American Idol's Tyler Grady: "I'm not bitter"

The finished four.

This week's eliminated American Idol contestants held a telephone conference with reporters to discuss their Idol experience; here's what they had to say.

Tyler Grady: "I'm not bitter at the judges."

Grady made a point to say that he didn't mean any disrespect to the judges after he was eliminated. But he emphasized that his belief that "You do need to stick to your guns… honesty as a performer is everything." He said he might have chosen a more recent rock song, but that he wasn't likely to change much if he had survived another week: "You wouldn't have seen me coming out in baggy jeans and wearing a headset microphone."

As for the repeated emphasis on his 1970s look, Tyler said, "It's not about the era, it's about the performance, it's about the emotion. What you see on American Idol is the type of performer I am honestly." And despite saying that Ellen DeGeneres had "kind of misrepresented me there," he said the Idol experience was "a phenomenal crash course" on the entertainment industry. He also managed to work in the name of his band several times (it's called Wailing Waters).

Janell Wheeler: "I'm doing better than people would think."

Not surprisingly, Janell put a positive spin on her elimination and spoke of what a great experience American Idol proved to be. But she also said that the contestants struggled with the sound and the stage: "When I did listen to the show, I definitely heard a lot of us having pitch problems."

Wheeler revealed that originally, her rendition of Heart's "What About Love" was "a little more country"—and that she "switched it to a rocker version." In retrospect, Wheeler said, "I should have gone ahead and brought the guitar out and performed a Top 40 hit like "American Boy." She said she may have been hurt in fan voting because, from the perspective of the Idol judges, her performance fell somewhere in the middle, which meant she was neither rewarded for the outstanding quality of her performance nor did she get additional votes by fans worried that she might be eliminated.

Ashley Rodriguez: "We could have used a little bit of love."

A surprise elimination, Rodriguez said she wouldn't have done anything differently. But when asked about the judges, she said they were surprisingly tough on all of the contestants. "It turns out they were coming in throwing punches. We could have used a little bit of love from them.... They were quick to give a lot of criticism and not back it up with anything positive."

But Ashley remains committed to her career, maybe more so than she was before: "American Idol has really shown me that now more than ever I have to fight for what I want. It gave a little taste of the dream."

Joe Munoz: "I think I had my moment."

Munoz came across as shy and a bit subdued during the press conference and was philosophical about his early elimination. In response to questions about his comparative lack of screen time, Munoz said he tried not to dwell on it because he had no control over the show's editing. "Other people didn't get screen time and they got through," he said. He cited Michael Buble and Celine Dion as major influences and said, "I'm just a pop guy. I see myself doing a pop record."