‘American Idol’ notes: Phillip Phillips, Jessica Sanchez, and Fantasia

While you enjoy Thursday night’s new “American Idol” episode, here is something you should keep in mind: you’re going to be hearing quite a bit of reigning champion Phillip Phillips.

Earlier this week, Fox confirmed that the goodbye song of the season (beginning during the finals) is going to be none other than Phillip’s new single “Gone, Gone, Gone.” It is a perfect song to send contestants off to just based on the lyrical content, and it also happens to be the best platform he could ever hope for. While not all farewell songs receive a sales bump from this show, Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” pretty much became a hit thanks to this series. The only thing that may have held back a few recent “goodbye song” singers (Scotty McCreery and David Cook come to mind) is that they snag covers rather than original pieces.

Jessica’s new video – Speaking of new music, Jessica Sanchez is really starting to make good timing when it comes to releasing what should be her upcoming single.

According to Mjsbigblog, Sanchez is getting set to film the music video for “Tonight” on March 1, and it is possible that she will even be joined by her new collaborator in Ne-Yo to record it. Having this talent involved from the get-go shows just how big Interscope believes that the teen phenom can be, and her music release seems to be primed for a good run on the show later on this spring.

Jessica’s album will come out at some point later this year … but we’ll have more details on that very soon.

Fantasia’s cover – Ready for some new music from none other than the season 3 champ? To the left, you can see the cover for the April 23 release “Side Effects of You,” which certainly has a nice air of fierceness to it.

The season 3 champ has some pretty nice collaborations on this album, including one with Kelly Rowland and Missy Elliot (“Without Me”) along with King Los (“Make Me Feel”). What we love about Fantasia’s music is that even when there are songs that we don’t enjoy as much as others, we don’t feel like she is someone who ever compromises her music or her style, which is evident by the fact that her music never strays too far from her R&B and soul roots.

Just like Jessica, we’re hoping that the show gives her an opportunity to come back and perform at some point.

If you want to see who we think are going to be some standouts of “American Idol” with the guys, you can do so over here.

Photo: Fox