Happy birthday, Blake Lewis!

To honor American Idol‘s season 6 runner-up Blake Lewis on his birthday*, I will risk the scorn and ridicule of those who have not heard his underappreciated Audio Day Dream by embedding the disc’s best track, “Know My Name” (featuring Lupe Fiasco), below. I’ll admit, the Audio Day Dream CD cover was hella bunky, and yes, I spent more on my breakfast (a sesame seed bagel and a bottle of Diet Coke) than Arista Records’ total budget for Lewis’s pitiful debut video for “Break Anotha,” but all that aside, I dare you to press play on the track below and tell me it wouldn’t have been a sizable hit if the dude had gotten even a modicum of support from his label.

* I solemnly vow that this will be my final blog post of 2008 using a former Idol contestant’s birthday as a platform to complain about his/her flagging album sales. But for those of you who think I’m an indiscriminate Idol cheerleader, do note that the birth dates of Katharine McPhee, Diana DeGarmo, and Phil Stacey all went unnoted here at PopWatch. That is all.