Diana DeGarmo

At just 16 years old and still a junior at her Snellville, Georgia high school, Diana DeGarmo entered American Idol’s 2004 competition as its youngest finalist, a fact her commanding and assured vocals made easy to overlook. An upbringing steeped in show business had already prepared her for the spotlight. Early Atlanta productions of Annie and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat gave her initial stage experience, while her membership in Coca-Cola’s “Olympic Kids” placed her on the 1996 Summer Olympics program. She next joined Cartoon Network’s Cartoon Gang and later reached the finals of NBC’s America’s Most Talented Kid. Because she remained underage for the first American Idol season, DeGarmo initially refused to watch, yet a midseason glimpse turned her into an ardent Kelly Clarkson supporter. Still ineligible for season two, she followed the show closely and, in the interim, earned the Miss Teen Georgia title. When prior commitments blocked her from auditioning during the season-three visit to nearby Atlanta, she and her family instead traveled to Hawaii for the subsequent tryouts. Selected as a contestant, she advanced to finish second behind Fantasia Barrino. While Barrino’s “I Believe” held the top chart position, DeGarmo’s Desmond Child-penned single “Dreams” reached number two. The songwriter had been a family acquaintance since DeGarmo was 12, and, she later noted, he had inserted a reference to her in Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” with the lyric “she switches sides like a Gemini.” Following the season-three national tour with fellow contestants, her debut album Blue Skies arrived in stores at the close of 2004.