Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 05/31/2011 at 11:57 AM Videos

The Popdust Files: Interview, live with regis and kelly, scotty mccreery

Now that Scotty McCreery was won American Idol, the true test of his celebrity mettle can begin. First and foremost—the morning interview circuit, starting with his appearance today on Live with Regis and Kelly, where he sat with the hosts for questions about his early life and current relationship status, before performing a stripped-down version of his first single, “I Love You This Big.”

Just as his voice seems more suited to a 35-year-old country vet than a pimply 17-year-old, so does Scotty’s interview demeanor, as he handled the discussion with the old-timers with the confidence of someone who’s been doing this for decades already. He joked through answers about misuse of his talents from his first choir director (“She had me at tenor for the first few years…[in falsetto] I was singing up here!!“) and his ill-fated soccer career (“The coach felt bad for me because all my buddies made the team, so I was kinda like the manager/assistant coach…towards the end of the season, if they didn’t call me coach, they ran a lap”), and performed a pretty convincing Elvis impersonation, lip snarl and all. Most impressively, he even refrained from snapping at Regis for his less-flattering-than-he-probably-realizes comparison of McCreery to Ron Howard’s Opie character from The Andy Griffith Show. (C’mon, Reg. Nobody wants to be Opie.)

Here’s video of the interview and performance, courtesy of MJ’s Big Blog. Oh, and Scotty’s keeping to his story about Lauren Alaina, maintaining that the two are “like brother and sister” and consistently blaming the post-win kiss on Lauren being a “character.” Why is that phrase starting to sound like a backhanded compliment?