Resistance is Futile

A few days ago I blogged about How I discovered Clay Aiken, but I must admit that it was very difficult shaking off years of being a pop music hater. I grew up playing classical piano for twelve years and classical was the only station my mom ever listened to in the car. When I had my druthers, I would switch to sports talk radio, because I was the teen sports trivia queen utterly obsessed with statistics and sports history. Popular music? Feh. I spent my childhood rolling my eyes at my contemporaries who loved Paula Abdul or NKOTB and my teenage years strongly resisting my best friend obsessed with country music's pleas to accompany her to concerts. My college years, I joined in with the file-sharers who had no respect for record companies. In short: Number of CDs purchased in my first twenty -two years of life: 0. Number of concerts attended in my first twenty-two years of life: 0.

So along comes this Aiken guy with all his charm and wit and talent to turn my world upside down when I saw him on the Tonight Show, but I still couldn't quite take the plunge to buy that CD, because I just don't believe in buying CDs, you know? I was watching the message boards pretty intently by this point, however, and knew that Mr. Aiken had an appearance coming up on Saturday Night Live, and I decided if he could wow me again then, I would *takes deep breath* buy his CD.

And then this happened:

Wow, those clothes look nice on him. What is he doing with his eyes? Gah! And the mic stand moves? OMG! Is that a growl I heard? Squee! You get the picture. I was beyond impressed that not only was this Clay Aiken guy smart, funny, talented and professional, he was most definitely sexy too. Ordered that copy of Measure of a Man from Amazon.com in a jiffy after that. :)

ETA after watching again: How could I forget those eyelashes! And his bopping along while acknowledging the band was too cute.

ETAA to add another video of "The Way:"

I LOVED the lipbite and wide-eyed wonder he shows at the end of the performance here. He's in full pop/rock star mode while performing but just drinks in the crowd appreciation with this incredulous "I can't believe I'm here" look that's positively swoon-worthy.

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