Crystal Bowersox may not be with RCA Records any longer, but she'll be on ABC's Body of Proof tonight (10 p.m. Eastern/9 p.m. Central). The American Idol Season 9 runner-up makes her acting debut playing a woman serving a prison term for assaulting her drug dealer.

"Finding the emotion to feel the character and make it real, that's something I do every time I perform," Crsytal tells TV Guide. "I have to find that emotion that I had when I wrote the song and bring it to the surface every time I sing it and then be able to put it away when I'm done. In some ways, it was a similar process, but I was pretty insecure."

Josh Gracin, who followed a fourth-place finish on American Idol with a string of country hits, will release his third album, Redemption, on Nov. 8.

Josh wrote or co-wrote every song on the album except one, a cover of John Mayer's Edge of Desire. He also wrote a song for the album with Ruben Studdard, who won the second season of Idol, in which Josh competed. Redemption also includes two versions of Josh's top 20-AC hit, Long Way to Go.

According to a press release about the album, Redemption also features "a special tribute through Sears' Heroes at Home on the track, Can't Say Goodbye, that [Josh] penned with widower Seana Arrechaga to celebrate the life of her husband, Army SFC Ofren Arrechaga, who was tragically killed on March 29 after suffering wounds from a firefight in Afghanistan one month before he was scheduled to return home and one day after their son Alston's third birthday."

Josh, who has had top-five country singles with I Want to Live, Nothin' to Lose and Stay With Me (Brass Bed), released his last album in 2008.

The track listing for Redemption follows:

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Steven Tyler was hospitalized Tuesday after slipping in the shower at a Paraguay hotel. According to Paraguayan newspaper ABC, the Aerosmith lead singer and American Idol judge had what a bellboy at Asuncion's Bourbon Hotel called "a nasty fall," knocking out several teeth. He was taken to a private hospital

The accident forced the rescheduling of an Aerosmith concert that was supposed to take place tonight.

Got an extra half-million dollars to spend? If you do, you could buy commercial time during next season's American Idol. According to a recent Advertising Age survey, "The average cost of running a 30-second ad in Idol runs between $468,100 and $502,900." That's not quite as much as NBC's Sunday Night Football commands (an average of $512,367), but it's a lot more than The X Factor ($283,034-$320,000).

• Guitarist/producer Nile Rodgers -- whose credits range from Chic, Sister Sledge and Diana Ross to David Bowie, Duran Duran and Madonna -- has been working with Adam Lambert on the singer's second album. Rodgers recently tweeted, "Working w Adam Lambert was one of the most organically perfect jams I've had since Bowie."

• Constantine Maroulis will be one of the featured performers at Williamstown Theatre Festival's Nov. 14 gala at the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan. Constantine trained as an acting apprentice at the summer-theater company after graduating college.

• Kendra Chantelle, a semi-finalist during American Idol's 2011 season, will release her debut album, Unthinkable, on Nov. 7.

• In a recent USA TODAY interview, romance novelist Bella Andre listed David Archuleta as one of the pop singers that inspires her writing.

Okay, let me just say that we had some pretty girls where I went to high school. But, judging from the music video for Scotty McCreery's current single, The Trouble With Girls, it was nothing like North Carolina's Garner Magnet High School where Scotty shot the video. If the video's any indication, only girls go to baseball games at that school, and they watch the practices, too. So where's the trouble?

Kelly Clarkson continues to dominate airplay when it comes to acts from American Idol. Mr. Know It All climbs to No. 13 on USA TODAY's Hot AC chart this week and to No. 16 at Top 40. On the AC chart, it remains steady at No. 13.

In Andrea Mandell's USA TODAY piece on Kelly, Billboard director of charts Silvio Pietroluongo calls Mr. Know It All a solid record. "Top 40 is really at a moment now where it's really favoring tempo-driven records," he says. "This is a good pop record, but it doesn't have the dance beats or the electronic feel that some of the other big hits of the format have right now."

Elsewhere, Casey James reaches a milestone this week, as his debut single Let's Don't Call It a Night breaks into the Country top 40.

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I love the teaser underneath the front-page photo of Kelly Clarkson in today's USA TODAY: "Kelly Clarkson's album Stronger is loaded with drama. Her life isn't."

USA TODAY's Andrea Mandrell interviewed Kelly in New York shortly before Stronger's release, and there wasn't much controversy. "You don't see me in rehab, or you don't see me coming out with my hey-haw showing."

She loves the way Stronger sounds: "Sonically, it's my best sounding album. A lot of people in pop will compress the hell out of your vocals. ... But there are vocalists like Adele or Pink or me or Christina (Aguilera), there are vocalists that don't want that."

And if she were to write a letter to her past self, she'd say: "Really make sure you're surrounding yourself with good people. Because I love music, but I am way more about: We have one life and I want to have good character, I want to be around people with good character who have good motives."

Guys, if you start going out with a girl who tells you how much she loves Kelly Clarkson's latest album, run away. Fast. Kelly takes telling guys off to new levels here, to the point that you eventually start to wonder if, just maybe, it's not the guys with the problem. By the time you get to the end, the country song you're half-expecting to hear isn't Don't You Wanna Stay, her chart-topping duet with Jason Aldean. It's Before He Cheats.

Musically, Stronger finds a solid middle ground between the pop-rock of her early albums and the high-energy dance grooves of 2009's All I Ever Wanted. Vocally, Kelly's never sounded better. And with bonus cuts that include Don't You Wanna Stay and Why Don't You Try, a old-school R&B ballad that lets Kelly unleash her inner Aretha, the deluxe iTunes edition of Stronger is worth the extra couple of bucks.

Here's a track-by-track assessment of the basic version:

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Lauren Alaina's 69,000 album sales last week gave the 16-year-old American Idol runner-up the best first-week sales for any female country singer's debut album since 2006.

• After selling 205,000 copies of her Farmer's Daughter album, Season 9 runner-up Crystal Bowersox has split with Sony Music and 19 Recordings.

• Want to catch Scotty McCreery on tour with Brad Paisley next year? Here are the tour dates.

• Melinda Doolittle has a holiday tune called God Bless Us Everyone coming out Nov. 1. Listen to the tune, written with Reggie (The Time of My Life) Hamm, here.

• Constantine Maroulis will take part in Quilt: A Musical Celebration and Reflection on 30 Years Nov. 28 at Avery Fisher Hall. The benefit performance, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, honors the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and the 30th anniversary of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

• Kelly Clarkson covered Carrie Underwood's I Know You Won't during her Wednesday show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. And Kelly keeps posting new songs to YouTube: Check out Honestly.

• Kellie Pickler tells The Boot that she's thrilled to participate in Saturday's Opry Goes Pink benefit concert for breast-cancer research and awareness. "It's just really exciting, because I've not been able to be a part of it before, in the past," she says. "It's a great way to bring awareness to breast cancer.

• Citing the Wall Street Journal, The Hollywood Reporter says The X Factor's lower-than-anticipated ratings has results in a drop for the show's ad prices. X Factor is averaging about 12.2 million viewers per episode, a good ways off from the 20 million creator Simon Cowell had projected.

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The X Factor has barely hit its stride, and already FOX is promoting American Idol's 11th season. Ryan Seacrest premiered this 30-second version of a 60-second promo that'll air during Sunday's World Series game.

Kelly Clarkson's Stronger comes out Monday, but who wants to wait to hear another song from the album? Kelly has posted I Forgive You on YouTube. What do you think?

David Archuleta talks about playing for U.S. military families stationed in Japan and meeting several Japanese fans during a recent trip. He has had to scuttle a planned trip to Thailand due to that country's recent flooding, but he will be in Orlando, Fla., this weekend to make appearances on behalf of Children's Miracle Network.

James Durbin already has two singles going to radio. Now, Wind-up Records has released the titles of all 11 tracks on the former American Idol finalist's forthcoming debut, Memories of a Beautiful Disaster.

A handful of radio stations have already started testing Durbin's two singles. Rock stations WCCC-FM in Hartford, Conn.; WTPT-FM in Greenville, S.C.; and WDHA-FM in Morristown, N.J., have all spun Stand Up. Wilkes-Barre, Penn., Top 40 station WKRZ-FM has played Love Me Bad.

In a press release about James' album, producer Howard Benson says he took notice of the 22-year-old rock singer during his run on Idol. "It was interesting that he spoke his mind and didn't back down from who he was," Benson says. "That's always a good sign."

Here's the full track list for Memories of a Beautiful Disaster, which comes out Nov. 21:

1. Higher Than Heaven
2. All I Want
3. Love In Ruins
4. Right Behind You
5. Love Me Bad
6. Deeper
7. May
8. Screaming
9. Outcast (feat. Mick Mars)
10. Everything Burns
11. Stand Up

Kelly Clarkson's Mr. Know It All continues to outsell all other tracks from American Idol acts. This week, sales of the original Idol's latest single climb 8% -- that's 52,000 for the week, 328,000 release-to-date, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Lauren Alaina puts several tracks on the SoundScan sales chart, but even though weekly downloads of Like My Mother Does jumped 159% during the week Lauren released her Wildflower album, it wasn't her top seller for the week. That honor went to Dirt Road Prayer, with 17,000 downloads. The Middle, One of Those Boys and new single Georgia Peaches also did well.

Daughtry's Crawling Back to You dropped 62% in its second week out. And we haven't seen totals for Carrie Underwood's Just a Dream in a while, but its 197% increase in weekly sales puts it back on our radar -- and also reveals that it recently passed the 1 million mark in sales. Congratulations, Carrie!

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American Idol runner-up Lauren Alaina got herself a top-five debut on The Billboard 200 this week, though, once again, she came in behind Scotty McCreery. Idol's Season 10 winner hung in strong in his second week, with last week's chart-topping Clear as Day dropping to just No. 4.

Lauren sold 69,000 copies of Wildflower, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's 11,000 more copies than Season 9 runner-up Crystal Bowersox sold of Farmer's Daughter in its first week.

Scotty, meanwhile, saw strong second-week sales, as Clear as Day moved 88,000 units, a 55% decline from last week. That brings his two-week total to 285,000.

Also debuting this week: ZZ Top: A Tribute From Friends, featuring Daughtry's remake of Waitin' for the Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago. That album sold 4,000 copies and debuted at No. 121 on The Billboard 200.

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