One of the former American Idol winners did not mince his words when it came to how he felt about his coronation song. Which victor is this, you may ask?
None other than season 13 champ Caleb Johnson!
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the popular singing competition series, the 31-year-old reflected on the moment he won season 13 in an interview with Insider. Looking back, Caleb did not have the same reaction as most other winners. Nope! While the artist was initially stunned by the results, he also felt a deep sense of dread at the time, he revealed, all thanks to his coronation song, As Long as You Love Me.
Calling the single a “cheesy piece of crap,” Caleb confessed to the outlet that he was “really bummed” to have to perform it on the finale:
“I knew that, by de facto, if you won you had to sing the song, and the song was just utter crap. Like it was just the worst song ever.”
Ouch!!!
In fact, the singer hated the track so much that he tried to fight with the show’s producers over performing it. But they made him sing it anyway:
“I pitched a fit about it to the management company and all this stuff. And they were like, look at this as kind of a graduation present or something.”
Caleb only became more frustrated with the song when he found out that it was actually used for another finalist two years prior! In 2012, Idols South Africa runner-up Mark Haze apparently recorded and released a version of As Long as You Love Me for his debut album. Then, the former Elijah Hooker frontman was given the same song with slightly different lyrics. Big yikes! He questioned to Insider:
“How is that even possible that somebody else releases the same song in another country?”
Still, Caleb went on to perform the song for the American Idol summer tour once the season wrapped. However, his opinions about the number ended up being right, and fortunately for him, it was soon dropped from the set list:
“We did at the beginning, but they switched it. They switched it about halfway because it just wasn’t working. It was not working, and it was a nightmare.”
Fans seemed to be on the same page with Caleb as it failed to even chart the Billboard Hot 100 — becoming the first in the show’s history to do so. So safe to say that no one should expect him to ever sing the song again! LOLz! But you can still ch-ch-check it out if you want (below):
We can’t help but wonder how the song’s writer, The Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins, must feel about this… Something tells us we’ll hear about it sooner or later…
While dealing with a song that he despised, Caleb also was fighting with the competition series’ label, 19 Recordings. He slammed the label to Insider for putting “absolutely no support behind” his debut album, Testify, saying:
“The label wouldn’t release the single. There was no single that came out after the record was done. There was no music video. There was nothing.”
It sounds like Caleb might have had a less than favorable experience after Idol!
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