Blake Lewis dropped from Arista
Jun 24, 2008, 03:26 PM | by Shirley Halperin
Categories: American Idol, Music, Music Biz
Blake Lewis may have come in second place on season 6 of American Idol, but he won't be seeing a second release on Arista Records. A rep for the major tells EW.com that the label "will not be picking up Blake's option" for any future recorded projects. Lewis will, however, remain on Idol creator Simon Fuller's 19 Recordings roster.
The news first broke on popular Idol online destination MJ's big blog, which featured an audio interview with Lewis where he said that, as of three days ago, he was informed he'd lost his recording contract. By Idol standards, his debut album, Audio Day Dream, which has yet to go gold, did not perform as well as expected. It sold 98,000 its first week and almost 300,000 to date. Lewis contends that, despite keeping most of the control over the recordings, he didn't have proper support for the release. He's not alone. Earlier this year, EW reported that former Idol winners Taylor Hicks and Ruben Studdard had also been unceremoniously dropped from the SonyBMG family. Says Arista: "We wish [Lewis] the best of luck in his future endeavors."
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