Singing competition shows have become a HUGE genre, but there was a time . . . 24 years ago . . . when they were a relatively novel concept, outside of "Star Search".
Kelly Clarkson was just on a podcast, where she says that she didn't realize "American Idol" was a TV show . . . until the THIRD AUDITION.
It seems silly, but remember Kelly was on the FIRST season of the show, and when she was taping her early auditions, no one even knew what the show was, let alone how successful it would become.
She said, "We were like, 'Oh, this might work. I might meet someone or whatever.' Nobody knew it was gonna amount to anything . . . we were literally, like, kids . . . you know, 19 years old, just trying to pay my electric bill y'all."
During the interview, Kelly also said that people were MEAN to her back in the day, despite her winning the show . . . BECAUSE she was from a talent show.
She said, "People who were really mean have been coaches [on 'The Voice']. You know . . . like, [they] hated talent shows, and they ended up being on 'The Voice'. People were really cruel at first . . . it was a very unlikeable thing."
She didn't name-names . . . but it obviously wasn't Jennifer Hudson, who competed on "Idol" AFTER Kelly, and they were really close on "The Voice" due to their similar experiences.
(This was from "Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce". Here's UNCENSORED video of the podcast. They start talking about "Idol" at the 20:25 mark. She also went makeup-free, which is casual-cool.)