{alltv} 16,000-plus singers chase 'Idol' Season 10 dream in Nashville

American Idol ratings have slipped, but you couldn't tell from the more than 16,000 who turned out for Season 10's first auditions. Here's our report from Nashville.

Your audition starts now: Many hopefuls thought auditions took place Saturday. Those people thought wrong. At 4 a.m. Thursday, Idol supervising producer Patrick Lynn quietly roamed among early-arriving registrants outside Bridgestone Arena with his Flip video camera, looking for people who caught his attention. Those sacked out on the sidewalk with their pillows and blankets missed their first chance to get noticed.

"We tell people this all the time: The minute we see you, we're about you," Lynn says. "If they're standing out, even almost by not thinking about it, then they're going to do well inside. So if somebody has brought five or six of their friends, and they're playing the guitar, especially if they're talking to each other and one person is always the center of attention, I like to gravitate toward those people."

Production assistants registered people around the clock for more than 49 hours, handing out wristbands for entry into Saturday's auditions.

'We're running out of real estate': Saturday's early-morning crowd at Fifth Avenue and Broadway filled downtown Nashville streets for at least a full city block in three directions. "We're running out of real estate," Lynn says as he and the show's cameramen set up their "beauty shots" of the hopefuls shouting things like "Welcome to Nashville!" and "Idol's taking over Nashville!"

Once inside, aspiring singers filled the arena to the rafters. On the floor, teams from Idol and 19 Entertainment manned a dozen tables. "We have a staff of about 50 that comes on the road with us," including musical directors Michael Orland and Matt Rhode, vocal coach Debra Byrd and senior producer Norm Betts, Lynn says.

Those auditioning approached the tables in groups of four, singing their few seconds of a chosen song in full view of everyone else. Over the course of 13 hours, the thousands got whittled to a few hundred.

Second chances: The Nashville crowd contained some faces familiar to die-hard Idol fans. Season 7 Hollywood contestant Brooke Eden, who now interns at cable network Great American Country, made it through to the next stage. Shelby Dressel, whose husky voice and partial facial paralysis helped her stand out during a run deep into the Hollywood rounds last season, began her journey anew. "The next step is to get prepared to hopefully go all the way this year," says the 20-year-old singer, who plans to relocate to Nashville this summer.

Even this early in the process, Idol's heart-tugging stories had begun to emerge. After Christian York, 19, registered Thursday, he learned that his grandmother back in North Carolina had suffered a heart attack. "I'm doing this for her," York says after his successful Saturday audition.

The final person to make it through to the second round of auditions, where singers will perform for the show's executive producers: Karley Moon, 20, of Chattanooga, who auditioned with Unchained Melody and Martina McBride's A Broken Wing. "I haven't slept in, like, 30 hours —and I'm not sleepy at all right now!" she says afterward.

Next up: "This is way bigger than I thought it would be," Lynn says. "I can't say enough about Nashville. I'm glad this was our first city. This is the most polite crowd, ever."

Registration in the next city begins today at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, with auditions taking place Wednesday. Additional audition cities include New Orleans (July 26), East Rutherford, N.J. (Aug. 3), Austin (Aug. 11) and San Francisco (Aug. 19).