Angela Martin

One of the contestants in American Idol 8 is someone named Angela Martin. It's actually her second time on Idol as she also participated in the last season. She actually came rather close that time, making it all the way to the Hollywood rounds, but that was also where she found her journey cut short. So now she's back. And she didn't waste any time. No taking a year off to regain her bearings or her confidence. No one year away from Idol to hone her craft or work on her voice. The very next season, she's back at the auditions, and it's looking like she'll do one better in 2009.

Perhaps it may have something to do with the fact that she's 27 years old. Unlike a lot of the other teen wannabees, she doesn't quite have that many chances left. A kid who doesn't make it past a certain round could always take 4 or 5 years off to get better, while Angela Martin doesn't quite have that freedom.

On her MySpace profile page, it seems she refers to herself as A'wun. No idea why that is. And I really don't have any idea how that can help her music career. Branding maybe? But why, A'wun? Then again, depending on how long she sticks around in American Idol, we'll probably hear the answer to that question. A'wun. It looks like one of her heroes is her daughter. That's kind of cute.

Some of the artists mentioned as her inspirations include, Brandy and Aretha Franklin, among others. Can I just add here that I really, really, really don't like sites, whether they're blogs or MySpace profiles or something else which automatically play music? Good grief. It just makes a site load so much more slowly. Not to mention make it more intrusive. Anyway.

It says here that Angela Martin doesn't just sing. She also dances, acts, and plays the drums. Cool. I'm thinking that her ability to dance will help her out if she makes it past Hollywood, since it'll probably give her a stage presence that some of the more neophyte contestants may lack. That said, some of the other contestants in past American Idol seasons were a bit too contrived. In their cases, the fact that they were too conscious of their presence on stage hurt them, instead of helped them.

I wonder how Angela Martin will do. Did she learn a thing or two from her previous American Idol try?