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You could call it a bad week. First, he continued to get called out by the judges for lacking authenticity as a "rocker," as he proclaimed to be. Then tabloid media started reporting that Robbie Carrico's hair is a wig, or at best a weave, further calling in to question his credibility. And to top it all off, he was the eighth contestant eliminated from American Idol on Thursday. Thank god that's over, right?

Well, not exactly. Now that he was available to talk to the press (within the guidelines of his 600 page confidentiality agreement and contract with the Idol machine), in Robbie Carrico's interviews he had to spend as much time defending both his hair and authenticity as he did talking about his experiences on American Idol.THE HAIR
What's interesting to me is that as someone with longer hair who's been around a lot of people with longer hair, it's almost impossible to never ever see the hair follicles where the hair comes out of your head. And yet with Robbie, even in close-up shots of his face and hairline, you can't see where the hair is coming out of his head, nor can you see it in his part. I'm not sure how carefully you'd have to style your hair to get it to look like that, but it would go a long way in explaining why most times when we saw him he had that bandanna on.

In response to the barrage of suggestions that his hair was less than authentic, Robbie told AOL television, "I've been growing this hair for a very long time. I think it's ridiculous that they have to come up with something like that." If he really wanted to prove his hair was his, all he'd have to do is grab it and pull it straight back so we can see his hairline.

The real problem I have with this whole thing is that there's really no point in wearing a wig or a weave in this day and age to be a "rocker." Sure, back in the '70s and '80s it was rare to see a rock-n-roll guy with short or no hair, but nowadays it's almost more uncommon to see rockers with long hair. More often than not they just have regular haircuts or, as is the case with Chris Daughtry, no hair at all. And if it is baldness that Robbie is hiding from, why not just shave it all off.

Need more American Idol? Get an inside look at Season 7's contestants and think back to these scathing (and hilarious) Simon Cowell quotes. Also: Who do you love? Rank the contestants!

ROCK AUTHENTICITY
Because Robbie spent a portion of his teenage years in a burgeoning boy (and girl) pop band, the judges continuously insisted that they didn't buy him as a rocker, or that he lacked the authenticity of someone like Amanda Overmyer or even David Cook. Robbie's response: "I've spent the past six years working my tail off in grungy bars. Pulling our own trailer with our equipment and living out of a van sometimes and doing all of the grunt work that they said they didn't see me doing, because of what I did before with pop music. That was a job to me. Like I said before, this is me and you get what you see."

The problem I have with that is he described being a roadie, not a rocker. My step-dad was in a rock band for several years back when I was a teenager and I worked in grungy bars hauling equipment and doing all the grunt work and I'd hardly call myself a rocker. Of course, I did go home to a warm bed so maybe that's the difference. Wait, Jewel lived in her car for a year. Is she an authentic rocker? Seems more folksy to me.

I think Robbie continues to miss the point of what it is to be an authentic rocker. It's an attitude that comes from inside, so you can't "prove" that you're a rocker with actions. That said, if he'd stopped trying to so hard to prove he was this hard-core rocker, he might still be on the show. On Top 24 week, he did a really good pop-rock rendition of Harry Nilsson's "One." There's nothing wrong with being that kind of singer and performer and he's believable and authentic as a pop-rocker. Instead we got this incredibly distracting back-and-forth about his authenticity which made fans at home doubt him. That and the odd looking hair.