Scott MacIntyre Interview On American Idol, Being Blind, Why He Doesn't Wear Sunglasses

I enjoyed dueling pianos with Matt in the depths of the mansion. Dueling it out on two pianos – I always won. He’s a great, fun guy. I love his personality and I’m going to miss him.

I do not. All I can say is it’s not who think from week to week. A lot can change from one week to the next. I’m going to be watching along with everyone else.

I was so excited to bring out the shredder and play the guitar in my final '80s power ballad performance. I wanted to go down in a blaze of glory – but I didn’t know I was going down at the time. If people go back and watch it, it was a good solid performance in a lot of ways. The judges could have given me more credit than they did but the chips fall where they do. I think I did everything I had to do to show the judges why I should be saved. It was a split decision right down the middle. Simon told me afterward it was a difficult decision for him. He told me he was conflicted about it as well and it had nothing to do with me. I don’t think they expected me to be on the bottom that week or the decision would have been a lot easier.

I was a little surprised by Simon’s reaction and the judges' reaction as a whole. I keep reminding myself that it is a TV show and they are competing with each other much like the contestants are competing with each other. I tried to not take what they said too hard – they are right a lot of the time, not always. I got to banter back and forth with the judges. I was never afraid of them. I treated them like peers I respected who happened to have very strong opinions.

That was as big an event as the plane landing in the Hudson River for a few weeks. It sparked a lot of discussion. Ryan did the right thing – he missed and then he grabbed my hand and said, ‘Scott, I’m giving you a high five.’ I’m really glad they aired that because it was a good way to start off the whole discussion. I’m a hard person to offend and I would never be offended by something like that. People my whole life have tried to wave and give me fist pumps. It’s nice when people forget for a few seconds that I’m visually impaired.

It was the first audition for the judges. You are stepping into a room where seven years of musicians have laid their reputations on the line. Whatever they say to you in that room is going to be stuck with you for quite a while. Not having a piano or a microphone to hold on to makes it a very different kind of audition.

I’ve been almost completely blind since birth. It’s kind of like looking through a straw – tunnel vision. Really not much usable vision in life. It forced me in a good way to rely on sound a lot more. I pursued music, recording engineering – all those things that have to do with the auditory world. If I wasn’t visually impaired, I might be in a totally different profession. I played music first because I couldn’t play baseball. Music really became my sport. I would play music competitively and all the things you would normally do with a sport.

It’s an interesting point in my life and in the music industry in a way. There hasn’t been a blind pop sensation since the likes of Stevie Wonder. Hopefully, I can bring something that hasn’t been seen for a while to the industry. Hopefully, I can break some paradigms. A lot of people have commented to me that I never wore dark glasses – what people would normally expect from a blind performer. I wanted to let people into my world and not shut them out. I was honestly waiting for the Ford people to put me behind the wheel! That would have been awesome!

I made a conscious decision not to. People have told me I have beautiful eyes. A lot of people are unsure how to approach a visually impaired person.

Beside the tour, I’m going to be putting out a CD. I lot of people don’t know that I’ve been writing music since I was 5 years old. It’s gotten a lot better over the years and I have a huge catalogue that’s ready to go. You’ll hear a lot music coming from me along the lines of Gavin DeGraw and John Mayer.