By Lori Acken
She seemed like just about the nicest young woman in the whole wide world on the show — and during a Friday conference call with journalists, American Idol‘s latest ousted contestant, Karen Rodriguez, did nothing to dispel the notion.
Sounding relaxed and thrilled by her Idol experience, Rodriguez made two things especially clear: She has no regrets about her much-discussed trademark of singing her selections in a mixture of English and Spanish, and she is thoroughly confident about her future career.
“I’ve always had a vision of myself as a Latin American artist,” the 21-year-old New Yorker said, noting that, even though the show is called American Idol, America is, after all, one big melting pot — and that doesn’t mean a pot filled solely with rock, country and R&B performers and fans. “I know it’s called American Idol, but there are so many cultures in America. I wanted to stand up for my race, for my culture.”
That outlook, she says, also helped her forge a tight bond with her role model, Idol judge Jennifer Lopez, who portrayed another of Rodriguez’s heroes — fallen Latin American crossover singer Selena — on the big screen.
Asked what Lopez — a vocal K Rod supporter and clearly the “yea” vote in the evening’s split decision about whether to award Rodriguez the judges’ sole save — told her after the cameras stopped rolling, Rodriguez revealed, “She said that I was perfect. She said somebody had to go home and this was just my time. … Jennifer would have saved me.”
But Rodriguez is hardly wallowing in her departure, noting happily “I got to sing to [Jennifer] every week!” as a highlight of her Idol experience, along with the opportunity to see her version of Selena’s “I Could Fall In Love” become an iTunes hit.
“I always live by the words that everything happens for a reason,” she says. “In a few days or a few months I’ll see that maybe if I would have stayed, I would have a missed an opportunity that was out there for me.”
Opportunities she hopes will also include commercials and films.
“There’s not really a female artist doing the Latin American crossover thing right now and I want to be that artist,” Rodriguez laughs. “I want to win a Grammy, I want to win an Oscar … I just have so much faith!”
And so do her legion of fans, who bombard her Twitter feed with countless messages of support.
“I check my Twitter every single day!” Rodriguez says, adding that she gratefully responds to as many fans as possible. “It gives me hope, because I know that as soon as I release anything, there’s going to be millions of people supporting me.”
Including the one person who has been her biggest fan from the very beginning — her mom, Elvira — whom the young artist can’t wait to pay back for the sacrifices she’s made to ensure that her daughter could fulfill her dream. “My mom wanted to be a singer when she was young — and she made it clear that she wanted all of her kids to be fluent in Spanish.”
Which is why she says she was never afraid of alienating Idol voters with her bilingual performances.
“I wanted to be a Latin American Idol!”
More fun facts about Karen Rodriguez:
• She did a voiceover for a movie when she was in high school
• She’s a graduate of Boston’s Berklee School of Music
• She and fellow contestant Pia Toscano were classmates and performed and wrote music together before they appeared on Idol.
• She finished seventh in Season Five of the Puerto Rican television program Objectivo Fama, which she says prepared her for American Idol by teaching her to trust her own instincts. “When I was in that Spanish show, I was the American one,” Rodriguez laughs.
American Idol airs Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8/7c on FOX.
Photo: FOX
