Gedeon McKinney
Former "American Idol" contestant Gedeon McKinney's music career has been so hectic that he barely made time to vote, but he went the extra step by turning his political leanings into a rousing music video for Barack Obama.
Gedeon McKinney
McKinney, valedictorian of Yo! Memphis Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, was 17 when he appeared on the fifth season of "Idol" in 2006. He made it to the top 13 before he was eliminated in the contest eventually won by Alabaman Taylor Hicks.
By the time McKinney was eligible to vote, he was struggling to parlay his "Idol" appearances into a music career.
"I'm up here every day or night working on music. That's all I do," McKinney said in New York last year after the release of a CD, Curtain Call, sold exclusively in Wal-Mart stores. It is a compilation CD with songs by "Idol" contestants.
McKinney, who turned 20 on Oct. 1, has worked in New York clubs and as a popular attraction for private parties with bookings that sometimes take him to three or more cities a week. But the new music video is his first solo venture aimed at a mass audience.
"This is really my way of coming out into the industry," he said
The video, available on YouTube, is called "The Bus," opening and closing with speech excerpts from President-elect Barack Obama.
McKinney sings the title song interwoven with dance moves. He said he did not write the song, but felt a bond to Obama through a Biblical reference in Hebrews, Chapter 11, verse 32, in which the Biblical character "Gedeon" has the same spelling as his own (King James version) and appears alongside the name "Barak."
Beyond that, he said, "I think (Obama) ... has class. He has dignity. He looks the part. He acts the part. He speaks about the same things I've been speaking about since I was 13. I never knew what my destiny would be, but I knew a change was going to come."
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