Season 8’s jazz crooner, Matt Giraud, celebrates his 25th birthday today. Matt will always be remembered as the first person to be “saved” by the judges on American Idol. The four judges thought his performance of Bryan Adams’ “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?” was worthy of using the save on him, and he returned the next week to sing the applicable disco hit, “Stayin’ Alive.” Matt made it all the way to fifth place, when he was eliminated during Rat Pack Week, despite receiving solid reviews from Simon Cowell.

After touring the nation with his fellow Season 8 finalists on the American Idols LIVE! Summer 2009 tour, Matt returned to Kalamazoo where he worked on his music and performed his first solo show. He’s also gotten involved with the Oreo Cakesters jingle challenge, along with Season 8 finalist Anoop Desai.

Matt returned to the American Idol stage during Season 9’s Top 16 results show to perform “Tell Her About It” with fellow Season 8 pal Scott MacIntyre. After their performance, Matt shared that his duet with Anna Wilson called “You Don’t Know Me” was recently #1 on the iTunes Jazz charts. After announcing that on the live Idol show, the single instantly jumped back to #1 on the chart! View photos of Matt performing on the results show.

Happy Birthday, Matt!

Matt recently opened up to AmericanIdol.com in an exclusive interview. Take a look.