'American Idol' from Nashville:on 1/27: Lauren Alaina Shines

Thursday, January 27, 2011, Fox, 8 PM (ET) "American Idol" from Nashville featured the main drag, Broadway, clogged with 17,000 contestants.

Nashville is known as "Music City." We saw so few people put through from Nashville, but, given the talent that flocks to Nashville to make it in the music business, it is a given that we will see contestants in Hollywood who came out of these auditions.

THE GOOD

One that we did see in Nashville who was outstanding was Lauren Alaina from Rossville, Georgia. Lauren's parents let slip that she won't be 15 for 2 weeks. She had both the raw talent, the potential for a makeover towards the better-looking side, and a hard luck back-story: her cousin Holly, with whom she was raised, has brain cancer. All 3 judges agreed, "If you got it (talent), you got it."

Others who made it through were Stormy, Miss Teen USA of 2009 who sang "Father, Can you Hear Me?" in what Jennifer Lopez (who voted no) called "The smallest voice we've ever heard in 5 cities." Adrian Simmons, 22, a black girl with white adoptive parents, also made it through and was '˜fixin' to go to Hollywood." The former boyfriend/girlfriend duo of Chelsea Oaks, 23, and Rob Bolin, 23, both made it through. Allan Luce, 24 from Ohio was voted through; Danny Pate, who sang "Papa Is A Rolling Stone" was passed through and Matt Dillard, 27, from Nashville, from Cheatham County, Tennessee and had a sad back story involving a family with numerous special needs foster children was passed through, but none of them could hold a candle to Lauren, who came back into the audition room with her entire family and dueted a bit with Steven Tyler on the song he wrote for "Armageddon."

THE BAD

There were so many bad singers that we weren't even given their names. Just a few of the more interesting ones included the tattoo artist, Allen Lewis; 28-year-old Kameela Merricks who screamed her way through a song and caused Randy to say, "Come on, girl. Oh, my goodness. Honestly, just don't do it." There was a girl with the name Poline Khorzheva and a man named Patrick Counts who caused Randy to say, "What kind of joke is this?" Jackie Wilson, 28, of Nashville and LaToya Moore, 26, of Nashville---who brought along one copy of her own album---were bad.

The judges move on to Austin, Texas next.