posted by AINews on Jan 11
Former American Idol finalists are dropping like McPhlies in the Sony BMG recording family.
Katharine McPhee is the latest former Idol to part ways with the recording company, a representative for her now former RCA Records label confirmed to Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday. The fifth-season runner-up joins fifth-season champ Taylor Hicks and second-season winner Ruben Studdard — who recently left Arista and J Records labels respectively — as no longer having a label.
“Katharine is going to record her next album on her own,” an RCA representative told EW.
McPhee was signed to Idol creator Simon Fuller’s 19 Recordings Limited and Sony BMG’s RCA Records two weeks after she finished second to Hicks during Idol’s May 2006 fifth-season finale.
Her self-titled RCA debut dropped at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 album sales chart in its February 2007 first week of release, selling 116,000 copies. However since then the album has sold only 366,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.
While McPhee had previously stated her sophomore effort would be “a much different record” — “maybe more like the female version of John Mayer” — the 23-year-old has also begun to focus on an acting career. This fall, she finished production on I Know What Boys Like — a comedy produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions that she co-stars in alongside Scary Movie actress Anna Faris — which is scheduled to premiere mid-2008.
In addition, EW reported “we hear [McPhee is] already in talks with another label.”
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