercules song better, but this one is also good. It’s a Christian song about how Christ was willing to go the distance for all his people, so we should be too. It encourages Christians to get out there and accept the Great Commission. “Even though I could choose the path of least resistance, Father, I will take the cross. I will go the distance.”

In Not Of - This song is mainly saying the same thing as the last song, but I don’t think it’s as successful. It just doesn’t appeal to me much for some reason, and I would list it as my least favorite Clay track. The instrumentation is heavy on the electric guitar and isn’t terribly melodic, and the message goes against itself and winds up sounding very sanctimonious – at least in my opinion. The idea is that Christians should not shield themselves from the rest of the world but should immerse themselves in it, embracing sinners and bringing them to Christ. I’m not sure why, but it just comes across to me as much too high-and-mighty – we’re too good for the rest of the world but lets try to save them from themselves. Or maybe it’s just me. It’s probably time I listened to it a couple more times… “Come take the Light to darker parts. Share His truth with hardened hearts. We are not like the world, but we can love it.”

Love of My Life - A very romantic Christian love song which Clay sings with passion. It’s hard to believe from all these songs that Clay has never been in a really serious romantic relationship. You wouldn’t know it from how he performs tunes like this. A beautiful number, with lots of poetic lyrics. “Now here we are, midnight closin’ in. Take my hand as our shadows dance with moonlight on your skin.”

Open Arms - I saved the best for last. This is the one that made me a certified Clayniac. And the weird thing is, I missed the beginning of his performance! I was very upset that I had missed part of it, but I came in during the middle of the chorus and my jaw dropped. He just floored me with this song, and I spent the next three weeks trying to get a clip of it. I would up finding the demo before I found the live performance. While I think the live performance of DLTSGDOM is better than the studio version, I think the studio version of Open Arms exceeds the live version, much as that impressed me. I mentioned that the Righteous Brothers had a perfect recording with Unchained Melody, and the same was the case with Simon and Garfunkel and Bridge Over Troubled Water. Bummer for Clay as these were his closing showstoppers of the second-to-last and last Tuesday on the show, but he did as well as he possibly could have. In this case, I believe Clay’s recording is the perfect one, improving upon the original. It sends shivers up my spine. The dynamic variation on this track is impressive; he starts out very quiet and works his way up to the chorus gradually. The first verse is rather quiet and melancholy, the second more pure anguish. It has the sort of dynamics that contributed so much to the success of the original version of Bridge. The instrumentation goes perfectly with his voice and the dynamics of the song, and it all comes together for a stunning performance. I get chills every time I hear him slide from the end of the first verse into the chorus. Absolutely masterful. My only complaint? That darn pronunciation again. I just can’t figure out what he’s doing with the word “nothing” in the chorus. It sounds like “wanting” to me, and I really, try as I might, can’t get it to sound like “nothing.” But it’s only a second long, and easy to overlook given the high quality of this track overall. I play this song more than any other of Clay’s. Well done. “We sailed on together, we drifted apart. Now here you are by my side. So now I come to you with open arms, nothing to hide. Believe what I say.”

Believe what I say, you will be missing out if you don’t give some of these tracks a try. I wish I could purchase his demo albums legitimately, but until that is a viable option (and I’m sorry, I’m not paying $200 for a copy on E-Bay) I am grateful to have access to these recordings. They are worth listening to over and over, and they prove that Clay was a star long before American Idol.