Clay Aiken

Clay Aiken is an American singer-songwriter and political activist whose 2003 second-place finish on Fox's American Idol Season 2 made him one of the most-iconic American Idol-derived musical figures of the 2000s. He was born Clayton Holmes Grissom on November 30, 1978, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was raised primarily by his mother and stepfather (who adopted him, leading to his legal surname change to Aiken in his adulthood). He attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (B.S. in special education, 2003).

His break came in 2003 when he auditioned for Fox's American Idol Season 2. The Aiken-Ruben Studdard finale on May 21, 2003 — at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles — drew 38 million American TV viewers and became the most-watched American Idol finale of the show's 2002–2016 original-Fox run. Aiken finished second to Ruben Studdard in the finale (Studdard won by 134,000 votes out of over 24 million).

His 2003 debut single "This Is the Night" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 within weeks of the American Idol finale, and his October 2003 debut album Measure of a Man sold over 600,000 copies in its first week. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and was certified 2x platinum within its first year. His 2004 second album Merry Christmas with Love sold over 1.7 million copies and became one of the 2004 American holiday albums.

Aiken came out as gay in a 2008 People magazine cover story — making him one of the American Idol alumni publicly to come out of the closet. His 2014 unsuccessful US House of Representatives campaign in North Carolina's 2nd congressional district (running as a Democrat against incumbent Republican Renee Ellmers) made him one of the American Idol-alumni political candidates. He has continued to record and perform American holiday-and-musical-theater shows into his forties, including the 2014 Broadway production of Spamalot.

His name Clay is from the Old English clæg meaning "clay" — originally a surname referring to those who lived near or worked with clay deposits. Clay has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for decades.