American Idol is one of the most popular television shows in history – and a long list of successful entertainers are associated with it.

For us, that means excellent profiles.

Scott Raab posited that the show's host, Ryan Seacrest, is the devil. "Oh, he's an enigma all right, big-grinning Ryan Seacrest, a mystery wrapped in a shroud of boyish bonhomie so thick, you'd need a pitchfork to pierce it. His green eyes glazed with pale gold, his patch of dirt-brown bedhead mussed just so, his chipmunk cheeks and square jaw dotted by winsome stubble -- put him in khaki shorts and a blue bandanna and you've got the world's richest Eagle Scout. Yet, at thirty-one, he seems so goddamn old. Choppers as big and white as dentures, wrinkling neck, rutted brow, the faint smell of sour coffee and green Tabasco decaying in his wake -- not merely old, old as sin. Ancient," he writes. "Clearly, being the fleshly embodiment of evil accelerates the aging process, and radio does the rest: Every moment counts, literally, and must hum with manufactured glee -- or, better yet, woe -- lest these poor dumb fucks stuck in traffic and trapped in a gray existence tune their ears and dials away from the unctions of the Devil."

Ariel Levy profiled Clay Aiken, an Idol runner-up who found stardom: "Before Aiken journeyed to Los Angeles to appear on American Idol at age 24, he had never been on an airplane. He had barely left his native North Carolina, except to drive west to the Tennessee border or south to Myrtle Beach with his beloved 'Mama,' who wrote him inspirational notes on his lunch bags every day and to whom he dedicated his best-selling 2004 memoir, Learning to Sing."

Skip Hollandsworth described the inspirational rise of Kelly Clarkson. "Only three years ago Kelly Clarkson was working part-time for Red Bull, the energy-drink company, driving around in a little car that had an oversized Red Bull can attached to the top of it, passing out free drinks at places where young people liked to gather. She made $13 an hour. Not bad, but Clarkson didn’t hesitate to tell her customers that she had other plans," he wrote. "Her goal, said the recent graduate of Burleson High School, was to become a major recording artist. The customers would nod and smile encouragingly. Clarkson was five feet three inches tall, cute but not a knockout. She had a rather round face, and she didn’t look particularly sexy in a midriff-baring shirt. When she was passing out Red Bulls at Joe Pool Lake, a popular hangout outside Fort Worth, she sometimes sang to whatever song was blaring from someone’s stereo, and she sounded good. But what were people supposed to say? 'Oh, yeah, you’re on your way'? She was getting out of her Red Bull car and singing at Joe Pool Lake."

Brian Hiatt profiled one of the newest judges on the show: Steven Tyler. "In May 2011, the Aerosmith frontman found rebirth in the most unlikely place," he wrote, "the judges' table on 'American Idol.'"

And Elizabeth Day wrote about the man who helped start it all: "The end of Big Brother was supposed to signal the death of reality TV, but more of us than ever are tuning into the X Factor and its like. Now, an extraordinary piece of research has revealed why our need for community has helped Simon Cowell become the king of Saturday-night entertainment."