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The third season of ''American Idol'' premiered on Monday, January 19, 2004 and continued until May 26, 2004. The third season was won by Fantasia Barrino, who defeated Diana DeGarmo by an approximate margin of 2% (1.3 million votes); the vote total (65 million votes) was the highest recorded vote total in the show's history until the May 23, 2007 finale of the sixth season. This season also featured Jennifer Hudson, who would subsequently win the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Season 3 is the first season where both the winner and the runner-up had been in the bottom 2 or 3 prior to the finale, being followed by the eighth and twelfth seasons. It is the first season to have a finale with two female contestants, followed by the twelfth season; while the second, seventh and eighth seasons had a finale with two male contestants. It is also the first season where a Wild Card contestant, Leah LaBelle, is eliminated in the first episode of the finals. It is the first season to have a gender imbalance among the finalists, followed by season 8, each having eight finalists of the dominant gender. Season 3 has eight female finalists, whereas the eighth season had eight male finalists. Both Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo released a single after the finale. Fantasia's first single, released in June 2004 on the RCA record label, entered the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 at number one, making Fantasia the first artist in the history of ''Billboard'' to debut at number one with their first single. In addition to Fantasia and DeGarmo, Jasmine Trias, LaToya London, George Huff, Jennifer Hudson, and Camile Velasco have all released albums since the season ended. Leah LaBelle was signed by Epic Records. ==Regional auditions== Auditions were held in the following cities: In this season over 80,000 attended the auditions in 6 cities. Paula Abdul was absent from the Los Angeles audition. A prominent auditioner was William Hung, a University of California, Berkeley student, who became a surprise cult figure following his tuneless rendition of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" at the San Francisco audition.〔Go, Jesamyn., (He's a loser, baby ), ''MSNBC.com'', 2004-02-24, Retrieved on 2007-03-02.〕 He was later invited back to perform on a special edition ''Uncut, Uncensored and Untalented''. His appearance on the show landed him a record deal with Koch Records and he released an album soon afterwards.〔(William Hung 'Bangs' Latin Lovers, R. Kelly Cover On Inspiration )〕 He became one of the most successful contestants to emerge from this year. During the audition round in Houston, Texas, auditioner Jonathan Rey threw a cup of water at Simon, who moments earlier commented that he was terrible and "there's not a song in the world you could sing." Security quickly escorted Jonathan out, and Houston police questioned him, but released him after Simon decided against pressing assault charges on him. Other prominent auditioners that year were "scooter girl" Nicole Tieri, and Alan Ritchson who sang to Paula Abdul alone. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「American Idol (season 3)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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