James Durbin

Every season of American Idol has at least one rocker vying for the crown, but few come with an honest-to-god metalhead like Adam Durbin, who wailed his way to a fourth-place finish through the show’s 2011 season. Blessed in 1989, Durbin grew up in Santa Cruz, California, where he was identified as having Tourette’s and Asperger’s symptoms at nine years of age. Uncomfortable in public situations, he considered music instead, creating a larger-than-life stage existence within a local movie theater group and performing business lead with Hollywood Marks, a hair steel group motivated by Mötley Crüe and Weapons N’ Roses. By enough time he auditioned for American Idol, he’d shifted to a fresh band known as Whatever Fits. Performing rock music by Queen, Muse, and Judas Priest, Durbin became among the season’s leading contenders, gaining evaluations to Adam Lambert (another high-voiced Idol alum) on the way. He completed fourth, joined up with the unavoidable “American Idol Summer months Tour” weeks following the show’s finale, and released an EP, American Idol Period 10 Features, in June 2011. Durbin’s full-length studio room debut, Thoughts of a lovely Disaster, offering the one “Like Me Poor,” adopted in November of 2011. In 2014, Durbin shifted in an a lot more pop-oriented path along with his sophomore recording, Celebrate, which presented the solitary “Parachute.”