STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — By Thursday morning, dozens of friends and millions of strangers had seen local musician Kyle Blaine's unsuccessful audition for the Fox series, "American Idol."

The episode in which Blaine, an Annadale resident, sang the Goo Goo Dolls' cover of "Give a Little Bit" aired Wednesday night. Deemed by judge Jennifer Lopez as "Yelly" and many others as a joke, Blaine was dismissed.

The show, now in its 14th season, starts out each season airing a mix of bad and promising auditions from prospective contestants. Many believed Blaine's audition was placed in the "bad" category, but see for yourself in the video above.

Reached by phone on Friday by the Advance, Blaine said he was disappointed by the show's portrayal of him as "an idiot" with no musical talent.

American Idol contestant Kyle Blaine. (Courtesy of Fox Television)

Well-spoken and earnest, the 25-year-old La Guardia High School graduate is nothing like the spacey weirdo the show portrays him as. He has a degree in audio engineering and considers himself a full-time musician, both independently and with his band Annadale. In March, the group will open for the nationally renowned "emo" band Hawthorne Heights at #Hashtag Bar in Staten Island.

"It's not like I think I'm God's gift to music," Blaine said. "It's just that I've been doing this my whole life."

"American Idol" has not responded to requests for comment on Blaine's accusations.

Overall, Blaine said the producers picked and chose the worst clips from his week-long auditions in Nashville over the summer.

"I'm a little quirky and I guess you could say I'm an 'eccentric musician,' but they just made me look like the freak of the night," Blaine said.

It's not unexpected for a reality show, he said. But he never imagined the production could be so unfair — not only to his character, but to other talented musicians who were also made to look foolish, he said.

"That was brutal to watch," Blaine said.

In the episode, Blaine enters the judge's room with his guitar and chats with the the celebrities about life as a grocery store worker — a job he later tells me is necessary as an emerging musician. Judge Harry Connick Jr. asks to touch Blaine's long red hair then jokingly asks the other judges for some hand sanitizer.

"When he said that, my heart sank," Blaine said. "All the other judges seemed like they were just posing for the camera, but Harry seemed like the only real one."

Blaine then plays the song, a cover of one of his favorites, Supertramp. He admits it wasn't his best performance, but he followed the producers' advice to sound "edgy."

In hindsight, he shouldn't have trusted that advice, he said. But he believed the producers were on his side — they even sang to him on his birthday during the week-long audition over the summer in Nashville.

"I was hoping the producers would know what was best, but they told me what would make me look like a fool," Blaine said.

All things considered though, it wasn't as bad as he thought — and he's gotten a lot of support from the show's viewers.

"I was expecting them to make me look like the next William Hung, or for Jimmy Fallon to go on his show with a big red wig mimicking me," Blaine said. "But in the end, my group of supporters has grown. That made me feel a hundred times better."

Chime in: Did you watch the performance? How do you think it went?