It seems to be that every year we get the same sort of “scandals” surrounding the current crop of Idol contestants. There’s the “sexy picture” sort of scandal (Antonella Barba then, Katrina Darrell and Casey Carlson now), the “dumb criminal” sort (none so far, but we’re sure The Smoking Gun is working on it as we speak), and, of course, there’s the “plant” scandal.

Last year brought us Michael Johns and Carly Smithson as 2008’s dedicated foliage. This time, the combined ire of the Idolsphere has fallen of Joanna Pacitti. For those not quite in the know, here’s the compressed version: Pacitti auditioned in Louisville, but first became famous in 1996 at the tender age of 12 – after getting fired from the musical Annie.

Since then, she’s been signed (and dropped) by Geffen Records, appeared on an MTV reality show, had songs appear on several movie soundtracks, as well as a debut album that sold 15,000 copies. Better than Smithson’s 6,000 debut effort, but hardly the next big hit.

Now, I’m pretty tolerant of these plants in general, as I said last year. However, the sheer volume of prior media exposure Pacitti has received gives me at least some pause. If Wikipedia is a good measure of “notability”, it’s worth pointing out that she had a page there even before she auditioned, as the revision history reveals.

I don’t quite think there’s enough in there to disqualify Pacitti – but it comes very, very close to the discomfort zone. While it’s not as bad as the case of Canadian Idol’s Dave Moffatt, who found success both in North America and abroad long before becoming a CI contestant, it’s pretty darn close. (For the record, I think someone with a record similar to Moffatt should not be allowed on the show.)

In an ideal world, the Idol producers would fix the rules to clarify the rules on contestants with previous experience, but we know that’s not going to happen. In the end though, will it matter? Probably not. Our gut reaction is that she will turn out to be the typical midgame boot, much like Michael and Carly last year. If an artist gets the kind of backing Pacitti did, there’s a decent chance there’s a good reason why she didn’t become the next star. The voice is there, no doubt, but there are so many other ingredients necessary for Idol success – and we don’t know how Pacitti stacks up there.

To be honest, this is the sort of thing that gets the Idolsphere in arms  but just doesn’t resonate with the wider voting public. The media outlets pick it up because, well, they need something to write about.

It’s all about perspective

I’m sure all of you already read What Not to Sing, but if you don’t you should check out their three recent Idolmetrics editorials: each one covered the effects of sex, age, and region.

The most interesting for us is the one for age, because while the two other studies largely confirm conventional wisdom – guys do better (because of Idol’s female-heavy demographic), and the South has a decided advantage. The finding for age, however, does upend convientional wisdom. Most Idol pundits have long believed that younger contestants have an advantage, but it turned out that wasn’t the case. Age isn’t a factor. So how could Idol pundits have gotten it so wrong?

The Idolsphere has long believed that younger contestants benefit naturally from younger, power-texting voters. Frankly, I’m not sure if that assumption is correct. Do younger voters instinctively pick younger contestants? Ask me a year ago and I would have said “yes”, but now I’m not so sure. Song age may be a much stronger factor there – none of the teens on the show so far have really sung younger material all that well.

What could possibly be at work here is that the Idolsphere is guilty of selective memory. We remember successful youngsters like Jordin Sparks and David Archuleta and turn that into Conventional Wisdom, and we conveniently forgot that for every one of them, there a few teens that are cannon fodder and vanish from our screens after a handful of forgettable (or terrible) performances.

The ultimate lesson? Take any conventional wisdom with a grain of salt. Heck, take anything pundits say with a grain of salt – ourselves included.

If you were with us during Season Seven, you may recall that we took a hard look at Idol song ages. At the time, I called the numbers “preliminary”. Since then, I’ve wanted to take a closer, more detailed look at the numbers. Unfortunately, that little thing called real life decided to interfere and delayed it, but eventually I found the time.

For people who didn’t read the early version, here’s the short summary. Song age turns out to be a pretty influential factor in the success of Idol contesants – both on and off the show. The younger an Idol contestant’s song, the more likely he/she is to succeed – either on the show, after, or both. This shows itself in a few ways, but we’ll get to the exact details later.

The Rules

Of course, before we get to analyzing song ages, we need to discuss the ground rules. Analyzing each and every contestant in the seven seasons of American Idol would result in a classic case of information overload. Besides, for semi-finalists there isn’t really enough data to draw any sort of useful conclusions. So, we’ll limit ourselves to everyone who’s made it to the finals stage – top 10 for Season One, top 12 for the other seasons. That’s 82 contestants in all.

The other thorny question is, just how do you measure song age? Cover songs cause the most problems in this area; do you measure from the original or the cover version? We’ve decided to stick with what’s called the primary song age – i.e., when the song was first made famous in the US. Occasionally, this results in some oddities. For example, David Hernandez sang It’s All Coming Back to Me Now when the theme was the 80s. However, because the song was made famous by Celine Dion in 1996, we date it to that year – not 1989, when it was first released in Britain.

But the song age is just the raw data – to get any meaning, you need to use some statistics. Everyone knows what the average is, but sometimes it’s not too useful. One song with a disproportionately high or low age can distort the data. So, we use something else called the median. The short version is: for our purposes, the median will be an age where half of the songs being considered are younger, while the other half is older. Check the link to Wikipedia for the details.

Let’s give credit where the credit is due as well. Our first effort – and this one – would not have been possible without the data provided by Nick over at What Not to Sing. They have our undying thanks, and any serious Idol viewer should check them out.

And now, let’s take a look at each season of Idol, and see what the numbers tell us. Continue reading ‘How Old Is This Song? 2.0’ »