Aging 'Idol' Ventures Fourth
As Newest Judge, DioGuardi to Lend Her Fresh Voice

By Chris Richards
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 13, 2009

NEW YORK

After tonight's season debut she'll be a household name, but on a recent afternoon, Kara DioGuardi is spinning circles in a chair at Fox's Manhattan offices, imagining an alternate reality. What if "American Idol" had existed during her days as a wannabe pop star?

Swivel, swivel, back and forth -- it's hard to tell whether she is daydreaming or cringing.

"A younger version of me meeting Simon Cowell? That would be funny," DioGuardi says, turning a full 360 degrees before spinning back to the conversation. "I wonder what he would have thought?" She clicks her fingernails on a nearby tabletop as if visualizing the worst. Then, a playful shrug. "I won't lose any sleep over it."

DioGuardi hasn't had much time for sleep since Fox bigwigs announced that the pop songwriter would be joining Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul as the fourth judge on the most popular show on television. For the singer-turned-songwriter-turned-producer-turned-imminent television star, the past few weeks have been an endless cycle of interviews and photo shoots.

But fame isn't entirely new to DioGuardi. Until now, the 38-year-old has made her name from behind the curtains of Hollywood's pop machine, both as a hit songsmith and producer. In addition to helming a successful music publishing business, she's crafted tunes for the A-list (Celine Dion, Britney Spears), coaxed sunshine out of the B-list (Ashlee Simpson, Lindsay Lohan) and even helped a few "Idol" alums make the jump from TV land to the pop charts (Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood).

Now, with "Idol" showing some signs of old age, DioGuardi is coming on board to help reverse the ratings dip that the show suffered last year, and, guessing from her assertive demeanor, she won't pull any punches. She takes a seat between Randy and Paula when the eighth season of "American Idol" premieres tonight, representing a major tweak in the show's formula.

This is not the first time "Idol" invited a fourth judge to the party. New York radio host Angie Martinez was recruited before the second season to help mix things up. But, uncomfortable with the burden of perpetually asking young people to hang up their dreams, Martinez jumped ship before the competition started, leaving the Cowell-Jackson-Abdul chemistry undisturbed for six more seasons.

And while DioGuardi's response to the invite was almost reflexive ("When 'Idol' calls, you just go 'Yeah,' " she says blankly), she understands Martinez's hesitations. She aspires to bluntness, but she's quick to police herself away from being a dream-crusher -- particularly because she's seen her own pop dreams crushed over and over again.

"I was told 'no' a lot," she says of her days as an aspiring singer in the mid-'90s. "But nobody could ever tell me why. I think hearing that 'why' is pretty invaluable. So I'm just going to impart my experience to these kids and hope that they learn something."

Long before doling out tough love on television, the first steps of DioGuardi's musical journey were just plain tough. Her early ambitions, in fact, don't sound dissimilar to the starry-eyed testimonials we're likely to hear from "Idol" contestants tonight.

"As a little girl, I'd always dreamed of being an artist," she says. "But it wasn't always encouraged." Worried for her financial security, the hopeful singer's parents urged her to get an education (her father is retired New York congressman Joseph J. DioGuardi). So after graduating from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., DioGuardi headed off to Duke University.

After college, she landed a position at Billboard magazine in New York, a gig that provided her with an early mentor (former editor Larry Flick) and a break (an audience with none other than Paula Abdul). Upon hearing her demo in 1998, Abdul's response was beyond anything DioGuardi expected: She invited the young songwriter to relocate to California so they could collaborate.

DioGuardi moved into Abdul's house and quickly got to work. Before long the roomies had penned "Spinning Around," a bubbly dance track that would go on to become an international hit for Aussie pop queen Kylie Minogue. "It launched my writing career," DioGuardi says. "And the revenue from it kept me from having to go back to my day job." As her reputation as a songwriter began to grow, her aspirations to become a singer quietly took a back seat.

After that, the ascent of DioGuardi's songwriting career lines up in almost perfect tandem with the dominance of "American Idol." The show left an enormous mark on the popscape -- in DioGuardi's case, for the better. "I've sold a lot of records with the songs I've written or co-written through the 'Idol' machine," she says. "It's been very lucrative for me."

In addition to providing Clay Aiken, Katharine McPhee and Bo Bice with radio-ready material, DioGuardi excelled at penning songs for artists who wouldn't have lasted five minutes on "Idol." (Case in point: Ashlee Simpson's charmingly frothy "Pieces of Me." The world remembers it as the tune Simpson didn't flub on "Saturday Night Live." Washington go-go fans remember Rare Essence's cover version when it coated local airwaves in 2004.) Other hits co-written by DioGuardi followed, including the Pussycat Dolls' irresistible "Beep" and Christina Aguilera's 2006 speaker-scorcher "Ain't No Other Man."

As her success continued in the studio, DioGuardi made a quick detour into television in 2006 as a judge on "The One: Making a Music Star," ABC's ill-fated "Idol" knockoff. "I liked the show because it had a mentoring aspect to it," says DioGuardi. "It was much more about getting [the contestants] from one point to the next and then letting the audience judge that. I felt like I could really help these kids, and some of them were really good kids." (The show only lasted a pitiful two weeks.)

But DioGuardi never lost that mentoring sensibility, and her long slog through the industry and storied ascent up the charts is likely to win her oodles of clout with this season's contestants. Perhaps they'll realize that nobody this season is being judged more carefully than her.

"Sometimes I feel more like the contestant than a judge," DioGuardi admits. "There's no training for this. . . . Suddenly you're on television in front of 27 million people and you need to look amazing, you need to speak correctly, you need to have your shtick down."

She spins back around in her chair. "You need to know who you are."