Idol conversation

Nick Malinowski ‘04 sits down with the S&B and discusses his upcoming performance, the art of seduction and his American Idol aspirations

I’ll get right to the point. Sell your concert to me. Why should people attend your performance?

Well, the repertoire is probably some of the most beautiful songs ever written. I’ve focused mostly on German art song during the time I’ve been at Grinnell. The song cycle that I’m doing, which is called Die schoene Muellerin,’ is just really beautiful music. I think from start to finish it not only is great music but it has a great story, and everything just goes together well and makes for a really nice concert.

Are you pretty proficient in German, then? Do you understand everything that you’re singing about?

Yeah, I do. I try to learn everything in English so that I know exactly what I’m singing with every word. I haven’t really studied any German outside of what I’ve sung, but I’ve sung in so much German the last four years that I’ve been able to understand what I’m singing most of the time.

Why do you perform the music that you do? Most guys want to sing in a rock band—why don’t you have those aspirations?

I like to sing that kind of music, but my voice is too corny for that, honestly. If I try to sing that way, it sounds like I’m a classical singer trying to sing Mick Jagger, and that never works. So a lot of it is just how I’ve been trained. My voice has been trained in a style that I think fits best in [classical] music. I guess I’m just weird, but I really like romantic, classical music.

What do you sing when you try to woo a girl?

Well, usually I don’t sing in German unless she understands it, although there is one song that I sang last semester that I thought was probably the sexiest song I’d ever sung. The translation was something like, “I want to plunge my soul into the cup of the lily/The lily shall breathe resoundingly a song of my beloved.” It’s a pretty overtly sexual song. Other than that, maybe some Boyz II Men or Color Me Badd—something that the ladies like, I think.

Tell me what it’s like to be at the intersection of the sports and arts worlds at Grinnell. Do you ever get razzed by either side?

I don’t really get razzed; I think both sides think it’s pretty cool. I think sometimes the basketball guys wish I could give a little more time to basketball, and my singing friends wish I could give a little more time to music. But I’ve been able to do both pretty successfully. One thing that’s cool about it is that I think I’ve been able to get a lot of sports people to come down and listen to some music performances.

I was reading Rolling Stone the other day and Amy Lee of Evanescence was saying that she uses Christina Aguilera albums to warm up. Do you have any similar guilty pleasures?

*NSYNC—I don’t warm up to them but I do like to listen to them. That’s probably the only thing. When boy bands were popular three or four years ago I really wanted to be in one.

That’s perfect for my next question, then. What would you bring to the table on American Idol?

I tried out for American Idol, actually. Well, actually it was in a regional capacity. It was this Iowa Idol thing, and if you won you went on. But I picked a song that I shouldn’t have picked. I picked kind of a slow song and I should have done a real crowd pleaser.

But what would I bring to the table? I think that my voice is probably better than most of those people on American Idol (laughs), but like I said it’s a classical voice so it wouldn’t be that good in some of the stuff they sing. I also think I’d have some good moves up there on stage.

Yeah, I think I’d be a good American Idol contestant. Except I might be too tall. If you look at the boy bands, all those guys are pretty short. None of them really sticks out among the others. So if I ever had to do a duet with Christina or Britney I’d tower over them