Barry Manilow on the Bench
Barry Manilow may write the songs, but on Tuesday night, America will vote on how well the "Idols" can sing them. Manilow stopped by "Extra’s" studios to talk about his new live double album and his guest appearance on America’s hottest show.
"I wanted to do an extreme makeover on my songs just specifically for them," he told us.
So was Manilow as big a fan of "American Idol" as last week’s guest judge Quentin Tarantino? "Um, I’d never watched it actually," Manilow admitted.
But the legendary singer agreed to act as both a mentor and
judge on the show -- with one condition: that he got to rearrange
the songs for each of the "Idols."
"If you do Elton's songs just the way he did them, you've got a shot," Manilow told us. "But if you do my songs in 2004 the way I did it in 1970, it's going to sound like elevator music."
Manilow’s fans certainly don't think of him as an elevator guy -- his new live double CD is a phenomenon: "It shipped gold, so a double album by a 75-year-old man… kidding," Barry joked (he’s only 58), before getting serious: "It really is quite a wonderful feat. I thank everybody for helping me out."
After continuously hearing people say that Clay Aiken reminds them of Manilow, the singer told us that Aiken is one former "Idol" who may have a shot of eclipsing him. "I have heard that over and over, and I think that he’s a better singer than I am," Manilow insisted. "He's got a better range and I think he's got a great future."
Find out the fate of this class of "Idols" Tuesday night on FOX.
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