As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was going to go back and release my updated How Old Is Thing Song study. (Thanks again to Landon Cox of Burleson, Texas for sending these numbers in.) After several weaks of looking at the numbers, poking them, tweaking them a bit, what have we found? As far as younger songs doing better than older songs in Idol competition, the numbers are looking even better than they did three years ago. As for post-Idol success, that’s harder to say: although to be fair, there are a lot of other factors at work there. So, let’s look at Seasons 8 to 10. Next week (fingers crossed),
The methodology is still the same as I outlined in How Old Is Thing Song 2.0, with one change: coronation and reprise songs will not be counted in the averages and median anymore. Most of the time, they only serve to artificially lower the number of the top two placers.
Season Eight: The Surprise Finale That Really Wasn’t
Take a good look at the difference between Kris Allen’s average song age and Adam Lambert’s. On average, Adam was singing songs almost a decade older than Kris. Then again, on average, Adam was the graybeard when it came to song choice: he was singing much older songs than the rest of the field. Lambert was not only the most controversial contestant of the season, he was (with the exception of the robbed Alexis Grace) the oldest artistically. Add to the many reasons Kris won and Adam didn’t song age.
I wish I could say that the young song picks of Season Eight made for an enjoyable season – but I’d be lying if I did. It was torture. No other season has inspired me to write a three part editorial calling out the Idol PTB. It was that bad. There is nothing that causes more anger in the Idolsphere than selective judging – whether it’s for someone or against someone.
This season’s low song age was achieved in a surprisingly easy way: theme selection. By Idol standards, there were few graybeard themes: sure, you had Motown and Rat Pack songs, but beyond that there really weren’t any atrocities. On the other hand, you had themes like Year You Were Born (when, by far, the contestants did the theme properly and didn’t cheat), Top iTunes downloads, and songs of the Opry.
However, song age can really only do so much. Young songs done poorly will still stink. This chart was done by my friends at What Not to Sing, and shows the WNTS scores of the first seven eliminated contestants in the finals. Scores over 50 have been highlighted. It speaks for itself.
Spare a thought for one contestant in particular. Alexis Grace proved again that singing older than average in a given year is dangerous for frontrunners. At the time of her elimination, her mean/median score was 32.67/35. Only Adam Lambert had an older score in both categories at that time. It was simply her bad luck to be in Season Eight and not Season Nine, as you will soon see.
Season Nine: Guys versus Girls, Contestants versus Producers
From the point of view of song age, Season Nine got off to a good start. The top 12 finalists, through three rounds of semifinals, had an average song age of 19.17 and a median of 11.5. You couldn’t complain about songs being old. And then the producers came in.
The average song age during the finals was more than a decade older at 32.13. The median was an appallingly high 39. Stop for a moment to ponder these statistics: half of the songs in the finals of the search for the next great singer in America was four decades old. The first five finals episodes had an average song age of 37.76 and a median song age of 41. What. The. Hell. Was. 19E. Thinking?
Some of the patterns we’ve seen before are, again, present in this year. Didi Benami should have lasted longer – but at the time of her ouster both her average and median song ages were above 30, where it starts to become a risk for contestants. Siobhan was in a similar situation, and also went out earlier than many pundits thought she should. On the flipside, consider the significant gender gap: there’s no guy with an average song age in the 30s; conversely no girl (save the hapless Lacey Brown) with a similar score in the 20s. However, correlation does not equal causation: in quite a few of those cases (most notably, Katie Stevens) the girls were perfectly capable of choosing young material. It just happens to be that they were eliminated before they got a chance to do that in the finals.
Season Ten: Casey Abrams, King… Graybeard?
This season was a powerful demonstration of the power of song age. First, however, I’ll dispel one possible case. Looking at Pia’s numbers, one might think that high song age was the ultimate culprit for her exit. It wasn’t. The table below show’s everyone numbers when Pia was eliminated:
If anything, Pia was singing on the younger side of the top 9! Pia left with three straight old themes on her Idol resume. Season Ten, like Season Nine, didn’t really get young songs until five weeks into the finals. That was after Pia had already left, so she’s saddled with a number that reflects the geriatric nature of the early S10 weeks. There were many factors behind her early exit, but song age… was not one of them.
A classic example of song age kicking somebody out was Casey. At the time of his Judges’ Save, his average and median song age were both in the 40s (40.5/43, to be exact). That’s essentially unheard of in Idol. Anything above 30 is a warning sign, let alone 40. He left with an amazingly high median song age of 41. If there was ever a king of the graybeard songs, Casey was it. The queen, however, was, surprisingly, Thia Megia. In fact, that number seemed so wacky, that I’ve already done some digging into some… other aspects of that anomaly. Maybe that’ll come out in another couple of weeks, or it may go nowhere if the numbers don’t pan out.
Looking at the top three, the most remarkable number there has to be Lauren’s. Consciously or not, not only was she borrowing Carrie Underwood songs, she also borrowed heavily from the latter’s Idol strategy. Given the… changing conditions of song choice since Season Four (read: iTunes), getting a median below 20 and lasting as long as Lauren did was a great achievement. It was generally assumed at the time that Lauren was vote-splitting with Scotty (hence, few believed both country contestants would reach the finale), but in hindsight thay may well not have been the case. It may well have been the what she had was the teen/tween vote and not country voters. Had Lauren been picking more “average” songs age-wise, she would probably not have made it into the finale.
Haley’s numbers show what is just about the only way to get out of a song age hole. Pick a really current song and sing the crap out of it. She did it twice – Rolling In The Deep and You and I. It’s a high-risk strategy, but then again if you need to get out of a song age hole you don’t have a choice. Of course, if you’re in a song age hole because old songs are your thing – Casey’s a good example, Haley to some degree as well – then you have to realize that that is something which makes advancing week to week that much harder.
Whatever the case, Season 10 was a season of extremes. You had Lauren Alaina doing as good a job as anyone ever has of selecting young material for her stay. On the opposite end, Casey was picking from the older half of the songbook.
In Closing
The past three Idol seasons have not taught us anything we couldn’t infer original How Old Is This Song study years ago. The lessons of the past are still unchanged: on American Idol, you’re better off doing new songs rather than old ones, all other things being equal.
Damn. All of these statistics and I don’t have the voice or the range to compete on this show XD Good article.
Hmmm… No post-results show analysis?
No, I generally do one editorial/analysis every week, and that’s it.
As for the Colton Dixon boot: I wasn’t all that surprised. It was earlier than I thought would happen, but apparently Colton singing Lady Gaga went down very poorly with his fanbase. I don’t know how badly it affected him, but an off night combined with that was enough to give him the boot. If Colton had a narrow, but passionate fan base – which is quite possible – any drop in passion with his fanbase could be fatal, as this turned out to be.
There is one interesting possibility if you combine Colton’s boot with Jessica’s near-exit. The vote totals may be a lot closer than people think. Certainly, both Jessica and Colton didn’t do an awful lot wrong and they ended up last. Also, Hollie ended up completely clear of the bottom three when her fans rallied for the first top 7 week. There may well not be a lot of room for error at the bottom. If that is the case, it makes Elise’s survival all the more remarkable.
Are there any songs in the last two or three years that are really good and will last 10-20 or 30 years? Most stink and will not be around even next year.
Maybe the youngsters who vote hundreds of times don’t appreciate the older songs but older viewers might be enjoying and watching.
The winner depends on the votes but the entertainment factor and talent factor draw viewers. How is success measured? Viewers or voters?
Idol is biased toward ballot box stuffing but still emphasizes the singers more than the judges. If the PTB limited voting but kept the helpful mentors and encouraged the judges to give helpful critiques then improving contestants might be able to make an impression on the voters so that the season is singing contest, not a popularity contest.
“Umbrella” by Rihanna, “Rolling in the Deep” and “Someone Like You” by Adele, “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers, “Oops I did it Again” by Brittney Spears, “Beauitful” “Genie in a Bottle” and “Fighter” by Christina Aguilera, and now it looks like “Somebody that I used to Know” by Goyte is joining the mix.
There are a lot of songs in this musical era that will stand the test of time. Railing against the music of today is only different then it was 10-40 years ago because we are now all connected via the internet to tell each other just how opinionated we are but frankly, there are various radio stations that play “Hits” that you can tell will manage quite nicely in the decades to come. I’m sure there are plenty of country and rap songs that will stand the test of time as well, but I’m not as versed in those (Maybe “Here for the Party” and “Anyway”?).
I agree with everything else you said though.
Idol- 10 years from now. I wonder if the songs you suggest will be classics, play on “greatest hits of the past” radio programs and will called too old for Idol singers. Thanks for the suggestions to listen for.
I also wonder how wide a choice the contestants have for their songs. Do the PTB give them limited lists to chose from which do not include some that would be good choices?
According to some of the interviews, they’re given anywhere from 10-20 songs to choose from but I’ve read that they can request for a song to be cleared. Idol isn’t exactly a bucket of transparency, so you know, lol.
Add “Before He Cheats” “Toxic” “We Found Love” “Teenage Dream” “Halo” and “Since U Been Gone” to that list, they are still getting airplay to a certain extent.
The problem with modern music is that these songs have not stood the test of time. When we get the older themes, the music that people know are the hits, the good songs. Time has not vetted the hits of today.
What is exciting about this year is how fluid the results have been. Only P2 has not in the bottom 3, which means that fanbases are less important and the ‘independents’ – those who aren’t aligned to particular contestants and rather vote week to week on who performed the best – come into play a lot more heavily. It will be interesting to see what TPTB do with Hollie; they clearly wanted her gone this week after she survived and not in the bottom 3 last week, and put her in the death spot. She outlasted Colton even by performing first, and performing spectacularly with her first number and decent to good on her second number (at least in comparison to the rest of the soul numbers, her’s was competent) but without the pity votes of last weeks “bussing” that wasn’t, she still hit the seal. I suspect she got more votes than Elise, but they put her in the B2 anyway. I think her ‘open choice’ song will determine her fate more than anything; if she goes for a big Celine ballad she’s toast. I’d like her to do ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’ for her Queen number and something fun like ‘Toxic’ for her second.
I was gonna add “Toxic” but I haven’t heard it on the radio in forever. All the other titles are totally instant classics :]
Looks like TPTB wanted to give Hollie a chance this week. Pimp spot and everything :] Wondering what kind of reviews she’s going to get from here.
The flipside to “When we get the older themes, the music that people know are the hits, the good songs” is that many of these songs were NOT hits back when they first came out.
The Grateful dead didn’t have a top 10 album or single until 1987, and the Ramones never even cracked the Top 40 in the US. In hindsight we think of them as defining the era, but back then songs like “Disco Duck” and the “Theme from S.W.A.T” hit #1.
Makes me curious if there’s some songs now that aren’t even on the radar but 20 years from now will be thought of as classics.
One possible corollary to all this, by the way:
So far there have 2 weeks in this season’s finals where Idols had the freedom to go music from whatever era they desired: Top 6 week (2nd half) and top 9 week. Here’s the average song age of the top 6 from those two performances:
Skylar: 3.5 years
Hollie: 4.5 years
Jessica: 6 years
Phillip: 14 years
Joshua: 14.5* years
.
.
.
Elise: 44 years
Sure enough, Elise was the one eliminated.
(*) I went with 1994 as the year for Joshua’s “Without You” since Mariah’s was the performance probably best known to Idol watchers.
One thing I should have mentioned there…Elise DID sail through with a (magnificent performance of a) current song in the semis. But from a casual idol viewer’s point of view, that was ages and ages ago.