Christopher Adam Daughtry (born December 26, 1979 in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, United States) is a Grammy nominated American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He was the fourth-place finalist on the highly publicized fifth season of American Idol, eliminated from the competition on May 10, 2006.
After his fallout from Idol, he was given a record deal by RCA Records, along with 19 Entertainment. His self-titled debut album sold more than 1 million copies after just 5 weeks of release, becoming the fastest selling debut rock album in history.
In its ninth week of release, the album reached number one on the Billboard charts. Daughtry is the fourth most successful American Idol contestant in the history of the show, in terms of record sales, behind Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Clay Aiken.Christopher Adam Daughtry was born in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. He was raised in Lasker, North Carolina until he was 14. His parents, Pete and Sandra Daughtry, reside in Palmyra, Virginia, where Daughtry grew up before he relocated to McLeansville outside of Greensboro, North Carolina. His brother, Kenneth, resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
At age 16, Daughtry started taking singing seriously as a professional musician. He performed with rock bands during his time in high school. Musical influences include bands like Bush, Live, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Bon Jovi, and Fuel. During high school he appeared in two stage productions: The Wiz and Peter Pan. For his first official performance he sang "Achy Breaky Heart" at his grandfather's bar. Daughtry graduated from Fluvanna High School in 1998. His first job was a service advisor at a car dealership at Crown Honda, in Greensboro, North Carolina.Daughtry's high school band went by the name of Cadence. He sang lead vocals and played rhythm guitar. They produced one album, a very rare piece that can sometimes be found on eBay.Daughtry sang lead vocals and played rhythm guitar for rock bands in Burlington.a[›] The band Absent Element consisted of Daughtry on lead vocals and guitar, Mark Perry on lead guitar, Scott Crawford on drums and Ryan Andrews on bass. Absent Element released Uprooted in 2005. This CD contains the songs "Conviction" and "Breakdown", which Daughtry combined and re-recorded as the song "Breakdown" for the Daughtry CD.
In 2005, Daughtry auditioned for the CBS singing contest, Rock Star: INXS. He did not make the cut for the actual filming of the show. Current drummer Joey Barnes was at the same audition and made the cut only to drop out of the running due to disagreements regarding the contract.Daughtry auditioned for American Idol in Denver, Colorado with The Boxtops' "The Letter"; he was portrayed as a young rocker with Southern and hard rock influences. He passed the audition by a split decision: approved by Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson, disapproved by Simon Cowell. Simon felt that Chris at that time was too robotic. After being given a Golden Ticket to Hollywood, he performed "The First Cut Is the Deepest", and sang "Emotion" during his trio performance with Ace Young and Bobby Bullard. The song for Daughtry's a cappella performance remains unknown.
Daughtry eventually made it out of the Hollywood Round and into the Top 24. On March 1, 2006, Daughtry's "raw" performance of Fuel's "Hemorrhage (In My Hands)" received critical acclaim by all three judges. On March 3, 2006, Jackson stated in an interview that Daughtry had been offered the opportunity to become Fuel's new lead singer, as the band was at the time without a lead singer. At a welcome home party Chris Daughtry said he had declined the offer, but, he said, "he'd still like to work with them somewhere down the road." Daughtry's March 21 performance caused controversy when the apparently original rendition of Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line" garnered much praise from the judges. However, viewers noted that the rendition was very similar to a version by Live; however, there was no mention of that in Daughtry's pre-performance interview. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Daughtry defended himself, saying "It wasn't my doing. You say a lot of things in the [pretaped] interview, and when editing gets involved, things get cut out for time constraints. I did mention in my interview that I'm doing a different version from a band I totally respect. The lead singer of Live, Ed Kowalczyk, called me to say, 'Man, don't listen to that.'...It was really cool to get that kind of respect."
Daughtry was in the final four on May 10, 2006, and found himself in the bottom two with Katharine McPhee. When asked by Seacrest who would be leaving, Cowell expressed that he believed that Katharine would be eliminated. Ryan Seacrest then announced that Daughtry was eliminated. Seacrest asked Daughtry if he was surprised. An obviously stunned Daughtry could only utter, "A little, yeah". The media grabbed hold of the surprise elimination and (practically an Idol tradition at this point) there was some controversy regarding the accuracy of the vote count on the night Daughtry was eliminated. The vote-tallying website DialIdol, however, predicted that Daughtry was the lowest vote-getter for the week.[10] In an interview after his elimination, Daughtry said that he thought he got voted off because his fans were "overconfident" that he would be safe, so they did not call and vote.
During the Season Five finale on May 24, 2006 at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, Daughtry performed the song "Mystery" with the band Live. After the show, "Mystery" suddenly went as high as #80 on the iTunes top 100 songs. Live's version of the song was later available for download on the bands MySpace.com profile with Daughtry as backup vocals.
