The Top 12 of Season 9. Really. This was the top 12!?! Oh dear.
So I wasn’t sure that I was even going to do these this year. They took up so much time last year and that was time that I had to spare. They were a great distraction from my course work but I'm not sure they'll be from actual work. But I did get a lot of pleasure from writing them.
When I was considering whether I was going to revue/analyse the performances again there were several reasons behind my thought process and the general idea not to bother this year which included, among other things:
No I don’t watch it with the same passion as last year and I think I’m going to end up incredibly frustrated as the people I like get the boot one by one and Lee Dewyze, Katy Stevens and Andrew Garcia stick around. But there is still a draw there to see if things get more interesting. After all, weren’t people complaining last year that the Top36 was seriously lacking in talent. Having never watched Idol before I didn’t understand what they meant but this year, sure enough, all I can think is
“by this time last year we’d already had Kris’s ‘Remember The Time’, Adam’s ‘Black and White’, Allison’s ‘Alone’, Alexis’s ‘I Never Loved A Man’, Lil’s ‘Be Without You’, White Chocolate, Gokey’s group song of ‘Somebody to Love’ and Jesse Langseth’s ‘Bette Davis Eyes’. And on an interesting if ‘what the hell?’ note we’d also had Anoop tanking on ‘Beat It’, Matt’s atrocious-what-the-hell-happened-to-the-man-who-sung-Georgia-!!! rendition of ‘Viva La Vida’, Nick/Normund’s entire run on the show (which I genuinely loved and made me want to see his stand up), Nathaniel’s insane choice of ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’ and Megan’s wonderfully ridiculous cawing.”
So yes, there was interest there even if people were bemoaning the apparently lack of Cook-esque interest.
But this year, this year I’m just not sure. We’ve already lost Lilly who I didn’t really like and couldn’t stand her voice on anything other than ‘Fixing A Hole’ but was talented and interesting. I was all ready for her to fill Giraud’s spot last year of ‘Person I know is talented but just doesn’t appeal to me’. We’ve lost Haley who had pitch problems and should have been made to wait a few years but had more charisma than most of them up there. We lost Todrick who was ready to bring the crazy. We’ve lost Katelyn who could have been a genuine contender were she not a pretty female singer/songwriter who chose a boring song. We’ve lost Alex who could have blossomed with some confidence. And we’ve lost Joe, one of the only to sing for the most part in tune. (And for my own personal sadness we lost John Park who had my favourite voice of the season but couldn’t hold it together under the pressure and lacked charisma. Yes he deserved to go but I was hoping he’d break through the nerves.)
Instead we’ve been left with a big range of boring with the odd spark shining through. I’m just hoping more and more sparks will appear as time progresses.
Now, this will not be that long because a) there are 12 of them and therefore I am not going into massive detail on any of them and have only written about 7 and b) I accidentally deleted this week’s performances from my box so it’s all from memory of a few days ago. So here we are in order of appearance (thank you Wikipedia) with a few notes on the performance and how I think they might progress.
Anyone who read last year will know the drill only this time I’m not writing uni work at the same time and therefore might have a slightly lesser vocabulary. And like last year, where I tried to compare things to previous seasons, you can bet your sweet ass that I’ll be bringing up the David’s, pretty much all of Season 8, some Melinda Doolittle, Blake Lewis, Kelly Clarkson and the occasional other former contestant. If you disagree with my views on things that’s absolutely fine and if you have an intelligent argument against my views or even an “I like Lee so I disagree” I would love to hear it, I agreed to disagree about Matt last year with many people and we were all quite happy about it. I will not, however, tolerate random screamed abuse. Just so we’re all on the same page okay?
But moving on.
Michael Lynche:
The thing with Michael that seems to be overlooked by a lot of the popular Idol commentators is that, for as cheesy as he is, he’s also one of the only male contestants to sing in tune. For some reason his ability to carry a tune doesn’t seem to matter as much as the fact that his movements are cheesy as hell and over thought. Over thinking moves is not the worst thing in the world, Adam obviously worked out the staging of all of his songs last year, Daughtry knew exactly on what beat of the music he was going to move. These were both theatrical dudes who made it work for them. But Michael’s self confessed ham factor is really getting in the way of people admitting that he’s one of the best there.
I’m not a Michael fan and I honestly find it hard to think of him as a possible recording artist, but at this stage in the game when there are so many others who can’t hit the right not for love nor money shouldn’t be we applauding this. And yes, that’s not a great sign that simply singing in tune on a singing contest should be held up as some sort of standard but hey, you take what you’re given.
This week Michael’s movements were more off-putting than normal because he had more space to make them in. He lumbered about that stage with his legs wide apart looking, to be completely honest, a bit strange. Yes he may know how to work a crowd but he needs to learn how to work a stage. Odd, jarring movements only work if you’re super sexy/super cute, quirky, and they appear natural. Kris Allen can get away with some very strange movements on stage and still look attractive because he is all of those things. Up there Michael just looks a little odd. He’s a good looking man, if far too large for my taste, but he’s not eccentric enough to be able to pull off the odd sumo-wrestling thing he had going on this week. He needs to be more natural in his movements otherwise they just seem contrived and strange.
On a purely sociological front I think, and I hate hate hate saying this, but I think the fact that he’s in a mixed race marriage could end up going against him. For some reason interracial dating is still a taboo in a lot of places (something I will never understand) and I can’t help but wonder if it could end up going against him - on all sides of the racial divide. But that’s the one and only time I’m bringing that up because I hope that I’m wrong and it’s not something that’s going to change and therefore not something that has any reason to come up throughout the rest of the competition.
I don’t think Michael’s in any way in danger for at least a few more weeks but with the way he’s being pigeonholed in what the judges and producers think a big African American should sing I can’t see him making it into the Top 4. But that gives him a few weeks to surprise us, to create a ‘moment’ for himself that doesn’t revolve around Kara’s tears or the birth of his child.
Didi Benami:
Didi has one of the most interesting voices in the competition but that hasn’t stopped some poor choices of song. This week she chose something far more suited to her vocal styling. The thing with this performance is, apart from knowing that I was pleasantly surprised, and fearing she was going to lose the song part way through, I don’t actually remember it. And I don’t really remember her. I remember that she is happy her mother has moved out to LA to housesit (?) and that she seemed very likable on her video. I also remember that she cries a lot, or at least did at the beginning of the competition, but apart from that she’s gone from my memory.
She was good enough that on the night I was all “I didn’t know she had that in her, that’s one of the best of the night” but now, 3 days later, it’s completely gone!
At the moment she’s very much a part of the middle of the pack which will hopefully go in her favour. It might give her the time to get more magnetic. And hey, at least next week I can be pleasantly surprised again when she doesn’t suck because I won’t remember that she didn’t this week.
Casey James:
Casey’s voice really is one of the smaller ones but he’s also one of the more consistent performers. He’s not out of tune that frequently and his song choices have been obvious enough that they’ve not been at all surprising. He’s coasting a little. Probably not on purpose but I just don’t think he has that big a range, either in his voice or in his stylistic choice. And the blues/rock thing does not go down well on Idol because there’s very little opportunity to bring it out. Michael Johns (who is far more blues than rock) never really got the chance to show his side of it apart from Dolly Parton week and therefore he never really fit with anything he sang. I’m a little worried that Casey will be pushed into the country rock area and I don’t think that’s entirely where he’s comfortable being. I might be wrong, I could easily be wrong, but only time will tell.
As a personality I like Casey; I think he comes across as one of the more assured but polite contestants. I think emotionally he’s definitely one of those who is going to deal with the pressure better. And he’s dorky enough that he’s going to develop quite the following.
So again, I’m pretty sure he’s safe, definitely Top 10 safe and possibly even a contender for the Top 5 (and I’m not going to look much further than that because who knows when someone will vomit up a ‘Dream On’ or ‘The Search Is Over’.
Lacey Brown:
Even if Lacey had stayed I don’t think I’d have had much constructive to say about her performance. She just has the kind of voice that I don't like, we're all entitled to our own opinions and that just happens to be one of mine. But I don’t see the point of kicking her when she’s down so I won't write much else. I don’t think her ouster was due to anything more than being one of the weakest singers left.
Andrew Garcia:
A man so charismaless that the black hole he exudes stood the chance of sucking in the charisma of those around him. Hey, maybe that’s why this year they’re all a little dull. One good song weeks ago does not a contestant make! He does the same shtick every week and whereas it seemed like an artistic choice is now seems like a default. These week a lot of his singing was out of tune and lacklustre. Plus, he took one of my favourite songs and made it dull. How you make ‘Gimme Shelter’ dull is beyond me but he managed it somehow. He took all the oomph and feeling out of the song, gave it a hard shove and locked it in a cupboard far far away.
Andrew Garcia is the main component in my ‘Kris Allen Killed Idol’ argument. What Kris does is very deceptive. The actual rearranging of the songs isn’t that hard to do. But listening to a song and hearing how you can make it your own and altering it to suit you as opposed to messing with it simply for shits and giggles is harder than it seems. Everything Kris alters you feel there a reason for it, an emotional reaction that he’s had to the song and he wants you to experience. Andrew always feels like he’s changing things simple to change them and that’s never a good reason.
There are very few people on Idol this year attempting to do what Adam did because they know that they don’t have the vocal instrument to do it, but there’s a whole load who think just because they can play the guitar they can do what Kris did. Lilly with her “I play lots of instruments including a guitar, a different type of guitar, and a moog” is a prime example of thinking you’re more talented than you are....and that a moog instantly makes you eccentric. Quirky for quirky’s sake is the same reason Meg Ryan’s recent films suck. Doing it just because doesn’t work, it has to be felt otherwise it’s just trying too hard. Andrew needs to stop trying so hard and simply do what feels right and maybe then we’ll finally get something worth listening to again which burst through his lack of stage presence.
Katie Stevens:
It’s Jasmine Murray all over again only with a bigger fanbase. Because what AI needs is another pageant child. But she’s young and needs time to grow up and find herself as opposed to what she’s been led to believe is the perfect teenager and then we’ll see how she’s doing.
Tim Urban:
Tim actually comes across better than most of the others in his video packages but that doesn’t make up for the lack of talent. He seems smart, nice and aware that he's already kinda won the lottery but he needs to back that up with some serious singing ability. Look, he’s going to go soon and not even the tween hormones will stop that; the only thing that’s going to matter is how many undeserving people go before him. At the moment, Idol is playing with about 5 people, at the most, who stand a chance of winning this and even less who could have a successful career out of the ashes. Tim is neither of these but then again neither are more of them. Because of this I can’t find myself getting too frustrated with his continued presence because so this week he didn’t push someone more deserving out. Why yes, I am blanking last week from my mind. His videos might be lying but he seems like a nice guy who is aware that he’s on borrowed time.
And I’m leaving it there for now. What can I say, there are a lot of them to go through and I just about made it through over half. I’d like to say that I’ll get to the other 5 before next week but that’s to be seen. I do plan to, after all, I’ve got Siobhan, Lee and Crystal to talk about. Two of whom I like and will enjoy talking about and one I don’t like and will enjoy talking about. But another time.
When I was considering whether I was going to revue/analyse the performances again there were several reasons behind my thought process and the general idea not to bother this year which included, among other things:
- the lack of a contestant I already feel invested in this year
- the discovery made last year that people can get really invested in certain contestants and do not like anything bad being said about them
- a lack of time on my behalf
- a seriously large lack of time
- I’m not sure my heart is going to be in it
No I don’t watch it with the same passion as last year and I think I’m going to end up incredibly frustrated as the people I like get the boot one by one and Lee Dewyze, Katy Stevens and Andrew Garcia stick around. But there is still a draw there to see if things get more interesting. After all, weren’t people complaining last year that the Top36 was seriously lacking in talent. Having never watched Idol before I didn’t understand what they meant but this year, sure enough, all I can think is
“by this time last year we’d already had Kris’s ‘Remember The Time’, Adam’s ‘Black and White’, Allison’s ‘Alone’, Alexis’s ‘I Never Loved A Man’, Lil’s ‘Be Without You’, White Chocolate, Gokey’s group song of ‘Somebody to Love’ and Jesse Langseth’s ‘Bette Davis Eyes’. And on an interesting if ‘what the hell?’ note we’d also had Anoop tanking on ‘Beat It’, Matt’s atrocious-what-the-hell-happened-to-the-man-who-sung-Georgia-!!! rendition of ‘Viva La Vida’, Nick/Normund’s entire run on the show (which I genuinely loved and made me want to see his stand up), Nathaniel’s insane choice of ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’ and Megan’s wonderfully ridiculous cawing.”
So yes, there was interest there even if people were bemoaning the apparently lack of Cook-esque interest.
But this year, this year I’m just not sure. We’ve already lost Lilly who I didn’t really like and couldn’t stand her voice on anything other than ‘Fixing A Hole’ but was talented and interesting. I was all ready for her to fill Giraud’s spot last year of ‘Person I know is talented but just doesn’t appeal to me’. We’ve lost Haley who had pitch problems and should have been made to wait a few years but had more charisma than most of them up there. We lost Todrick who was ready to bring the crazy. We’ve lost Katelyn who could have been a genuine contender were she not a pretty female singer/songwriter who chose a boring song. We’ve lost Alex who could have blossomed with some confidence. And we’ve lost Joe, one of the only to sing for the most part in tune. (And for my own personal sadness we lost John Park who had my favourite voice of the season but couldn’t hold it together under the pressure and lacked charisma. Yes he deserved to go but I was hoping he’d break through the nerves.)
Instead we’ve been left with a big range of boring with the odd spark shining through. I’m just hoping more and more sparks will appear as time progresses.
Now, this will not be that long because a) there are 12 of them and therefore I am not going into massive detail on any of them and have only written about 7 and b) I accidentally deleted this week’s performances from my box so it’s all from memory of a few days ago. So here we are in order of appearance (thank you Wikipedia) with a few notes on the performance and how I think they might progress.
Anyone who read last year will know the drill only this time I’m not writing uni work at the same time and therefore might have a slightly lesser vocabulary. And like last year, where I tried to compare things to previous seasons, you can bet your sweet ass that I’ll be bringing up the David’s, pretty much all of Season 8, some Melinda Doolittle, Blake Lewis, Kelly Clarkson and the occasional other former contestant. If you disagree with my views on things that’s absolutely fine and if you have an intelligent argument against my views or even an “I like Lee so I disagree” I would love to hear it, I agreed to disagree about Matt last year with many people and we were all quite happy about it. I will not, however, tolerate random screamed abuse. Just so we’re all on the same page okay?
But moving on.
Michael Lynche:
The thing with Michael that seems to be overlooked by a lot of the popular Idol commentators is that, for as cheesy as he is, he’s also one of the only male contestants to sing in tune. For some reason his ability to carry a tune doesn’t seem to matter as much as the fact that his movements are cheesy as hell and over thought. Over thinking moves is not the worst thing in the world, Adam obviously worked out the staging of all of his songs last year, Daughtry knew exactly on what beat of the music he was going to move. These were both theatrical dudes who made it work for them. But Michael’s self confessed ham factor is really getting in the way of people admitting that he’s one of the best there.
I’m not a Michael fan and I honestly find it hard to think of him as a possible recording artist, but at this stage in the game when there are so many others who can’t hit the right not for love nor money shouldn’t be we applauding this. And yes, that’s not a great sign that simply singing in tune on a singing contest should be held up as some sort of standard but hey, you take what you’re given.
This week Michael’s movements were more off-putting than normal because he had more space to make them in. He lumbered about that stage with his legs wide apart looking, to be completely honest, a bit strange. Yes he may know how to work a crowd but he needs to learn how to work a stage. Odd, jarring movements only work if you’re super sexy/super cute, quirky, and they appear natural. Kris Allen can get away with some very strange movements on stage and still look attractive because he is all of those things. Up there Michael just looks a little odd. He’s a good looking man, if far too large for my taste, but he’s not eccentric enough to be able to pull off the odd sumo-wrestling thing he had going on this week. He needs to be more natural in his movements otherwise they just seem contrived and strange.
On a purely sociological front I think, and I hate hate hate saying this, but I think the fact that he’s in a mixed race marriage could end up going against him. For some reason interracial dating is still a taboo in a lot of places (something I will never understand) and I can’t help but wonder if it could end up going against him - on all sides of the racial divide. But that’s the one and only time I’m bringing that up because I hope that I’m wrong and it’s not something that’s going to change and therefore not something that has any reason to come up throughout the rest of the competition.
I don’t think Michael’s in any way in danger for at least a few more weeks but with the way he’s being pigeonholed in what the judges and producers think a big African American should sing I can’t see him making it into the Top 4. But that gives him a few weeks to surprise us, to create a ‘moment’ for himself that doesn’t revolve around Kara’s tears or the birth of his child.
Didi Benami:
Didi has one of the most interesting voices in the competition but that hasn’t stopped some poor choices of song. This week she chose something far more suited to her vocal styling. The thing with this performance is, apart from knowing that I was pleasantly surprised, and fearing she was going to lose the song part way through, I don’t actually remember it. And I don’t really remember her. I remember that she is happy her mother has moved out to LA to housesit (?) and that she seemed very likable on her video. I also remember that she cries a lot, or at least did at the beginning of the competition, but apart from that she’s gone from my memory.
She was good enough that on the night I was all “I didn’t know she had that in her, that’s one of the best of the night” but now, 3 days later, it’s completely gone!
At the moment she’s very much a part of the middle of the pack which will hopefully go in her favour. It might give her the time to get more magnetic. And hey, at least next week I can be pleasantly surprised again when she doesn’t suck because I won’t remember that she didn’t this week.
Casey James:
Casey’s voice really is one of the smaller ones but he’s also one of the more consistent performers. He’s not out of tune that frequently and his song choices have been obvious enough that they’ve not been at all surprising. He’s coasting a little. Probably not on purpose but I just don’t think he has that big a range, either in his voice or in his stylistic choice. And the blues/rock thing does not go down well on Idol because there’s very little opportunity to bring it out. Michael Johns (who is far more blues than rock) never really got the chance to show his side of it apart from Dolly Parton week and therefore he never really fit with anything he sang. I’m a little worried that Casey will be pushed into the country rock area and I don’t think that’s entirely where he’s comfortable being. I might be wrong, I could easily be wrong, but only time will tell.
As a personality I like Casey; I think he comes across as one of the more assured but polite contestants. I think emotionally he’s definitely one of those who is going to deal with the pressure better. And he’s dorky enough that he’s going to develop quite the following.
So again, I’m pretty sure he’s safe, definitely Top 10 safe and possibly even a contender for the Top 5 (and I’m not going to look much further than that because who knows when someone will vomit up a ‘Dream On’ or ‘The Search Is Over’.
Lacey Brown:
Even if Lacey had stayed I don’t think I’d have had much constructive to say about her performance. She just has the kind of voice that I don't like, we're all entitled to our own opinions and that just happens to be one of mine. But I don’t see the point of kicking her when she’s down so I won't write much else. I don’t think her ouster was due to anything more than being one of the weakest singers left.
Andrew Garcia:
A man so charismaless that the black hole he exudes stood the chance of sucking in the charisma of those around him. Hey, maybe that’s why this year they’re all a little dull. One good song weeks ago does not a contestant make! He does the same shtick every week and whereas it seemed like an artistic choice is now seems like a default. These week a lot of his singing was out of tune and lacklustre. Plus, he took one of my favourite songs and made it dull. How you make ‘Gimme Shelter’ dull is beyond me but he managed it somehow. He took all the oomph and feeling out of the song, gave it a hard shove and locked it in a cupboard far far away.
Andrew Garcia is the main component in my ‘Kris Allen Killed Idol’ argument. What Kris does is very deceptive. The actual rearranging of the songs isn’t that hard to do. But listening to a song and hearing how you can make it your own and altering it to suit you as opposed to messing with it simply for shits and giggles is harder than it seems. Everything Kris alters you feel there a reason for it, an emotional reaction that he’s had to the song and he wants you to experience. Andrew always feels like he’s changing things simple to change them and that’s never a good reason.
There are very few people on Idol this year attempting to do what Adam did because they know that they don’t have the vocal instrument to do it, but there’s a whole load who think just because they can play the guitar they can do what Kris did. Lilly with her “I play lots of instruments including a guitar, a different type of guitar, and a moog” is a prime example of thinking you’re more talented than you are....and that a moog instantly makes you eccentric. Quirky for quirky’s sake is the same reason Meg Ryan’s recent films suck. Doing it just because doesn’t work, it has to be felt otherwise it’s just trying too hard. Andrew needs to stop trying so hard and simply do what feels right and maybe then we’ll finally get something worth listening to again which burst through his lack of stage presence.
Katie Stevens:
It’s Jasmine Murray all over again only with a bigger fanbase. Because what AI needs is another pageant child. But she’s young and needs time to grow up and find herself as opposed to what she’s been led to believe is the perfect teenager and then we’ll see how she’s doing.
Tim Urban:
Tim actually comes across better than most of the others in his video packages but that doesn’t make up for the lack of talent. He seems smart, nice and aware that he's already kinda won the lottery but he needs to back that up with some serious singing ability. Look, he’s going to go soon and not even the tween hormones will stop that; the only thing that’s going to matter is how many undeserving people go before him. At the moment, Idol is playing with about 5 people, at the most, who stand a chance of winning this and even less who could have a successful career out of the ashes. Tim is neither of these but then again neither are more of them. Because of this I can’t find myself getting too frustrated with his continued presence because so this week he didn’t push someone more deserving out. Why yes, I am blanking last week from my mind. His videos might be lying but he seems like a nice guy who is aware that he’s on borrowed time.
And I’m leaving it there for now. What can I say, there are a lot of them to go through and I just about made it through over half. I’d like to say that I’ll get to the other 5 before next week but that’s to be seen. I do plan to, after all, I’ve got Siobhan, Lee and Crystal to talk about. Two of whom I like and will enjoy talking about and one I don’t like and will enjoy talking about. But another time.