EXCLUSIVES

Interview by Joshua Rotter

February 2005

If three is the charm, then Kimberley Locke has great hope yet. Beaten out of the coveted “American Idol” top spot in the second season, Locke isn’t beat.

While walking down the street in New York’s West Village, cruising a cute boy, Locke might still have high school style crushes, but at 26, she’s every inch a woman, with a strong voice and influences, betraying an old soul.

While doing press for her new single “Wrong” off her hot new release, One Love, made on Protools®, the admitted iPod afficionado said her favorite music to download off iTunes is seven decades old.

“I buy old Judy Garland tracks,” she said. “My favorite thing in the world. I listen to them over and over again.”
In fact, one of the Hartsville, Tennessee native’s earliest memories is singing Wizard of Oz tunes in the back seat of her father’s car on the way to a babysitter’s house.

Raised on a steady diet of Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle, Kimberly relied on her grandmother’s extensive vinyl collection to listen to her favorite singers.

“That music has more emotion, and back then in those days, you had to be a real singer,” she said. “It was all or nothing: no talent, no record deal. If you listen to old records, you can hear emotions in their voices and the way they sing. And those guys only had one shot to get it right, and that was it. Look at Aretha, who even when young was no beauty queen. But you did not have to be at that time, because it was not about that. Etta James was a thick young girl, not a stick figure, but it didn’t matter, because she had talent.”

Whether she was singing with her cousins as back-up musicians, or in her first girl-group in the seventh grade called Shadz of U, where she sang acappella material and a lot of Gospel at local churches, or in the premier high school group called “The Performers,” which featured a top 20 select group of male and female singers, where she honed her craft, it was clear she was a natural performer.

Attending Belmont University in Nashville to study business education, she put her singing dreams on hold to focus on school. A friend convinced her to join a local band, Black Widow, a group that sang Top 40, and The Imperials, a group of retired professors - in which the drummer had once played with James Brown.

Although she put her singing on hold temporarily to pursue a law school degree at the Nashvlle School of Law, which seemed more pragmatic at the time, she didn’t pass up the momentous opportunity to to audition for American Idol in Nashville.

After making it through multiple rounds of auditions, which led her to Los Angeles for final tryouts at Glendale’s Alex Theatre, Locke was forced to make a serious decision - to begin law school or pass on pursuing American Idol any further, because the final auditions were the week after she was to begin law school.

“It was very scary for me,” Locke said about the decision-making process. “I had made this decision to stop singing, because I’m a realist. The singing was not happening, and I had to be realistic about life. I was already enrolled in law school, but when American Idol came out, I realized I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and law school would always be there.”

Every day 100 people went home, then 20, and then groups of eight were split up into the top 32. It was in Locke’s group that she met her strongest competitors Clay Aiken and Ruben Stoddard.

Producers kept throwing curve balls at the contestants to narrow them down. One night they didn’t stop rehearsing until 11:00pm, and then they gave them cold lyrics that they had to take back to their hotel rooms, make up a song for them, and come back and sing the next morning.

“I had to come up with the melody,” she said. “It was very nerve-racking. But I was very fortunate, because when I came back to the hotel, it worked out for me. I was playing really hard, trust me. I’d look at the lyrics and sing what I felt and just work it out.”

The final day came when Locke made it to the top three with Aiken and Stoddard, and then lost by a slim margin. Regardless, Kimberley remains friends with both of them. After American Idol ended, Locke embarked on the American Idol tour cross country, and soon she had a recording contract with Curb Records.

When Locke set to work on her debut album she wanted a mixture of pop, R&B and ballads, sung with power and intensity. “The songs bring out something in you,” she said. “But you have to be able to adjust and step forward and put yourself into it.”

But the singer didn’t have to struggle to fit herself into perhaps the most powerful number on the album, “You’ve Changed.” “That’s the Mary J. Blige song,” she said. “Everyone has experiences. And I had my own, trust me. Life was not easy. At 26, there are plenty of things I feel passionate about and I sing from experience. And singing from the heart isn’t always comfortable.”

But any discomfort she may have felt was assuaged when One Love debuted at no. 13, spawning two hits, the top 40 single “Wrong,” and the number-one-selling "8th World Wonder."

As Locke prepares for a fall tour and a stint singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” off her new album at the upcoming Kristi Yamaguchi ice skating special, she hopes to prolong her time in the spotlight and achieve the longevity of many of her own American idols such as Garland, Ross and Franklin with even more hits. “Hits are important, because at this point I need them, so I can be on the radio and more people can hear my music,” she said. “But once I’m established, who cares? But right now, I need those hits. They’re crucial to any artist.”

www.kimberleylockeweb.com