Blake Colin Lewis is an American singer, songwriter and beatboxer who was the runner-up on the sixth season of “American Idol.” His major label debut “A.D.D. (Audio Day Dream)” was released on December 4, 2007, through 19 Recordings and Arista Records. Take a look below for 31 more awesome and interesting facts about Blake Lewis.
1. On October 30, 2007, his first single “Break Anotha” was released.
2. The album landed on number ten on the U.S. Billboard 200 as its highest peak position with 97,500 copies sold in its debut, and has sold over 350,000 copies.
3. After the release of his second single “How Many Words”, which peaked at number eight on the U.S. Billboard Dance/Club Play Songs, Lewis was dropped by Arista Records. Lewis eventually signed with Tommy Boy Records.
4. His second album, Heartbreak on Vinyl, was released on October 6, 2009.
5. The first single “Sad Song” was released on July 21, 2009. The album charted at number 135 on the U.S. Billboard Billboard 200, number twenty on the Billboard Independent Albums, and number seven on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums with over 4,000 copies sold in the first week.
6. His third album, “Portrait of a Chameleon,” was released on May 20, 2014. This was his first independent record and includes the single “Your Touch”.
7. Lewis was born in Redmond, Washington to Dallas and Dinah Lewis. Dinah is a former rocker who still sings and plays guitar.
8. He is an only child and is of Welsh, Swiss, German and Irish descent.
9. He attended Kenmore Junior High and later Inglemoor High School in Kenmore, Washington.
10. In high school, Lewis participated in many high school state competitions . He also took part in numerous musicals, as well as comedy and rap videos with his friends. In many of these videos, he portrayed his alter ego, Jimmie Walker Blue, the character he introduced during the semi-final round of “American Idol.”
11. Lewis started beatboxing at seventeen. He picked up this talent purely by ear, listening to CDs of beatboxing, after he was inspired by Matthew Selby, a former member of the Los Angeles-based a cappella group M-Pact, of which fellow “American Idol” semi-finalist Rudy Cárdenas was a member.
12. Aside from singing and beatboxing, Lewis plays the guitar, keyboard, drums and has written many songs such as “She Loves the Way”, “Emotional Waterfalls”, “Dumpty Humpty” and “Jealousy”.
13. He describes himself as an improv musician and often uses devices such as loop pedals and the Kaoss Pad to layer beatboxing, instruments, vocals and effects to create a song live on stage.
14. Being a member of the a cappella group Kickshaw for four years after graduating from high school in 1999, Lewis worked with the group on a 10-track album titled “Put It In the Microphone,” but he quit the group in 2002 to become a solo musician going by the stage name Bshorty, which was basically inspired by the nicknames of the members of 311 and “aggressive inline-skate videos during the 1990s”, “doing drum and bass shows, and conscious hip hop shows, singer-songwriter stuff, and electronica and hip hop”.
15. He made connections with various musicians by performing regularly in many venues in Seattle such as Nectar Lounge in Fremont, SeaMonster Lounge, Lo-Fi Performance Gallery, Jet Deck in Everett and hosted shows like The Digital Lounge shows at ToST.
16. Though he initially found “American Idol” unappealing, Lewis auditioned for it in Seattle with “Crazy” by Seal and an off-screen rendition of “Sunday Morning” by Maroon 5.
17. Introducing himself as the local beatboxing champion in the audition, Lewis beatboxed along with his teammates, including Chris Sligh, Rudy Cárdenas and Tom Lowe, to “How Deep Is Your Love” by Bee Gees in the Hollywood’s Week.
18. The memorable performance received a standing ovation from the audience and Paula Abdul, who commented “that brought down the house”.
19. In an early episode of the United Kingdom edition of “American Idol,” Lewis recalled his first solo performance in the Hollywood’s Week was “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” by The Temptations. When later he sang it in front of the other finalists, Phil Stacey felt that it was the best performance he has seen from Lewis.
20. Lewis’s songs from “American Idol” have been on sale at the iTunes Store and the “American Idol” official website as “Blake Lewis – EP” shortly after the finale of Idol, along with other songs that did not make the EP’s cut that are being sold as individual singles.
21. Figures from SoundScan which were posted on USA Today indicated that Lewis’ “You Give Love a Bad Name” was “the biggest-selling download of the season”, with 192,000 copies sold.
22. After the finale of Idol, Blake Lewis has made several appearances on television shows.
23. Lewis took part in the “American Idols Live! Tour 2007” from July 6 to September 23, 2007, along with other contestants in the top ten.
24. He revealed on “The View” on June 14, 2007 that all the male contestants on the show would be playing musical instruments on the tour (for the first time ever), “doing like a folk band,” and that he would bring along his loop pedals for his beatboxing.
25. Lewis was named number five in the list of the ten sexiest “American Idol” contestant ever on the website during the running of the sixth season of “American Idol” and was ranked number 21 in the list of music’s 21 sexiest single men on June 11, 2007, on AOL.com.
26. Later in the issue of People Magazine on June 15, 2007, the brand-new runner-up of Idol appeared on its list of “Hottest Bachelors of 2007”.
27. On February 25, 2013, it was announced that Lewis has signed with Republic Records.
28. On February 17, 2014, Blake Lewis officially announced that his new album would be released May 20, 2014 on his own record label, Audio Day Dream Records.
29. Lewis made his voice acting debut in the English dub of the anime series, “Durarara!!,” in which he voiced Kasuka Heiwajima; however, he was replaced by Vic Mignogna in the show’s second season.
30. Lewis had also voiced a character named Thump on one episode of “Generator Rex.”
31. Lewis has been supporting cancer research at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle by donating 50% of the proceeds from the merchandise of The Blaker Girls. He chose to put his support behind this organization after a best friend of his as well as his friend’s girlfriend were diagnosed with lymphoma.
