Multi platinum recording artist Clay Aiken emerged from his 2003 American Idol experience with a recording contract, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly magazine covers, and legions of loyal fans.
Those fans voted him the winner of the Fan’s Choice award at the 2003 American Music Awards as well as TV Guide’s Fan’s Favorite Reality Star that same year. His first single, This is the Night/Bridge Over Troubled Water won the Billboard Music Award for best selling single of 2003.
He has spent much of his time since then on the road, performing at sold out concerts across the country. Between the American Idol tour in the summer of 2003 and the Independent Tour with Kelly Clarkson early in 2004, Clay released his debut solo CD, Measure of a Man, which sold over 612,000 units the first week and over 2.6 million overall, earning it a Double Platinum sales certification from the RIAA.
A successful solo tour, sponsored by Disney, took Clay and company to thirty states for fifty shows during the summer of 2004. In December of that year, Clay performed in intimate performance halls across the country with his Joyful Noise holiday tour in support of his sophomore CD, Merry Christmas With Love, which sold over one million copies in six weeks.
The summer of 2005 brought Clay’s Jukebox Tour to twenty five cities for a celebration of fifty years of rock and roll.
The success of 2004’s Joyful Noise Tour and Clay’s love of the Christmas holiday inspired him to tour once again in late 2005. This holiday show broke new ground, utilizing actors, dancers and a band to enhance a storyline scripted by Clay, and directed by Amy Tinkham.
Two weeks before his 26th birthday, in November 2004, Clay’s inspirational memoir entitled Learning to Sing – Hearing the Music in Your Life was released. Co-written with Allison Glock, the book spent several weeks on the NY Times Nonfiction Best Seller list.
In the summer of 2003, Clay founded the Bubel/Aiken Foundation with his friend Diane Bubel. The mission of the foundation is to encourage and facilitate programs that enable the inclusion of children with disabilities into the environments available to children without special needs. In 2009, the name of the foundation was changed to The National Inclusion Project. For more information, visit their website at
http://www.inclusionproject.org/ UNICEF named Clay an Ambassador of Education for All Children in 2004. He has visited Banda Aceh in Indonesia, and Uganda, where he observed the night commuter children. He served as a national spokesperson for the 2004 Marine Toys for Tots campaign, their most successful year up to that time. In 2005, he was honored to be the national spokesperson for the Trick or Treat for UNICEF campaign.
Clay Aiken was born November 30, 1978 in Raleigh, NC, which is proud to call him their own. He graduated from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte with a Special Education degree in December 2003.
“To me, singing is the single most joyous thing a person can do.” -Clay Aiken, from his book “Learning to Sing – Hearing the Music in Your Life”