Chuck Wicks Elimination: Blame TiVo

Chuck Wicks on "Dancing With The Stars." Photo courtesy of delawareonline.com/ABC.

June 5, 2009 — Chuck Wicks was being a good sport when he agreed to appear on this spring’s edition of Dancing with the Stars. He wasn’t a particularly good dancer, and he knew he was setting himself up for a bit of mockery by viewers at home by going on the show.

Still, it helped that his girlfriend, Julianne Hough, agreed to be his dance partner in the competition, in which he lasted a solid eight weeks before fans finally voted him out. The tough part about it was that for someone who’s not really a dancer, Chuck had just started to get the hang of it all.

"After eight rounds, I was just hitting my stride," he told The Stockton Record. "I was getting my best scores. I told [Julianne] all of our voters were TiVo watchers, and by the time they were watching it was too late to vote. That's my excuse, anyway."

The ABC series brought a lot of attention to Chuck, who got his first real taste of fame when he scored a hit with his debut single, "Stealing Cinderella." The song won the approval of a wide range of people: In addition to hitting country music’s Top 10, it was voted by the Nashville Songwriters Association International as one of the 10 best songs of the year, and it’s built him some credibility in a very young demographic that might actually prove to be future music-buying Chuck Wicks fans.

"So many people can relate to it: daughters, grown men with daughters, girls getting ready to get married, guys getting ready to ask dads if they can marry their daughters," he said. "It's even little girls coming up to me and saying, 'You're the one who sings about Cinderella. She's my favorite princess.'"

Chuck will likely be singing "Stealing Cinderella" during his appearance at Nashville’s Riverfront Stage Thursday on opening day at the CMA Music Festival. Set to join him during that afternoon’s performances: the Bellamy Brothers, Diamond Rio, Neal McCoy, Heidi Newfield, James Otto, the Randy Rogers Band, Ashton Shepherd, Phil Vassar and Gretchen Wilson.