'American Idol' Season 4: Carrie Underwood vs. Bo Bice

The Season 10 premiere of "American Idol" is less than a week away and to make the days go by a bit faster, Zap2it decided to take a stroll down memory lane and re-evaluate the previous nine seasons.

Each day leading up to the premiere on Wednesday, Jan. 19, we will post a retrospective on each season. We're breaking it down into four categories: Best Performance, Worst Performance, Most Underrated Idol and most Overrated Idol. At the end, we will decide how the season stacks up against the rest, rating it as great, good, or not-so-good.

We've looked back at Season 1 (yay Kelly!), Season 2 (aww, Clay and Ruben!) and the black hole that was Season 3. Now it's time to take a look back at one of our favorite seasons.

Season 4 contestants in order of elimination:

Lindsey Cardinale
Mikalah Gordon
Jessica Sierra
Nikko Smith
Nadia Turner
Anwar Robinson
Constantine Maroulis
Scott Savol
Anthony Fedorov
Vonzell Solomon
Bo Bice
Carrie Underwood (winner)

Best Performance: Carrie Underwood, "Alone," Bo Bice "Vehicle" (tie)

Bo and Carrie might be our favorite top 2 every on "Idol." They were both very talented and fun to watch. These performances really defined their season -- we still have both of these actual performances on on our iPod and listening to them now, they still give us chills.








Worst Performance: Mikalah Gordon, "Love Will Lead You Back," Anthony Fedorov, "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" (tie)

Mikalah Gordon's Fran Drescher schtick really annoyed us and her voice was so unusual that it really only worked with certain songs. Taylor Dayne's "Love Will Lead You Back" was not one of them. On the flip side, we really liked Anthony Fedorov's voice. But this Mother Superior ballad from "The Sound of Music" was not good.

Most Underrated Idol: Nadia Turner





We thought Nadia could've advanced beyond Anwar, Constantine and Scott. She was hard-core and could really wail. She made the mohawk cool way before stupid Sanjaya came along. We loved her "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and "Time After Time."

Most Overrated Idol: Scott Savol and Constantine Maroulis

We could not figure out how Scott stayed in the competition as long as he did -- we didn't think he could sing a lick.  Constantine, while being able to sing (his "My Funny Valentine" was excellent), made us feel icky. All the time.

How the season stacks up: Great

Season 4 not only launched arguably the most successful Idol in Carrie Underwood, but it had a number of very talented singers and was extremely fun to watch.