American Idol

When I think "American Idol," I think of James Dean or Jason Bateman... someone like that.

Are you trying to tell me he wasn't an AMERICAN IDOL, Dan????

How well is the smart arse simon coming over? You guys do know it OK to hate him I take it.

ts: objectivity-panic vs authenticity-panic

The next round has Red in it! She's great!

DO YOU SEE!!??

Something tells me that Chris is going to get the wildcard spot. I'd love to see Angela or Tenia get it, though.

Personally, I think that having an AJ, RJ and Ejay in the finals confused the public and the accidentally voted the wrong J off the show.

Kelly
Tamyra (slightly off, but still a great performance)
Justin (it wasn't a weak performance; it just wasn't the full-on pyrotechnic show people assume he's always going to do)
RJ (Why does Simon hate him so much?)
Christina (SHE IS COASTING ON HER LOOKS. I HATE HER VIBRATO. Nice weave, though!)
Nikki (couldn't tell if her pitch vagaries were interpretation or nerves)
AJ (MAKE HIM GO AWAY)
Ryan (Oops!)

One thing I will say in Ryan's defense, though, is that it was very obvious to me that everything she did up there she did deliberately. When Paula said, "You got off from your vocal track near the end," and Ryan said in a shocked, puzzled tone of voice, "But... I changed the song..." I WAS IN HYSTERICS. Also, as much of a twunt as Simon is, at least he's giving the impression of taking the goal of the competition seriously. Paula is a fucking HORRIBLE judge because she's refusing to pass judgement.

(At the end of the day, Justin and Tamyra are still on top of the pack, but Kelly has gone WAY UP in my estimation to join them with RJ close behind.)

I had a dream last night. The remaining contestants were assigned Van Halen songs. AJ had to do "Panama" and obviously it was most horrible. (Ryan's meltdown made me think she had only heard VH's version of "You Really Got Me"; that p'bly had something to do with my dream being VH-related.)

Justin's confidence has turned into cockiness. Not a good thing for him but it obviously won't have any bearing on his popularity.

Christina's getting much better. I initially loved RJ's performance, but watching it a second time was disappointing. Kelly and Tamyra are UNREAL; they both deserve contracts. Kelly espeically was nervous as hell and on the verge of passing out throughout her entire performance and still managed to fight through vocal problems and give a great performance. Tamyra is a MACHINE; wind her up and watch her be fucking amazing. Justin needs to center himself; he's got the chops but he's letting his show strategies get in the way of his performances (I for one didn't believe his woefully insincere apology for a SECOND; I spent a good five minutes applauding his tactics).

I initially thought Justin was going to mop this competition up, but now it seems that Kelly and Tamyra are the two who are most consistent and most resilient.

This show is WAY BETTER than "Popstars" and "Making The Band"; there's a vested interest in seeing who ends up winning due to the national vote aspect.

Of the ones voted off, I hope an R&B exec saw Angela Peel's auditions because that girl DESERVES to get a contract. (ATTN ?UESTLOVE) AJ, Jim and Ryan should get nothing. God, how I've soured on Ryan Star! They needed to work on the distribution of their talent in the round of 30 segment; they had something like five outstanding people in the last group. Ejay I can't comment on because I didn't see the performance that led to his dismissal.

Actually, if they put together a group with Tenia, Angela, Natalie (the girl from group 1 who sang Patsy Cline) and Jazmin, I'd buy their record.

I think the marketing department would have hung themselves if Jim or Ejay had won.

I don't quite get the reaction to Tamyra's performance. I thought it was excellent, but it wasn't the best thing to ever grace television! Although, I do agree that she's at least on par with Whitney and Mariah (because neither of them can really sing anymore and Whitney's been woefully overrated for her entire career).

I want to beat Justin with a stick for working against his strengths. He should be MILKING the Maxwell angle for all it's worth.

A final three of Kelly, Tamyra and Nikki would be frightening, because that would mean that whatever's going on with the Nikki Groundswell has grown large enough to legitimately threaten the two superstars.

Tamyra and Kelly are beginning to show their scars from belting everything; both of the were extremely ragged around the edges. Their first songs in particular were awful; Tamyra's take on "New Attitude" evoked images of Ryan Starr while Kelly gave a placid, no-emotion robot rendition of "It's Raining Men". By contrast, Justin's "Get Here" was AMAZING (although his "P.Y.T" debacle later on took off any points he had built up). Tamyra's second song was much better suited towards her, while Kelly would have been great had she been in voice.

So, who would have predicted that the most consistent performer of the evening would be NIKKI? She still isn't the singer the other three are, but the song choices tonight worked for her rather than against her (particularly that Melissa Etheridge song). If only she would support the ends of her phrases! I must say I like the darker red hair on her, too.

Here's my ranking of the performances:

Tamyra #2
Justin #1
Nikki #2
Nikki #1
Kelly #2
Kelly #1
Justin #2
Tamyra #1

Anyone could be the bottom two tonight. I'm going out on a limb and saying it will be Kelly and Nikki, with Nikki going home. However, if people judge solely on last night's show, the bottom two will be Justin and Kelly with Kelly going home. (Even though Tamrya gave the worst performance of the evening, Justin gave the most embarassing and Kelly gave the most boring.)

I'm not too upset about Tamyra getting cut because I know that she was besieged with calls from people wanting to sign her the instant she stepped off stage, including Simon. In many ways, it's good that she's out now because she can rest up for the AI tour and someone else who needs it more (Justin, Nikki) has a shot at the guaranteed contract. (Kelly's going to get her own phone-call deluge after she loses to Nikki.)

The fact that I had to scratch my head and wonder who the hell you were talking about perhaps sez it all.

I've idly wondered to myself why I haven't been watching this show, and I think it has something to do with the fact that its whole competitive/judging/public reaction ethos makes no sense to me at all as a listener. I don't see music as a game, I can't sense it on those levels. But it's not just that...I really don't know, the whole thing seems like this really perverse waste of time that I can't put my finger on. We normally just hear final products after having been buffed and run through the wringer. In ways, that IS all I want!

1) Vote Kelly because she's The Singer.
2) Vote Justin because he can sing.
3) Vote Justin because he's ethnic.
4) Vote Nikki because she's redeeming herself.
5) Vote Nikki as a spoiler for Kelly.
6) Stop watching and voting.

How the vote distribution falls along those lines will determine who goes on and who doesn't more than the actual performances, assuming there isn't another train wreck. If Kelly doesn't get healthy, she's out next week because her core constituency will not support her if she's in bad voice. If Justin gets conceited and smug again, he's out. If Nikki... you know, at this point I have no idea what Nikki would ave to do to get kicked out of the competition at this stage, because up until this week she's been the weakest performer since AJ got kicked out, yet she's managed to stay in the competition. Maybe if she comes out and shits onstage, she'll get booted off. (No, that would just attract the coprophiliac vote. I'm telling you, she's going to win this thing.)

Which leads me to another quick question -- exactly what have they been performing again? I think there was a mention of Whitney Houston covers somewhere along the line, and I have to admit that a prospect of a bunch of people just doing that for a show doesn't exactly warm my heart. ;-)

Didn't see this, but this battle over proper singing style sounds interesting:

http://www.nextavenue.org/blog/why-harry-connick-jr-couldnt-sit-idle-during-idol

His breaking point came when Randy Jackson implied that Connick's advice had hindered Kree’s vacuous rendition of "Stormy Weather," which none of the judges liked. He thought she should have sung it more like Etta James, as she had wanted to do. As it turned out, her rendition was neither Etta nor Lena, nor even Kree. It lacked any personality or feeling. You could see Connick about to pop his cork. That's when Keith Urban went into the audience, took Connick by the hand and brought him to the judge’s table. Taking a seat, Connick proceeded to school a very defensive Jackson in the art of singing standards. The point Connick tried to make, which Jackson didn't want to hear, was that the show’s contestants didn't know these classic songs well enough to take liberties with their melodies and lyrics. In doing so, they were murdering the music.

I enjoyed that. Something that needed to be said, and actually had been said so much that it became a cliche and people stopped saying it, but said better than anyone had said it before, by a person who really knows what he's talking about

I know that the response of a certain camp of ILM would be something like "well why not belted-out, overly exuberant, hollow renditions of Stormy Weather with lots of melisma, you rockist?" I want that voice out of my head already, it ruins everything.

I was thinking about that, and I like that the last 2 sentences clarify this a bit because otherwise I could see folks saying yes to Etta James over Lena Horne.

Yeah, I had that sort of drilled into me in music school I guess - it's not that you shouldn't ad lib on a song, it's that you shouldn't ad lib on it before you know the melody and harmony really well. I had a professor who made us learn lyrics to jazz standards even though we were playing them instrumentally.

i thought harry was awesome, and i'm glad the show gave him the airtime to make his case, and repeat his case, and then make it again, and then lose his head over it. it was great tv, and it was smart mentoring.

but to be fair to randy, he didn't say please sing with as much melisma as possible. he basically said you don't have to listen to everything everyone tells you to do, including harry connick jr. it's ok to be yourself. that's all. and there's something essentially true, obviously, in that.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/05/06/181586182/harry-connick-idol-and-the-pop-charts-can-you-define-good-singing?sc=tw&cc=share

Ann Powers says Harry "bullied" the singers, but most of the NPR commenters disagree

there might be a lot of different definitions of "good" singing, but I don't think any of them include not understanding what the song is about

Yep. Also, Connick was forceful in his comments but I wouldn't call it bullying.

As a classical singer, that Ann Powers piece is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen written about singing.

Everything she says about the Connick/Holcombe interaction during the coaching is completely off, plus the commentary about Rihanna blankly performing everything the same with no sense of the words she's singing hasn't actually been true since Rated R and, regardless of whether you like the song, is a ridiculous thing to say about the performance given in "Stay". It also doesn't help that she wholesale abandons her thesis of Harry Connick Jr being a fuddy-duddy who is stuck in a rut of not recognizing the value of other approaches to a song by artificially extending it to performers who weren't on stage and weren't coached by him and then going on to celebrate the AI contestant who is the closest living embodiment of the stance Connick is taking as the best performer on the show.

From the Kacey Musgraves thread

Kree Harrison, a current top 4 contestant on American Idol, is best buds with Kacey, sings on her record, and is I believe the younger sister (or cousin?) of Kacey's guitarist.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, April 26, 2013 7:50 PM (1 week ago)

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/TV/2013/0502/American-Idol-And-the-winner-is-Harry-Connick-Jr.-video

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/kree-or-candice-idol-finale-kicks-off-with-finalists-kree-harrison-and-candice-glover/2013/05/16/066c8e1a-be88-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html

Glover looked stunned when “Idol” host Ryan Seacrest announced amid a flurry of confetti that she had bested soulful 22-year-old country singer Kree Harrison from Woodville, Texas.

...

Glover’s win marks the first time a female and a nonwhite singer has won the competition since Jordin Sparks dominated the sixth season in 2007. The previous five winners — Phillip Phillips, Scotty McCreery, Lee DeWyze, Kris Allen and David Cook — were all Caucasian guitar players, known to “Idol” fans as WGWGs, or white guys with guitars.

The lack of a female champion for the past five years was mocked in a finale bit featuring the female finalists, in cahoots with Sparks, jokingly sabotaging this season’s five male contestants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/american-idol-winner-candice-glover-rolling-out-debut-album-in-july/2013/05/22/3b815f9a-c306-11e2-9642-a56177f1cdf7_story.html

That's quick