This season of "American Idol" reminds me of a poster that used to hang in one of my high school classrooms that read: "What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular." This season the battle is between the popular (Sanjaya) and the person who should rightfully be the American Idol based on talent (everyone else on the show).
While Sanjaya may be raking in the votes based on popular websites like VoteForTheWorst.
com and fans of his ever-changing hairstyles (aka: "the Ponyhawk"), what do you really know about this kid? If you're gonna vote for him, you should at least know a little bit about the contestant that Simon Cowell thinks "is in [his] own universe!"
Sanjaya Malakar hails from Seattle, Washington.
At 17-years-old, he ties with Jordan Sparks to be the youngest contestant in this season's Top 10. So young, in fact, he chose to drop out of high school to participate in "American Idol," deciding to go for the GED and a musical career for his future plans.
If you watched "Idol" early in the season, you saw his sister Shamble also made it to Hollywood – but was cut right before making the Top 40.
Not surprising, considering both Malayas come from a very musical family; their dad is a classical Bengali Indian musician. Sanjaya's family encouraged him to pursue and celebrate music, and in the brief time the family lived in Honolulu, he was active in the Hawaii Children's Theater Group. After the move to Washington, he participated in the Total Experience Gospel Choir.
He's also had formal vocal training.
If you couldn't tell by the "interesting" outfit he wore a few weeks ago for the British Music Invasion week, he loves Michael Jackson (fedora and jacket anyone?).
He also really looks up to Steve Wonder for musical inspiration – appropriately, his audition song was "Sign, Sealed, Delivered."
AI Executive Producer Nigel Lithgow admits that there has even been a phrase named after him – being "Sanjayaed." In an interview he confessed, "I think we're going to have this thing called the 'Sanjaya Effect.
' I feel as though last week, I was 'Sanjayaed' purely and simply because he's got guts and you have to applaud that. If half the people with more talent than him had his guts, we'd get better talent all around."
Sanjaya escaped the bottom three this week (curly-haired Chris Sligh was sent packing), but every week the slate is cleared again.
Check for Tony Bennett to be the guest mentor Tuesday and a performance from the legendary singer on Wednesday's result show.Advertisement
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