With the Tuesday May 24th airing of the competition component of the 10th season of American Idol, for the first time in that show’s history we find two very young competitors ready to duke it out to see who is crowned the American Idol.  With neither Scotty McCreery nor Lauren Alaina even 18 years old yet, we are guaranteed our youngest Idol winner ever and we’re also guaranteed our second (winning) country music Idol as well.

From the very beginning of this season both were stand-outs, Scotty with both his deep, anti-Bieber vocal delivery to his Alfred E. Newman prankster-like awe-shucks look and Lauren with her ‘she doesn’t even know how good she is’ approach and fantastic (at times) voice that is parts Reba-like twang, Miranda-like edge, Martina-like power and Dolly-like whimsy. There’s really nobody except perhaps Carrie Underwood like her on the show. While others on the show clearly had at least partial Nashville aspirations (Paul McDonald fronts a rock band and is based in the 615, James Durbin sang country power ballads, Haley sang LeAnn Rimes and Patsy Cline and is a young Heidi Newfield and Casey Abrams Zac-Brown Band-like musicality and look fits the ‘new country mold), these two young guns have clearly decided that country music is where they belong.

While Carrie Underwood is the obvious beacon of the country Idol canon, other past contestants have come to Nashville (on a yearly basis) and while season nine youngster Aaron Kelly is working on material for his first post-Idol album this year (growing up in the process), other male country Idols have found a tough go of things after first album releases. Josh Gracin has a Gold record and a few #1 hits from his days with Lyric Street Records while Bucky Covington scored a couple big hits and was working on another one when that very same record label closed.  Phil Stacey, also signed to Lyric Street at one time, is now a Christian artist (a much better fit for him, like it is for the charming and talented Chris Sligh).  Danny Gokey is the currently the only male country music-leaning Idol left on a big label (19/RCA) and he’s a good point of reference for Scotty McCreery as Danny’s taking his time with his sophomore album after rushing My Best Days to the market after his time on Season 8’s show.  The biggest bonus for Scotty is that labels in Nashville (a Universal Music Group Nashville label will get him) have had time to look for and hold onto songs for him, unlike what Sony Nashville (the old label partner with 19 Records), had for Gokey or Lyric Street had for their male artists because like the case with Underwood, McCreery has never ventured from Country music at all so they knew what he was going to want to record and where he was going to want to record it. 

Even though Lauren Alaina’s been basically a country singer for most of her time on the show, she’s much more ‘moldable’ from a label standpoint as she fits more of what has helped the most successful female contestants on the show. Like Underwood, she’ll be able to sell both tempo and powerballads with ease and if she is allowed to grow the way that both Underwood and Pickler have, she can avoid becoming another Diana DeGarmo, the #2 on Season three who barely lost to Fantasia Barrino.  This isn’t anything that Nashville labels don’t already know.  They know – particularly given the tough criticism that McCreery got (unfairly in our minds) from radio here – that in order to succeed in country music, they need very good songs (or at least very good songs for country radio).  Lauren could deliver that and fall somewhere between Underwood and Pickler or, even, garner a career that allows her to grow from green newbie into one of country music’s brightest stars, just like Pickler is doing before our eyes as she matures (having just delivered a gem of a single in “Tough” to radio today), otherwise she could end up like a Carmen Rasmussen or Kristy Lee Cook and struggling to remain relevant to country fans post-idol (though those comparisons really aren’t good ones because both of those girls didn’t get one of the top 2 slots on the show and a virtual guarantee of a record deal – Cook’s now signed to Broken Bow, her second label after 19/Arista).

While I think that both of the finalists could use a 3-4 years of seasoning before they're truly ready for the prime time, the key to the success for Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina post-Idol 10 is going to be what it’s always been for successful artists: good to great songs, a great team around them (including family that knows when to stay out of the cookie jar), a great producer (I’d pair McCreery with Carson Chamberlain, Frank Rogers or Clint Lagerberg and Alaina with Paul Worley, Nathan Chapman or Byron Gallimore) and a great attitude.  If these young idol finalists get all of that, they’re bound to become Idol success stories and prove once again that country music really is the true American music that is the most appealing and successful avenue for an American Idol contestant to succeed.