'X Factor' winner Tate Stevens' tips for Season 3 hopefuls

With 11,000 people already registered and thousands more expected to walk up to audition at Nassau Coliseum, all the singers are looking for ways to get noticed by "The X Factor" producers. (Judges Simon Cowell and Demi Lovato aren't expected to attend, and no replacements have been named for Britney Spears and L.A. Reid, who were judges last season.) Here are five tips from last season's winner, Tate Stevens, for those looking to stand out from the crowd:

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Tate Stevens wasn't going to audition for "The X Factor" last year.

"I didn't even really want to do the show," says the reigning "X Factor" champion, sitting in the lounge of a midtown Manhattan hotel. "My wife and kids . . . signed me up without me knowing."

The 38-year-old country singer from Belton, Mo., said he decided to go to the show's Kansas City auditions only because his wife agreed to stand in line with him, and he thought she would decide to go home pretty quickly. "We had to get there early early in the morning," Stevens recalls. "It was kinda drizzly rain, and I thought, 'Uh-huh, she's not going to want to stand out here with all these thousands of people.' But she hung in there. Luckily, she did."

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After leading for most of the season, Stevens won "X Factor" and a $5 million recording contract in December. His major-label debut album, "Tate Stevens" (SYCO Music/RCA Nashville), hits stores Tuesday, with the single "The Power of a Love Song" starting to climb the country charts.

Regardless of how it performs, the album already has made several dreams come true for Stevens, who got to co-write "I Got This" with one of his favorite singers, Joe Diffie. "He's one of my heroes and a super-super nice guy," Stevens says. "It was a great experience, and we got a great song out of it."

Stevens was able to co-write three of the album's songs, despite the intense time pressure to finish the record quickly. "I would have liked to have written all of them, but that just wasn't possible," he says. "I'm thrilled I was able to work on three of them, but I would have been OK if I didn't write any of them. It was best song wins."

"I'm just really excited for the chance to get people to hear it," he says.

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(You also can register online. Either way, you'll need to go to the coliseum on those days for a wristband.)