We had to get a few things off our chest when we spoke to Madison VanDenburg in a never-been-aired interview we did with her late Friday morning.  Tonight on American Idol, Madison VanDenburg will perform three songs and by the time the show is over at 10 pm, we'll know if she's a top 3 candidate or not.  We believe in our heart of hearts she will be, but Chrissy and I also felt that something needed to be addressed about post-performance  'advice' she's been given from judge Katy Perry.  All this talk about adding hair-flips, more stage presence, dancing etc, is ridiculous.  VanDenburg is a unique singing talent and she's been given a gift.  Her voice stands out on it's own.  Hair-flips, glitz, glamour and all that stuff useful when needed to cover up some shortcomings when the singing voice isn't enough.  That's not the case with VanDenburg.  In her case, less is more.  On the eve of the biggest singing night of her life, we felt the need to give some advice to the budding teen star in hopes that she'll pull it back a bit so that we can remember why we fell in love with her in the first place. This is what we told her, and this is how she reacted.

 

As soon as she sat down at the piano and started to sing, America (and anyone watching back home in the Capital Region) knew she had 'it'. How could we forget the first time we saw this humble, unassuming, local high school student during the 'audition rounds' of American Idol?  Madison Vandenburg, the Cohoes 16-year-old, sang a a delicate, sweet, simple rendition of Dan + Shay Speechless, and it left the AI judges, and us watching at home, just that; speechless.  All this talk from Katy Perry about hair flips, stage presence, dancing etc.  needs to stop.  We hope VanDenburg agrees.

We'll find out tonight.

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