Idol’s Paige Miles Still Wants to Make It in Music

The powerful pipes of Paige Miles were laid low by laryngitis during her last few weeks on American Idol, and understandably the 24-year-old pre-school teacher from Naples, Florida, now based in Houston, was disappointed to be on the other side of the Top 10. Miles spoke to People magazine about friendships, the future and how to soothe a very sore throat.

Last week, Lacey Brown spoke of her deep friendship with you. What can you tell us about your bond?
You’re going to make me cry! We actually just got off the phone a little bit ago. Lacey is just an amazing person and we bonded immediately. We became roommates after making Top 24 and we were roommates until she left last week. She is just a genuinely caring and sweet person and just so honest and loving and we both are girls who are very devoted to our families and had a lot of things in common. We both teach programs at our churches. We just connected on the fact that it was okay to be a good girl! We never broke curfew, we were always hanging out and having good time. We are actually thinking about getting an apartment together in L.A.!

So that means you will continue with a music career?
Yes, I want to continue to pursue a music career and see where it takes me. I want to do pop-rock-soul, a mix of Tina Turner and maybe Christina Aguilera. I like all styles of music but I’m definitely more comfortable with that kind of rock-y soul.

But Tina Turner rocks some very high heels and you did not seem to like those shoes.
No more heels like that, absolutely not! But I definitely will experiment with fashion more.

Is there a sense of freedom to explore now outside of Idol?
Hmm. I would say yes and no because going on tour, you would learn so much of that process.

So it was tough knowing the judges already decided you were not going to be saved before you sang your swan song?
Yes, I initially thought the save was something that even if they’re not going to use it, you get the opportunity to at least sing for it, and then they make their decision, but for the statement to be made before I opened my mouth, I was pretty bummed.

You had a terrible case of laryngitis!
I’ve been struggling with laryngitis for over three weeks now. I have swollen vocal cords, and there’s a lot of inflammation and with us singing and rehearsing as much as we do, I had very little time for it to heal. So it would basically get a little better, then I would have to sing again, and it would get worse again. So it’s tough when you’re in a singing competition and you have no voice, so that was a bummer. And that affected my song choice at times because I would kind of stay away from what I would typically do, like big … tunes like “All Right Now,” which I love and I am super-comfortable at, and I would kind of shy away and try to do something smaller in efforts to not, like, overtax my chords or so something where I could possibly damage them.

What have you been doing to soothe your throat?
Throat Coat Tea! I have high blood pressure so I can’t take a lot of different throat lozenges because they have salt in them. So really tea is the only remedy for me. Even sore throat medicines and over-the-counter decongestants raise my blood pressure, so I kind of have to naturally go through it.

Paige Miles is the Second to Go Home on Idol

She was in the bottom two last week when Lacey Brown went home, and last night she and Tim Urban were consigned to the bottom three before 9:30 p.m. Her version of “Against All Odds” was, by even the most conservative reckoning, the worst song of Tuesday night, possibly of the season — and maybe even ever.

Paige Miles just lost her grip. The judges said they sensed she no longer had her heart in competing. And yet her voice had real musicality to it — and muscle too.

Simon hinted in the past that she might be worth the Judges’ Save, as it’s called. But last night he completely ruled out that option. At the start of the season, he told her, she “genuinely had a great voice.” Now she’ll have to go back and figure how to rebuild a singing career. If she’d lasted into the top 10, she’d have secured the big boost from the Idol tour.

The evening’s one surprise was that Katie Stevens landed in the bottom three instead of Andrew Garcia. She’d been improving: Her cover of Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” was her most consistent performance so far, while Andrew has been struggling to please the judges. Simon more or less wrote him off after his Tuesday performance of “Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

Was Andrew rescued by pity points? What did Katie do that displeased voters?

At the start of the hour she said her father is so unnerved by the results show that he flees the theater rather than watch. If that’s the case, last night he must have buried himself under a mound of pillows and blankets.

Most likely, next week Tim Urban will wind up in the bottom two again. He’s started sliding down into that Funnel of Doom. But at least he’ll get to go on the tour.

Siobhan Magnus admitted that she may have overused that shriek — gee, you think? — but only because she knew it was effective and could help propel her into the top 10.

Otherwise, throughout the hour Simon had a strange, faraway look in his eyes. Was he bored or thinking about his next show, The X Factor?

Miley Cyrus bowed her head and stormily whipped her hair around while singing “When I Look at You,” which meant she wasn’t looking at us at all. Then Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato sang “Make a Wave.”

Next week: A night of R&B soul with Usher as the mentor.