If you don't know the right people or have the right connections, you may never be discovered. With 'Opening Act,' we are democratizing a notoriously impossible process, pulling back the curtains on a consistently fascinating industry, and affording aspiring artists the chance of a lifetime.

Since I've been in the U.S. I've lost the back of my heart, 15 ft. of intestine and my marriage - and God, I miss my intestine.

The minute you take away somebody the public's voting for, you're screwing with the program. There's no logic to it.

I don't think rap really fits in to 'American Idol' in the sense that I believe rap is an art form in itself more akin to poetry, more akin to drama, if you will.

And what is a stage dad, or a stage mom? It's someone who's protective. That's all.

If you don't know the right people or have the right connections, you may never be discovered. With 'Opening Act,' we are democratizing a notoriously impossible process, pulling back the curtains on a consistently fascinating industry, and affording aspiring artists the chance of a lifetime.

That makes entertaining television. That is the circus of American Idol . We go for the very, very best and the very, very worst. It's the boring people that we don't want to see on television.