The Idol Guy

Earlier this week, our cable box broke and we weren’t sure if we could catch Idol this week and file this week’s article on time. As it turns out, though, we wouldn’t have missed much. It was as close to a total disaster as we’ve seen this season so far. Of the 673 songs they could have chosen from this week, it was almost like they chose the eight worst ones. It was that bad.

We have to give the title of “best” this week to Jordin. To Love Somebody had reasonably good vocals – she delivered the power notes without sounding screechy, which is not always a given with Jordin. However, it wasn’t anything we hadn’t heard before from her. We already knew she was good at the slow power ballads, and this wasn’t even her best go at that kind of song. Woman in Love was far less impressive; to us she sounded screechy in a lot of spots. It didn’t do too much harm to the overall performance, but overall it was just okay. It’s saying something that one good performance and a middlingly mediocre one was good enough to get Jordin on top of the heap this run around.

Melinda is next, but only just. Both songs were well-sung, but that’s practically Melinda’s trademark. However, Love You Inside Out made zero impact with us. Our reaction after that song could have been summed up as okay, now what? There was nothing good or bad to take note of; it was pretty forgettable. How Can You Mend A Broken Heart got off to a rather insipid start as well, but it improved to become at least acceptable by song’s end. Like Jordin, though, this was nothing we haven’t heard from her before, nor was it any good.

Blake’s first song was You Should Be Dancing. How about just singing, for starters? It was horrendous beyond words. It was so bad, it was almost enough to make us wish Chris or even Sanjaya were still on the show. Blake’s falsetto resembled that of a cartoon character who’d just been kicked in the nuts. The beatboxing seemed out of place, and do we even have to mention Blake’s attempt to become the Human Sound Effect Machine? Even his physical appearance was bad. The white highlight on the hair was ridiculous, and the jacket looked to have been stolen from Dr. Evil’s closet with a weird pattern sewn into it. One of the worst performances this season.

As for This Is Where I Came In, it wasn’t quite a complete mess, but it was still awful. His vocals are by far the weakest in this group, and that was exactly what the song highlighted. Paula made liberal use of the “contemporary” tag which, as we said several weeks ago, isn’t a compliment in our book. We understand what Randy was trying to say with his beatboxing comment – if Blake is going to beatbox, he must make sure that it fits the song. To us, it seemed like the beatboxing was like a poorly conceived addition to a house – it just didn’t fit. It was as if Blake took the song and asked himself “where can I beatbox in here?”, ignoring whether or not his performance would be helped by it.

In her own way, Lakisha was just as bad as Blake. Did she really think any good could come from singing Staying Alive? Once again she was given good advice (go up in pitch), and she ignored it. It would have been fine in a karaoke bar, but this is the final four. It wasn’t anywhere near good enough. It would have been the worst of the night, had Falsetto Blake not decided to show up. Run to Me was just okay, but it was still not what we’d expect this far along in the season. On a night when she had to be outstanding to survive, Lakisha was mediocre. It’s no surprise she got the boot.

Is anyone really surprised?: Lakisha’s boot this week was fully expected. She started out strong, but it soon turned out that she was very limited in what she could do. If she stuck to her comfort zone (mostly slow ballads), she was as good as anyone, but outside of it she had a tendency to fail, sometimes spectacularly. Staying Alive was only the most recent example; other notable ones in our book include Jesus Take The Wheel and Conga. We’re tempted to say she went a bit too far, but if you look at the rest of the field you can’t say that either. You have a hard time pinpointing just who really deserved to go that much further than they did. Any other season, Lakisha would be further down the order, but taking everything into consideration she made her exit right where she ought to.

That all you got?: We’ve spent plenty of space commenting on what seems to be the substandard quality of this season. We’re almost at the logical conclusion of that chain of events: we now have three contestant who all bring something new to the table, but also have some sort of flaw that would have been fatal to their chances any other year, or may cause problems post-Idol. This is a situation that may well be unprecedented in Idol history.

Jordin may well be the best teenager we’ve ever seen on American Idol. She’s got amazing power, and as we’re constantly reminded, she’s only 17. So what’s the problem here? Plenty. For one, she doesn’t quite have the kind of control and precision that’s especially important if you’ve got the power she has; otherwise you can sound like you’re shrieking (as she did in some parts of Woman in Love).

Another problem we have with her is this curious disconnect between her singing and non-singing personas. Like most teenagers, she has this bubbly, energetic personality. Yet when she goes out to sing, she’s at her best with the slower, older songs. When she does try something more uptempo, or more recent… it doesn’t seem to fit. Go back a few weeks and look at Hey Baby. She wasn’t impressive. Sure, Jordin can win. What happens to her when it’s time to start recording the album? With most Idol contestants, we know what they’re going to sound like when they cut an album. Consider, for example, Carrie Underwood and Chris Daughtry (the biggest commercial successes from the past two seasons.) They didn’t have the kind of contradictions that Jordin has. We’re pretty sure she’ll be signed to a record deal, no matter how she does on the show. It’ll be interesting to see what the end result will be.

What about Melinda? On technicals alone, we’ve said many times she’s as good as they get. It’s not her singing that’s the problem; Randy loves to refer to her as the “resident pro”. There, though, lies her biggest problem.

We doubt there are that many boxing fans among our readers, so humor this comparison. For many boxing aficionados, what they want to see is both fighters bring it all out in the squared circle, exchanging blows and leaving nothing in the tank, not caring about whether there’ll be a tomorrow or not. The same can be said for all sports fans – and Idol fans, to boot. It’s not enough to have the skills; you need to tell the people at home, “I’m giving it my all because this is what I want to do, I’ll be damned if I don’t do the best job I can, I don’t give a crap about what happens after this.”

Yet all too often we don’t see that from her. Yeah, the vocals are there, and we know she is trying her best. However, that’s something you almost never see from her performances. They’re always well sung, but there’s that special factor that just isn’t there. The fire, the desire to be the best… it’s just not there. Early on, we were wowed and impressed by her vocal prowess, but as the season went on that was no longer enough. Lately, our reactions have been: “okay, you can sing well. Now what?”

Why doesn’t Melinda have this ability? If we had to guess, it’s because she’s spent her professional career as a background singer. Contrast Melinda with Taylor Hicks, who did have that ability. We knew he was working his butt off every week, leaving it all out there for his fans. And it worked! Melinda learned her craft in the shadow of others; Taylor learned his in clubs all around the South. When your success as a performer is tied to the reaction you can get from a crowd that may now know who you are, or may not even care about you that much, you quickly learn how to grab their attention and impress them. Melinda, as a background singer, never had that chance; if anything what she’s learned is the exact opposite – not to stand out, not put yourself on the line because it’s not about you. It’s a quintessential case of Background Singing Syndrome. She’s shown signs of snapping out of it, but when push comes to shove she tends to revert to her old ways.

Blake is both defined and confined by his beatboxing. He has forgotten that beatboxing, like hitting glory notes, is a means, not an end. Just because you can add it to a song, doesn’t mean you should. We’re surprised no one has used the “indulgent” tag on Blake, because that’s what he did this week. More to the point, no matter how hard Blake tries, you can’t beatbox through an entire song. It will always be a seasoning to the main dish, As it is, his fundamentals are weak. When he tries to just plain sing, he’s horribly outclassed. It’s like bringing a spork to the O.K. Corral. He has some musical knowledge and creativity, but that’s more useful if you’re a producer, not the singer. All the creativity in the world can’t make up for a weak voice – you’re either born with it or you aren’t. Blake got this far with a very unique tool – his beatboxing – but beyond that, he doesn’t have much to offer. Like Jordin, one has to wonder what will happen when the album recording sessions begin.

In the short-term, the effect of having this group make up the final three is that the finale spots are pretty much wide open. Most final threes have an obvious laggard, and while vocally Blake fits that role he has a strong hardcore fanbase that will keep him in the mix. Melinda’s vocal abilities should be enough to get plenty of votes from more casual viewers, offsetting her relatively weak fanbase. Jordin is somewhere in the middle, good enough to get casual votes yet having a sizable base that will vote for her, no matter what. It’ll make for an interesting study in song choice, particularly since they’ll get to pick one of the three songs next week, with the rest in the hands of Clive Davis and our judging panel.

The Idol Guy Mailbag: with the finale week coming soon, it’s time for an announcement. When the finale is done and over with, we’ll have not one, but two articles. One will look at that week specifically, but the other will be a season in review. So I’d like to ask you, the reading public: what do you think are the trends or moments that define this season? There are some obvious ones – the (lack of) quality talent, Sanjaya – but is there anything else you think will stand out from this season? If you’ve got any suggestions – let us know either in this thread, or via private message.

This was a good week for us. John’s finally going to pay us! This season finally had a good episode! On paper, this group – three divas, one Timberlake copy, one beatboxer, and the most distracting cranium in Idol history – was not the best-equipped bunch to take on Bon Jovi. This was undoubtedly the best week of the season to date – the only bad part is it took this long to get a truly good week.

Before we dissect each performance individually, let’s spend some time on the night as a whole. In many ways, this was everything last week wasn’t. Last week was defined by a series of safe performances, as if no one wanted to be the poor fellow voted out on Idol Gives Back week. This time, though, it was clear that almost everyone took chances they weren’t taking before. It doesn’t always pay off, but we appreciate the effort. We’ll take that instead of a snoozefest like last week any day.

Let’s start with Phil. Not quite the riskiest performance of the night (that would be Blake’s), but it was still an incredible gamble. It could have turned out very poorly. It worked fairly well for him – the vocals were spot-on, the performance itself was pretty good, and it was definitely one of the top performances of the night. Say what you will, but to us it’s clear that Phil has improved markedly since the start of the competition. Why Simon felt this was such a bad performance, we have no idea. (Actually, we do. More on that later.) It’s a real pity this had to be his last week.

Melinda continues to prove her frontrunner status. For someone in a strange place musically she was pretty good. Vocals were her trademark high-quality, and now she’s getting better at commanding the stage and audience. She always had the whole package, but she’s still improving. That, in itself, would be remarkable. Add to that the fact that she’s never faltered vocally and you have a recipe for something truly remarkable. She’s put together what to even the most jaded and cynical Idol viewer has to admit is the greatest run of consistent vocal skill in years. It’s simply amazing.

It’s safe to say that in a night where others took risks and pushed their own personal envelopes, Lakisha opted to stay right in hers. To be fair, it also worked well for her. Her recent performances have been closer to shouting than actual singing, but there was none of that on Tuesday. It was the right balance of power and control – she was able to hit the power notes without sounding like a caterwauling feline. This was the Lakisha we had not seen in a few weeks.

Unfortunately for her, that’s a somewhat backhanded compliment. She spent the last few weeks digging herself a hole, and now she has to bail herself out of it. Her adventures in mediocrity have undoubtedly made it difficult for her to expand her fanbase. For someone in the final four, that is not good. She survived this week, but her prognosis of getting any further is rather grim.

There’s an old saying that says bad things come in trees. So it’s no surprise that for the third straight week someone reprised a song that a previous contestant had done before. Chris Richardson had to pick, of all songs, something Chris Daughtry did last year. To be fair, it wasn’t a complete disaster. The vocals were still nothing to write home about, but overall it wasn’t any worse than anything he’s done before. Just like Lakisha last week and the one before that, Chris was really in a no-win position, but at least his performance wasn’t a complete disaster. Two non-singing related notes. What the heck was with the lighting – did they want to blind the viewers at home? Secondly, why does Chris feel the need to keep moving his head when he sings? This led to someone bestowing a not-so-flattering, but completely appropriate nickname upon Chris: Bobblehead.

Worst of the week was Jordin. That’s a real shocker. We knew she would have trouble with the theme, but just how badly she misfired was surprising. We thought it would at least be a reasonable vocal, but that was not to be. The vocals were rather bad, with plenty of screechiness that we don’t usually associate with her. Jordin is as good as anyone else when she’s in her comfort zone of slow power ballads, but out of it she’s not as good, and she’s perfectly capable of laying a goose egg. She’s fortunate this theme came so late; had it been earlier in the season (top 10 or so), Jordin would have been in real trouble. This week, though, her strong fan base (and a healthy number of votes from last week) kept her on track for a finale appearance.

Blake… well, Simon was partially accurate when it came to him. It’s not quite a fifty-fifty split between those who’ll like it and those who won’t. One-third will love it, another third will hate it, and the other third will think “what the heck was that?” We’re firmly in the third camp, but we freely admit to Blake not being our cup of tea. We will give him this: he took a risk and made it work for enough people. It may well have been the most unique Idol performance ever. The beat-boxing has always been his ace in the hole, and he made excellent use of it. Even if he’s not our favorite, we can still call a good performance when we see it. Well done, Blake.

Two exits = twice the cheese: When we did our top six roundup, we wondered who would last longer: Phil or Chris. Chris did, but only by a matter of minutes. Chris was no surprise, but Phil was something of one; conventional wisdom had it that Lakisha would go home on Wednesday night.

Chris going home was no surprise. He didn’t have a good vocals, but made up for it with his performance skills, among other things. The oft-repeated mantra is that Idol is a singing competition, but that’s not completely true. A good comparison is to the previously eliminated Haley Scarnato. Neither were particularly good singers, but had enough appeal as entertainers to succeed. Of course, Chris’s overall entertainment abilities were better than Haley’s, which is why he got a fair bit further than she did. Chris took it as far as someone with a weak voice, good entertainment skills, but nothing else particularly innovative could.

Phil’s departure was somewhat of a surprise, but if one takes a look at the long view we can see why it happened. Phil has had a few good weeks, but his early season appearances were a little rough. That doesn’t mean you’re stuck at the level you were at the start – witness Jordin this year, and the king of improving-on-the-show, Season 5′s Elliott Yamin . However, Phil wasn’t as good at the start as either Jordin or Elliott were, and more importantly he wasn’t consistent. You can’t get more fans if you’re good one week, mediocre the next, and stink the one after that.

Phil, in all fairness, exceeded most expectations of him from the start of the season. He did well to make the top six. If you have to get voted off, what better song to do it than Blaze of Glory?

Speaking of going out…: We normally don’t have much to say about the results show. They’re filled with enough filler to make Spam look like gourmet food, and most of the time there isn’t much we could say even if we tried. We have one thing to say about this Wednesday’s show, though.

Robin Thicke. What in the world was he doing up there? The guests on results night haven’t always distinguished themselves, but even among those it woeful. It was a performance that would have been more at home in an audition episode rather than top 6 results night. Before seeing him in action, we had no idea who he was. (We still don’t.) Is he always that bad? If he is, well, who knows. Maybe Sanjaya does have a career in the music industry after all.

So how much is he being paid again?: We were doing some channel-surfing recently when we came across Simon Cowell as a guest on the Ellen show. With nothing much on, we tuned in – and Simon said something that, in all honesty, surprised us. He said, in effect, that he doesn’t actually listen to the performances on Tuesday night, because it’s too loud and it’s difficult to hear anything. So what he does is listen to the dress rehearsals, and make up his mind there.

Now, this is a mind-numbing failure on so many levels. One word: earpieces. Is it that hard to get sound to the three? Is there some reason that the same sound delivered to millions of households across America and the rest of the world cannot be delivered several yards? More likely, someone is being lazy. Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to anyone that with god-knows-how-many cheering fans behind them, Randy, Paula and Simon might need some help. It goes beyond laziness. This is cluelessness.

Simon himself shouldn’t be spared from the blame either. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean he should stop trying. In real life, what Simon did would be a firing offense. Last we checked, to judge something you actually have to pay attention to what you’re judging, not engage in childish games with the Seal Clapper in Chief, also known as Paula Abdul. We all know that sometimes the performances from dress rehearsals and the actual show vary. If you want to see it at home, all you have to do is watch the brief summary they give out at the end of each performance show. Those are from the dress rehearsal, not the actual show.

Is it too much to ask Simon to actually do what he’s paid millions to do?

This week may well have been the most hyped in Idol history – and that includes the five past finales. Did it deliver? Well… not so much. We had no obvious stinkers, but even the good performances left us wanting. Of course, in many ways, that was only a set-up to the two hour “results” show… which, in what was truly an Idol first, consisted exclusively of filler.

In the spirit of feel-goodiness, let’s go down the list of performances in the order they were on the show. First up… Chris. It was a good song choice for him. It’s not a song that taxed his vocal abilities; it was what we’d describe as a reasonable vocal. Unfortunately, he chose to move around a fair bit, which we found distracting. What he should have done was simply sit down and sing. As a whole, it was just average. Unfortunately, this is the top six. “Average” doesn’t cut it, not at this stage of the competition.

We’ve said before, and we’ll say it again: Melinda’s performances are always spot-on technically. Idol hasn’t had anyone who was this good (technically, at least) so consistently. Maybe it’s a case of overly high expectations, but this was not her best performance. The first half was not particularly good, but the second half was the kind of performance we’ve come to expect from her. It was still very good, but it didn’t have the “complete” feel that Trouble is a Woman had.

If this were baseball, Blake should be walking back to the dugout by now. This is the third time in a row he’s pounded a song into blandness. A lot of what we said last week about Lakisha applies, here, too. You do a song that’s so strongly identified with one person – in this case, John Lennon – you will inevitably be compared to that person. That was a losing proposition no matter what Blake did. Simon was right – it came through as completely sincere, but that was really it. Where has the fun beatboxer gone? He’s tried to be this staid, down-key singer… and it isn’t working.

First Lakisha did Carrie Underwood, then she this week she does Fantasia. One thing for sure: she likes to make ambitious song choices. She’s not afraid of being compared to two past Idol winners, either. Now, it wasn’t quite the disaster Jesus Take The Wheel was. With Lakisha you will always have a tendency to “shout” parts of songs, since she has a lot of power but not always the control to properly use it. However, we got the impression that the judges were harsher on her this week compared to last. It wasn’t quite that bad. The song choice was daring, but it felt like a “safe” performance. Lakisha should be better than this.

Phil is one of the more interesting contestants among the top six. When he’s on, he can be very good. Not quite in the same league as Melinda or Jordin, but roughly on the same level as Lakisha and better than either Blake or Chris. Unfortunately, he has as much charisma on stage as he has hair on his head. The Change showed both sides of Phil. Technically, it was very good. Certainly, in that department alone he was well above the other guys. Unfortunately, just singing a song well isn’t enough. The test of a good performance is, do you remember it as being good one or two days after? For Phil… not quite. He’s in the “forgettable” category, but as we said last week he could sneak into the final four.

The judges are prone to exaggeration, and while Jordin was good, it wasn’t “best vocal in six seasons” good. There’s no doubt Jordin can hit the power notes as well as anyone else, but the rest of the song was just average. The one thing Jordin did very well this week, however, was connect with the material. She did that better than anyone else did on Tuesday night. Given the theme and the whole Idol Gives Back aspect of this week, that was even more important than it normally is. As an overall package, it was the best of the night, even if perhaps it had some rough patches technically. Perhaps that was the reason it received so much praise from the judges, even if on vocal merit alone it did not deserve it.

What is this? The Amazing Race?: The idea of kicking someone off on a given week is part and parcel of reality TV. The Amazing Race is perhaps the most notorious for, on occasion, not having someone leave at the end of each week. In hindsight, not kicking off someone this week made perfect sense – it would have been somewhat off-putting to boot someone after the Wednesday night show they had.

As far as the competition is concerned, though, the non-elimination week and the extended voting period will have some effects. To recap, next week the voting period will last four hours, and the votes from this week and the next will be added together and the bottom two will go home.

The big gainer from the “twists” this week and next will be Jordin. It’s safe to say she had a lot of votes this week, and the little stunt that Ryan pulled – making it seem that she might be going home – will only energize her fan base even more. There is no way she can end up in the bottom two next week – we can consider her final four ticket punched.

For Blake and Phil, this week was essentially the Idol equivalent of a mulligan. They weren’t good enough to merit a big boost in the votes, but not bad enough to put themselves in a big hole they can’t recover from. For Phil, if he has an off-week next week his relatively good vote count this week might make the difference. For Blake, it doesn’t matter nearly as much. He was probably safe in any case, and save a major disaster he’s through to the final four as well.

Melinda loses out, but that’s from the extended voting hours more than the vote addition. Her fan base may not be up to the task of voting for four hours straight. She may be the front runner, but our guess is her votes come from relatively more people, but with each one casting relatively few votes. We doubt Melinda is the favorite of power voters who are willing to dial for hours on end. (Someone like Sanjaya, for example, would represent the opposite extreme.) With two people going home next week, there’s a good chance Ryan Seacrest would announce something like a bottom three or four. Do not be surprised if Melinda makes an appearance there. She’s not going home, but a scare is not out of the question.

The ones in serious trouble are Chris and Lakisha. Both of them came into this week in a relatively dangerous position. Chris never impressed vocally; Lakisha impressed early on but has faded since. In particular, after their poor country week performances, they needed good ones to get any further. Unfortunately, neither one of them delivered. Chris is almost certainly gone; Lakisha will need to regain her form from the start of the season, and hope that someone makes a major mistake (think forgetting-the-lyrics major.) It’s not likely.

Useless trivia of the week: Jordin fans may want to take note. The last two winners both made it through the entire season without ending up in a bottom two/three group. Kelly Clarkson and Clay Aiken both did the same thing in their respective seasons as well. Of the six remaining contestants, who could qualify under that would be Melinda and Jordin. If, as we suspect, Melinda makes a bottom group appearance next week… perhaps it could be considered foreshadowing.

Who is giving back, anyway?: the whole week was dominated by the whole Idol Gives Back charity drive. While Idol deserves credit for the publicity it’s giving to various charitable causes, we hesitate to fully praise them for this. Here’s why.

The final amount that will be raised will probably be somewhere around $80-100 million. (A news article we read earlier today has a partial total of around $60 million.) It’s all good that they’ve been able to raise that amount… but how much of it is really from the various corporations involved in Idol? We know the News Corporation, owners of Fox, have donated their $5 million. What about all the other corporate sponsors they like to brag about – Coke, Ford, and AT&T? How much have they given?

We don’t have any problems with Ryan, Simon, or any of the public faces of Idol. We think their concern is genuine, and it’s worth noting Simon’s donated a “six-figure” sum out of his own pocket. The same goes for the actors and singers who did their part for the show. There’s no reason to think their concern for the needy is anything but real. Our beef is with the nameless corporate types who call the shots behind the scenes.

If you’re going to ask people to give their own hard-earned money, isn’t it only fair to give just as generously? Isn’t it unfair to demand change from ordinary folks when you’re not willing to part with significant cash from your own far larger coffers? Right now we doubt anyone topped the $5 million figure; with their love of big numbers Idol would have announced it in a heartbeat if that was the case. With ad rates well over half a million dollars for a single 30-second spot on either Tuesday or Wednesday night, Idol earned around $55 million in ad revenue for this week alone. We haven’t even gotten into the money the name sponsors put into the show. So how much did the corporate powers that be really give? If they were really interested in giving, why tie the final donations to participation numbers (like votes, as News Corporation did, or Internet video downloads, as Ford will reportedly do)?

In the end, Idol Gives Back will be remembered as a great success for bringing attention to the problems in America and Africa. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that the real credit should go out to the viewers at home. The show should have been called Idol Viewers Give Back, because that’s exactly what happened. Idol Gives Back was probably conceived with the best of intentions, but somewhere along the line it turned into a gigantic act of self-promotion, with the viewers at home left to do the actual work of charity. Was it a good night for charity? We can’t deny that. That amount of money is significant, and we’re sure it’ll find its way into hands where it can do a lot of good. But we can’t help but wonder how much better it could have been had self-promotion not been so much of a factor.