AI 8 Rewatch: The Finale!!!! (Finally!!!!)
Well I have finally gotten through my season 8 DVD, added by some vacation days. And my little rewatch project comes to an end with
Starting with the
Finale Performance Show As always, this is divided into contestants choice, rigged producers choice, and gawdawful song written for the winner.
Contestant's Choice round What a shock, NOT, that Adam picks Mad World and Kris does better than the producers at choosing songs. He reprises Ain't No Sunshine and his performance is better than the first time. The judges are thrilled with it. Adam's, in comparison, is a little too theatrical. This is exactly what Simon says after the other judges do the usual OTT praise, and Simon and I both award round one to Kris.
Producer's Choice round Well there have been some awful producer choices over the years, and it's a great opportunity to knock someone out of the park; for example, when they made Syesha sing Happy Feet.
This time around, they give Adam "A Change is Going to Come", which he slays (embedding was disabled). It means a lot to him and he brings that to the performance, which is his best of the night by far. Kris gets "What's Going On" which he does in his usual style.
So it's good, but right after Adam's tour-de-force, maybe a touch flat. Still very underrated, however, by the judges, who award the round to Adam. I do as well, but not by as much as they do.
Winner's Song No Boundaries. Object of hate and derision of every American Idol Season 8 fan. Written for Gokey but sung in the wrong key and dreadfully on this particular episode by Adam and Kris. You can tell they think the song sucks. It's too little for Adam and too high for Kris. Just awful but Kris does a smidge better.
Both of them cleaned it up much better on the studio versions and I confess to a secret like of Kris' version. I don't turn it off when it pops up on itunes shuffle. I do appreciate that Kara, in judging Kris, says "vote on the season" and someone says similar about Adam.
So off we go! Who's going to win? I remember that night. Voting and voting and voting with two phones and occasionally bringing up dial idol to see if Kris had pulled ahead. It was neck and neck and as Edward Boddington of Stuffy and Stuffy Accountants tells us in the results show, over 100 million votes were cast. As opposed to 36 million in sucktastic season 9. That stat alone tells you how much Adam and Kris meant to people and why it sucks that they are struggling to get radio play over the Ke$ha's and Katy's and DeRulos of the world, all of whom I suspect we would vote off the island if we could.
Results Show The end is hear, but not without lots and lots of musical numbers and first, a red carpet show!
First cool thing Syesha has ever done maybe:
Show time! Disclaimer- It's been a week, I will get the order of events wrong. Kris and Adam look hot in white! They all sing a crappy Pink song! They sing with Jason Mraz! Ah who cares about all this, fast forward this baby to the 2nd best moment of television in 2009:
OMG THEIR KICKY FEET AND SHOULDERS AND CUTE LITTLE TIGHT JEANS AND HARMONIES AND GUITARS GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH KREITH FOREVA <3<3<3<3
OK, oh yes, the rest of the finale. Well there's something with Steve Martin, Megan and Sarver that is weird and makes no sense and is still enjoyable. There's a nice duet with Allison and Cyndi Lauper. At some point, Lionel Richie comes out and saves us all from Gokey. Kris and Adam get their car from David Cook, and we get the best Ford commercial ever. I will never for the life of me understand why Idol didn't cash in and make that song a single. They sound great together. It would have given all of the Kradam lovers music to chew on besides No Boundaries and tided us over until the CDs came out the following November. It would have been a smash!
But for my money, I really liked the Santana performance which kind of gave Matt his 15 seconds to shine and showed us all Kris salsaing (you can pretty much click off after that).
Then either right before or after that we get Adam's package and he sings with Kiss. This is kind of a sell-out actually on Idol's part. It would have been better to just have paired him with Queen, and gone even bigger and better for the finale duet. Kiss is cheesy, it's almost like saying Adam is cheesy (which I don't believe he is), but he cheeses out in his Kiss outfit. It doesn't serve him well like the Keith duet served Kris, IMO.
Then we get this hilarious dance display, followed by 10 million years I mean minutes of Rod Stewart singing.
Finally, a duet with Kris, Adam and Queen. Both sound good but of course it suits Adam better. It was supposed to be his crowning when they planned all this, after all. But this was Kradam's moment and they do a great job.
I wonder how cool it would have been to have made Adam pick something other than Mad World for performance night (he could have gone with Tracks of My Tears, for example), and then have brought out Tears for Fears to do a greatest hits medley with them. Adam could have done Mad World, Kris could have done EWTRTW and everyone sings Shout. Hindsight, I guess.
And then it is time to announce the results. We all know Kris won and have seen the footage. Adam fans were horrified. The media was horrified. Simon was horrified. Kris fans, fellow musicians who had picked him (Mraz, Daughtry, etc.) and fellow contestants were THRILLED. As anyone who has read my journal or twitter entries has figured out, Kris is my #1 favorite Idol contestant of all time, and Adam is one of my favorites, I definitely do count myself as an Adam fan even if I don't love all of his music. He's got it, no doubt.
Rather than focus on all that, which is widely available on You Tube, it's good to focus on positive stuff. Kris and Adam were and are good friends who respected each other, and just represented different styles of music. They went on to have a successful tour (I think I will do a tour recap post for fun next) and then make their CDs, have their first hits and begin careers doing what they love. Around the summer after Season 8, there were tons of tribute videos, so I thought I'd post one of the nicest ones to wrap up this post. Season 8, though, was by far my favorite season of Idol, so I have a large playlist of videos to relive it. Unless you are a Gokey fan, there will be something for you on it.
I will remember you, Kris, Adam and Season 8:
Starting with the
Finale Performance Show As always, this is divided into contestants choice, rigged producers choice, and gawdawful song written for the winner.
Contestant's Choice round What a shock, NOT, that Adam picks Mad World and Kris does better than the producers at choosing songs. He reprises Ain't No Sunshine and his performance is better than the first time. The judges are thrilled with it. Adam's, in comparison, is a little too theatrical. This is exactly what Simon says after the other judges do the usual OTT praise, and Simon and I both award round one to Kris.
Click to viewProducer's Choice round Well there have been some awful producer choices over the years, and it's a great opportunity to knock someone out of the park; for example, when they made Syesha sing Happy Feet.
This time around, they give Adam "A Change is Going to Come", which he slays (embedding was disabled). It means a lot to him and he brings that to the performance, which is his best of the night by far. Kris gets "What's Going On" which he does in his usual style.
So it's good, but right after Adam's tour-de-force, maybe a touch flat. Still very underrated, however, by the judges, who award the round to Adam. I do as well, but not by as much as they do.
Winner's Song No Boundaries. Object of hate and derision of every American Idol Season 8 fan. Written for Gokey but sung in the wrong key and dreadfully on this particular episode by Adam and Kris. You can tell they think the song sucks. It's too little for Adam and too high for Kris. Just awful but Kris does a smidge better.
Both of them cleaned it up much better on the studio versions and I confess to a secret like of Kris' version. I don't turn it off when it pops up on itunes shuffle. I do appreciate that Kara, in judging Kris, says "vote on the season" and someone says similar about Adam.
So off we go! Who's going to win? I remember that night. Voting and voting and voting with two phones and occasionally bringing up dial idol to see if Kris had pulled ahead. It was neck and neck and as Edward Boddington of Stuffy and Stuffy Accountants tells us in the results show, over 100 million votes were cast. As opposed to 36 million in sucktastic season 9. That stat alone tells you how much Adam and Kris meant to people and why it sucks that they are struggling to get radio play over the Ke$ha's and Katy's and DeRulos of the world, all of whom I suspect we would vote off the island if we could.
Results Show The end is hear, but not without lots and lots of musical numbers and first, a red carpet show!
First cool thing Syesha has ever done maybe:
Show time! Disclaimer- It's been a week, I will get the order of events wrong. Kris and Adam look hot in white! They all sing a crappy Pink song! They sing with Jason Mraz! Ah who cares about all this, fast forward this baby to the 2nd best moment of television in 2009:
OMG THEIR KICKY FEET AND SHOULDERS AND CUTE LITTLE TIGHT JEANS AND HARMONIES AND GUITARS GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH KREITH FOREVA <3<3<3<3
OK, oh yes, the rest of the finale. Well there's something with Steve Martin, Megan and Sarver that is weird and makes no sense and is still enjoyable. There's a nice duet with Allison and Cyndi Lauper. At some point, Lionel Richie comes out and saves us all from Gokey. Kris and Adam get their car from David Cook, and we get the best Ford commercial ever. I will never for the life of me understand why Idol didn't cash in and make that song a single. They sound great together. It would have given all of the Kradam lovers music to chew on besides No Boundaries and tided us over until the CDs came out the following November. It would have been a smash!
But for my money, I really liked the Santana performance which kind of gave Matt his 15 seconds to shine and showed us all Kris salsaing (you can pretty much click off after that).
Then either right before or after that we get Adam's package and he sings with Kiss. This is kind of a sell-out actually on Idol's part. It would have been better to just have paired him with Queen, and gone even bigger and better for the finale duet. Kiss is cheesy, it's almost like saying Adam is cheesy (which I don't believe he is), but he cheeses out in his Kiss outfit. It doesn't serve him well like the Keith duet served Kris, IMO.
Then we get this hilarious dance display, followed by 10 million years I mean minutes of Rod Stewart singing.
Finally, a duet with Kris, Adam and Queen. Both sound good but of course it suits Adam better. It was supposed to be his crowning when they planned all this, after all. But this was Kradam's moment and they do a great job.
I wonder how cool it would have been to have made Adam pick something other than Mad World for performance night (he could have gone with Tracks of My Tears, for example), and then have brought out Tears for Fears to do a greatest hits medley with them. Adam could have done Mad World, Kris could have done EWTRTW and everyone sings Shout. Hindsight, I guess.
And then it is time to announce the results. We all know Kris won and have seen the footage. Adam fans were horrified. The media was horrified. Simon was horrified. Kris fans, fellow musicians who had picked him (Mraz, Daughtry, etc.) and fellow contestants were THRILLED. As anyone who has read my journal or twitter entries has figured out, Kris is my #1 favorite Idol contestant of all time, and Adam is one of my favorites, I definitely do count myself as an Adam fan even if I don't love all of his music. He's got it, no doubt.
Rather than focus on all that, which is widely available on You Tube, it's good to focus on positive stuff. Kris and Adam were and are good friends who respected each other, and just represented different styles of music. They went on to have a successful tour (I think I will do a tour recap post for fun next) and then make their CDs, have their first hits and begin careers doing what they love. Around the summer after Season 8, there were tons of tribute videos, so I thought I'd post one of the nicest ones to wrap up this post. Season 8, though, was by far my favorite season of Idol, so I have a large playlist of videos to relive it. Unless you are a Gokey fan, there will be something for you on it.
I will remember you, Kris, Adam and Season 8: