Entertainment Weekly called NBC sports and spoke with senior Olympics producer, David Michaels, to find out exactly HOW Phillip Phillip’s coronation single, “Home” was chosen as the “Fab 5” theme song:
An NBC Sports producer just happens to have a daughter who works on Idol…..
Michaels, the brother of sports broadcaster Al Michaels, says he was turned onto the song back in May by his daughter, Megan Michaels, who is a supervising producer on American Idol. “My wife and I were actually sitting at home watching the finale,”he says, “and I heard the song for the first time, and I said to her, “Wow, I bet I could use that in the Olympics on some night.”
A case of serendipity…
As luck would have it, the next day a man named Myles Lewis, who works for 19 Entertainment (which manages many Idol alums), reached out to Megan to ask if she knew anyone working on the Olympics. “She said, ‘Yeah, I do – my dad,’” laughs Michaels.
After an initial conversation with Mr. Lewis, Michaels got right to work. “I took some old gymnastics footage on my home computer on Final Cut [a movie-editing program], and I laid down the song,” he says. “I just wanted to see if it would work, and then it was one of those a-ha moments of, ‘Wow, this could really be something cool.’”
Indeed.
After a test segment at Olympic Trials [embedded below], which Michaels calls just “okay,” he was ready to give the song the full treatment. “We just knew with the right pictures, we could really make this thing explode.” He brought the potential theme to his London production team. “Everybody I played it for went, ‘Wow, what is that?’ and I go, ‘It was the American Idol winner.’ And they were like, ‘Really?’
It appears that several people at both NBC and 19 had the same idea. No hard sell involved at all. It’s just a perfect coming together of positive forces for “Home”–A really good song, sung by the right person at the right time.
Gymnastics is over, but the song will be used one more time, during the closing ceremony:
“We’ll use it on the piece we’re doing on the team championship for the closing ceremony day,” says Michaels.
I have to say, regardless of how I felt about Phillip during the competition (mostly didn’t care for his performances) “Home” is a good song, and deserves to succeed. Besides, this is just good news for my beloved cheesy show, American Idol. The Voice may have earned the accolades this year–with the Emmy nods and all. But I won’t be impressed until their alums grab the attention and imaginations of folks the way so many American Idol alums have.
“Home” hit the charts this week at #1 on Digital Songs and #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. It sold a whopping 228,000 downloads–up 472% from the week before. Go Phillip! Go Idol!
Interesting side note: Phillip tells the Associated Press that he wanted a song he wrote with his brother-in-law to be the coronation single:
“I was trying to fight to get my song (I wrote) on there, but it just wasn’t happening,” said Phillips, who tried to persuade “Idol” producers to let him sing the song “Drive Me,” which he co-wrote with his brother-in-law.
“It was hard for me at first because I didn’t really have any input with the song,” he said in an interview Thursday from Baltimore.
But now, the 21-year-old says he’s “starting to grow a connection” to the song, thanks to its use in the 2012 Olympics.
