Boys and girls, we’re a week away.

But what if this year’s American Idol isn’t even American? Yep, it’s a possibility, as rumors have swirled that an Irish lass has made a big impression on our judges.

However, Carly Hennessy has way more experience in this business than you might believe. As of just a few years ago, MCA Records had spent $2.2M on her, only to have her sell about $5,000 worth of CDs — a massive, massive bomb.

Blogger Matt Goyer posted an article from the Wall Street Journal that explained further:

Eighteen-year-old recording artist Carly Hennessy is packing up her small apartment. Her promotional posters will go into storage, and the beige rental couch will be returned. A weight-control message that the slender teen scrawled in marker on the refrigerator — “NO, U R FAT” — will be wiped clean. For two years, Vivendi Universal SA’s MCA Records paid the rent here while Ms. Hennessy prepared for pop stardom. And that’s not all: The label so far has spent about $2.2 million to make and market her new album, an upbeat pop recording called “Ultimate High.” “Some people just struggle,” she says. “I was very, very lucky.”Not lucky enough. “Ultimate High” was released in stores nationwide three months ago. So far, it has sold only 378 copies — amounting to about $4,900 at its suggested retail price. In many other industries, this would be considered an extraordinary bomb. But in today’s troubled music business, it’s routine. Of the thousands of albums released in the U.S. each year by the five major record companies, fewer than 5% become profitable, music executives say. The high failure rate has become the focus of an escalating battle. On one side are big names such as Don Henley and Sheryl Crow, who are fighting the industry’s practice of holding top performers to multiple-album contracts that can take decades to fulfill. They complain that labels unfairly enforce such deals because they need to offset their lavish spending on ill-conceived acts that never make it. “We’re expected to indefinitely fund the record company,” says Mr. Henley, a solo artist and member of the Eagles, who calls the industry’s high percentage of flops “shameful.” He and other top performers are staging concerts Tuesday night — on the eve of Wednesday’s Grammy Awards — in part to support an amendment before the California legislature that would limit recording contracts to seven years. That’s the current cap on contracts for actors and other service workers, under a state law that originated from a 1940s legal case that helped break up the Hollywood “studio system,” which tied movie stars to multiple-film contracts. In 1987, the music industry successfully pushed to exempt record contracts.

Nevertheless, Season 7 wasn’t the first time Hennessy tried out for Idol. In 2005, visa issues precluded her from striking it big in the states.

However, according to a November 2007 New York Post article, Nigel Lythgoe was quoted as saying:

“There are one or two that stand out - there are three girls who are superb, including one girl we saw three years ago who wasn’t an American citizen [and is now] and we’re happy to have her this year,” he says.

This wouldn’t be the first time that a contestant with some foreign roots made it far on the show. In Season 3, Seattle native Leah LaBelle made it to the finals, but only after a name change. See, she’s originally from Bulgaria, and if I remember right, her mother was a vocal teacher of some sort.

Either way, both LaBelle and Hennessy are American citizens, so I don’t think there is any controversy there.

What bugs me though is that MCA spent $2.2M on Hennessy, and she managed to sell only 378 units. If our favorite show is to continue its phenomenal run, how can it do so with a singer whose commercial worth is a punchline? Look, it might not be a punchline right now, but by the time Hennessy gets to the Top 24, as it seems like she will, this will be a bigger story.

And Idol will face some criticism.

Then again, perhaps our li’l talent competition is a haven for second chances. That’s the ticket, and I like looking at things from a perspective of positivity and good energy.

Besides, if you’re asking me, this video from Hennessy — outside of the weird wind-blowing — wasn’t half bad. The song that is.