Kris Allen Not Planning Post-‘Idol’ Country Career

'American Idol' helped turn Carrie Underwood into a country superstar. But don't expect reigning 'Idol' champ Kris Allen to follow the same career path.

In spite of the fact that he earned raves for his performance of Garth Brooks' 'To Make You Feel My Love' during the competition, and was joined by Keith Urban on Keith's hit, 'Kiss a Girl,' during the show's finale last week, country music clearly isn't where the 23-year-old's passion lies.

"That's not my cup of music and not the feeling that I want in my album," Kris said during a teleconference last week.
Kris adds that he has a lot of respect and admiration for Keith, and appreciated the opportunity to perform with him, but he insists he plans to stick with songs more along the lines of the pop-soul hit 'Ain't No Sunshine,' which proved to be one of his more popular performances during the run of the show. Kris says he wants to focus on music that "moves people."

We're sure you didn't mean to imply that country music doesn't move people, Kris, but we're still compelled to remind you who Keith and wife Nicole Kidman were raving about on the show a few weeks ago.

By the way, Kris' hometown of Conway, Arkansas, has an interesting connection to country music history. It provided one-half of the inspiration for singer Harold Jenkins to change his name to Conway Twitty. His last name was inspired by Twitty, Texas.