“American Idol” is back for an eighth season of first-class karaoke.

The first piece of novelty of the show will be the bikini contestant with a terrible voice who splits the jury straight down the gender line in the first episode of the season. The world's best-known show will have more judges in its eighth season. It will also feature one more Hollywood round, more finalists, more backstage intimacy and hopefully more surprises.

To cut a long story short, this season, “American Idol” fans will get more of everything.

As everyone in the entertainment industry does, “American Idol” made efforts to reinvent itself for this season. However, despite speculation that the 7 percent drop of the show’s ratings led to desperate changes, AI executive producer Ken Warwick assured viewers that there were “no panic changes.”

"It wasn't, 'Oh, my God, we've dropped seven percent and what are we going to do?"

Of course it wasn’t like that. The show had 28 million viewers on average in 2008.

A preview of the first episode was aired by FOX on Monday night for those who couldn’t resist for another 24 hours. The rest of the country can see the show from 8-10 p.m. today (Tuesday).

The first episode opens with audition held in Phoenix. The show’s fans will meet the new judge: Kara DioGuardi. She joins Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson. DioGuardi makes herself noticed right away when she takes on the girl in the bikini.

DioGuardi, a songwriter-producer and a past Grammy nominee, sings a few bars to show the bikini girl how it’s done and gets a bit belligerent by saying that the girl doesn’t have the chops to sing that song, “sweetie.”

"But your demonstration wasn't any better," the bikini girl replies making Paul Abdul, a long time friend of DioGuardi, to jump on her feet. For the record, the new judge’s name will soon be Kara DioGuardi-Guarini. She is marrying Season 1 runner-up Justin Guarini.

Meanwhile, the male judges were quite impressed with the daring bikini girl who snapped back at the new judge.

Simon Cowell is the same we all know. Although the girl in the bikini had a terrible voice, the bitchy British judge said he saw a lot of potential in her and was definitely impressed.

“I'm going to say yes," he concluded.

As for the other changes, there will be three semifinalists instead of two and the wild-card round has been revived so failed singers have a second chance to make it into the top 12. As far as the rumor-interested fans are concerned, Paul Abdul won’t get the boot, said Warwick who underlined that the singer’s job as an AI judge is not in jeopardy.