‘American Idol’ notes: Haley Reinhart, Kris Allen, and Heejun Han

For our second Tuesday edition of “American Idol” notes, we’re going a little bit all over the place when it comes to our subject matter — but there are some interesting things to report.

Haley and Kris move up – While Haley Reinhart and Kris Allen are each likely expected to debut with somewhere between 16,000-21,000 copies of their new albums (with a slight edge up to Haley), there is some good news to report from the Hot AC radio shart.

For the first time since their singles “Free” and “The Vision of Love” debuted, both songs have reached the top 30 on the chart — with Haley at #29 and Kris at #30. (However, expect the two to flip-flop positions within the next 48 hours or so.) Getting some airplay should not only help both of them sell more singles, but hopefully bring some attention to what are two pretty fantastic albums that aren’t getting enough love just yet.

Heejun covers “How Deep is Your Love” – Get your hankies ready, mostly because this is one of the sweetest / saddest things that we have seen all day.

Along with Arden Cho and Gerald Ko, Heejun Han can be seen in the video below giving a pretty memorable cover of “How Deep is Your Love” by the Bee Gees in what is a tribute to the late Robin Gibb. This shows just what sort of vocal Heejun is capable of when giving the right material, and he is already planning to launch a singing career over in South Korea.

Did producers get Ruben wrong? – “Idol” executive producer Nigel Lythgoe did a lengthy (and fascinating) interview over at TVLine, and one of the more interesting comments to come out of it (outside of Nigel and Fox head Kevin Reilly being at odds over “The X Factor” leading to some viewer decline for all singing competitions) was that he felt that record executives failed to understand what sort of performer Ruben Studdard was after his season 2 win:

” I do love the validation when they are successful. And I get annoyed when the record company, in my opinion, gives them the wrong music to sing. The best example I can give you of that is Ruben Studdard. I believe they just said, ‘Oh, you’re black, you should be singing urban music,’ rather than [envisioning] this wonderful sort of crossover artist that he was. He was singing Neil Sedaka and the Bee Gees songs beautifully — in a sort of Donny Hathaway- Luther Vandross way. They just put him in this [narrow] category, which was a shame to me.”

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What do you think about Nigel’s comments? Feel free to share below, and as always stay tuned for more “Idol” news!

Photo: Interscope / 19