Phillip Phillips: The Billboard Cover Story

[Miguel]

...Where Phillips stands alone is in the success of a single first performed on the show. His coronation song, "Home," written by Drew Pearson and Greg Holden, has delivered at a level unlike any other track performed by a current "Idol" contestant. It has hit No. 1 on a host of Billboard charts like Hot Digital Songs, Rock Digital Songs, Adult Top 40 and Triple A and reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 (No. 7), Mainstream Top 40 (No. 8) and Adult Contemporary (No. 6), while selling 3.3 million copies, more than any other coronation song.

...NBC used "Home" as a music bed for Olympic coverage of the women's gymnastic team, which helped drive huge gains for the song nine weeks after it sold 278,000 in its debut week. The track leaped to 228,000 downloads sold the week of Aug. 5, up from 40,000, and sold more than 100,000 per week through Sept. 23. Top 40 airplay kicked in in mid-November and it again started posting sales of more than 100,000 units per week.

Phillips has a heavy-duty touring schedule coming up. He has 10 college dates in January with a four-piece acoustic band, 21 dates opening for Matchbox Twenty from Jan. 29-Feb. 27 and more college shows with an electric band from March through May.

Phillips' distinction is that he's the first winner with a sound rooted in jam bands and folk-rock-an alternative to the styles covered on the Fox program. "This wasn't music you were hearing on the radio," Iovine says, referring to the show's run early in the year, which predated the pop acceptance of the Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men and the second Mumford & Sons album. "Phillip is a true artist and the fact that people are embracing his album shows they accept him as an artist."

When 19 Recordings went through BMG and then Sony-BMG, then-chairman/CEO Clive Davis said the first 300,000 of any winner's album sales were "a souvenir of the show." Pushing sales beyond a half-million was the responsibility of the record company and owed to the material and the marketing. If one were to recalculate that based on album sales being two-thirds of what they were in 2002, the year "Idol" debuted, Phillips' start more closely resembles that of Carrie Underwood than Taylor Hicks.

His attitude toward "Idol," he believes, was different from most contestants. It wasn't until he saw season 10's Casey Abrams, the double bassist/singer who favored Ray Charles and jazzy interpretations of pop (and finished in sixth place), that he could even envision trying out.

"I honestly didn't think people would like me -- I didn't care what happened on the show," he says. "It never seemed like a competition. I always made sure I was having fun and the band was having a good time. I didn't give in to what some people give into -- the fame. I went in, played the song and went back and got in bed. I hope it opens doors for other [non-pop singers] to do the show."

http://www.billboard.com/features/philli...4152.story