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Fantasia: "I Believe"

Published on: 06/28/04

You'd have to be pretty special to make lemonade from the cliché-ridden song "I Believe" and the overly familiar "Chain of Fools" and "Summertime." Happily, specialness courses through "American Idol" Fantasia Barrino's soul, and she spends her new three-song single — which has sold about 150,000 copies in its first week — making such material burst to life. For as much as judge Randy Jackson loves to champion the one-named, technique-obsessed divas Whitney and Mariah, the plucky Fantasia gets over by exploiting her voice's cracks. She's a poppier Macy Gray, a raspier Mary J. Blige. She sounds, in a word, real.

— Nick Marino