American Idol Won’t Include Country Week Anymore

Not only have some of the judges changed on “American Idol,” but some of the usual stand-bys, like country week or Frank Sinatra night, are gone. Instead, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe says “we are no longer going to get the country singer to sing rock and the rock singer to sing folk.” He says they’re now going to stay with what the new mentor “believes is their genre that they need to work in.”


So, Lythgoe says “the styles of music are going to be “more decades rather than individual artists’ music.” 


There will be one mentor for the entire season and he’s not a celebrity. He’s the chairman of Interscope Geffen A-and-M Records, which is replacing Sony as the label that signs Idol finalists. The new season of “American Idol” starts in January.