‘American Idol’ notes: Nicki Minaj, season 12 promo, Colton Dixon’s album release

We’ll start off our “American Idol” notes for Tuesday morning with a major announcement for Colton Dixon fans: “A Messenger” is now in stores! We had a chance to do a fantastic interview with him last week about the album, and you can check that out over at the link here.

Now that we’ve announced that, let us turn our focus now to what will be coming up on Wednesday night’s all-new episode. This will surprisingly be the last week of auditions for the show, which proves that there is a lot of talent right now that we are either not seeing very much of, or that is still to be revealed. There are a few shining stars present in these final audition cities based on the promo below, including a young man who seems to be making Mariah Carey think “Nick Cannon who?” as she is trying to offer up critique.

Our personal favorite moment of the entire clip, though, is of Nicki Minaj reminding one contestant that “there’s always Auto-Tune.” For whatever reason, most artists choose to just sit around and pretend as though the device doesn’t exist, even though some of the best in the business do use it from time to time. It is this sort of honesty that makes up appreciate having Nicki on the show even more; and while she is polarizing, we like that she can be honest with a bad singer without having to pull a Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell and put them down in the process and make them feel silly for even trying out.

Do you want to read some more news about Jessica Sanchez and Adam Lambert? If so, be sure to check out our Monday “American Idol” notes over at the link here.

Photo: Fox