Think of what could be if you rewrite the role you play
So with the quotation from my least favourite song on Adam Lambert's album, an album I genuinely love (a little to my surprise to be honest), I will not regale you with a tale of why my weekend has been epically shit (although today has been wonderful and I might be a little sunblushed). Instead I will just inform you that it has been one big cluster fuck which is a combination of no one’s fault (I’d love to blame someone for a volcano eruption stopping my holiday because that would be tilting at windmills) and a passive aggressive douches fault.
So yes, while two and a half weeks plans fall to the ground around me and I gather what is left of my hard earned personal identity and self-worth back together from the insidious chipping away that took place last night I will apologise for the lateness of the post on recent Idol evictees Katie and Andrew. When the post does arrive - maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe Tuesday (as we watch Idol on Wednesday) - it will also include Tim and Siobhan and maybe mention others but that has yet to be determined. But as I’m trying to cheer myself up, and a wonderful day today has gone a long way to that, I will instead focus on the brilliance and joy that was seeing Adam Lambert on my screen again.
In terms of mentoring there were, let’s be honest, more doubts about Adam than anyone else (apart from maybe Miley) who’s ever appeared on the show. People thought:
Now none of this ever worried me.
I did however worry that Adam would be too polite, too nice, to actually give any form of useful criticism.
I was wrong. Adam managed to say pretty much what everyone’s been thinking about each contestant and he managed to do it without sounding arrogant. He tried to help them with their performances, give them advice they could actually use. If they didn’t take it that’s not really his fault is it.
So yes I thought Adam was a great mentor. I also thought the performance was, in a statement that should surprise no one who read my blog last year, simply wonderful. There was one or two notes that I’m note 100% sure he nailed from the get go but I’m not a stickler for that if there’s something more to a performance. If a performance is emotionally connected I’ll take mildly dodgy notes any day. It was not my favourite rendition of the song, although I did love that opening and the way he built it, but it was still pretty fucking good. I loved that he came on, showed his phenomenal vocals, and then let his performance demonstrate exactly what he’d been trying to get the contestants to do; bring a connection to both the material and the audience, and an energy to the performance. I loved the lighting and the theatricality of the performance and I loved that in my head I heard Randy questioning its theatricality, Simon calling it self-indulgent rubbish (but obviously still kinda liking it), Kara being confused by it and Ellen thinking it was ‘great’ but actually meaning it for once. In her living room somewhere Paula would have been, were she watching, crying with his pain (she was always bizarrely connected to Adam’s pain).
This performance made me sit up and take notice in a way that not one of the actual contestants this year have. Cook and Kris both made me listen and, in Kris’s case, feel but neither brought an intense curiosity to what they would pull out; as soon as Kris said he was singing ‘Let It Be’ I knew it would be brilliant and I was aware that Cook doing The Stones would be fun but the curiosity wasn’t there. Admittedly Adam also made me do what Adam’s performances often do which is laugh. I have been brought up with prog rock and at times I still can’t quite believe what I’m seeing with Adam’s performances. He brings the theatre into every performance and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
One big problem with Idol’s insistence on bringing back its alumni is that they are really showing that this season’s batch are perhaps, for the most, simply not up to scratch. Sure they have at least one year’s worth of experience more than this crop but they make us think about performances of the past and wonder if we’re going to get any super memorable ones this year?
So yes, while two and a half weeks plans fall to the ground around me and I gather what is left of my hard earned personal identity and self-worth back together from the insidious chipping away that took place last night I will apologise for the lateness of the post on recent Idol evictees Katie and Andrew. When the post does arrive - maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe Tuesday (as we watch Idol on Wednesday) - it will also include Tim and Siobhan and maybe mention others but that has yet to be determined. But as I’m trying to cheer myself up, and a wonderful day today has gone a long way to that, I will instead focus on the brilliance and joy that was seeing Adam Lambert on my screen again.
In terms of mentoring there were, let’s be honest, more doubts about Adam than anyone else (apart from maybe Miley) who’s ever appeared on the show. People thought:
- he was too new to his career
- that his lack of overnight superstardom meant that he’s failed & therefore can’t be a mentor
- that because he didn’t win he shouldn’t mentor before someone who did win does
- that it was seen as favouritism from TPTB.
Now none of this ever worried me.
- He wasn’t there to mentor how to have a post Idol career he was there to mentor getting through and flourishing on Idol. The newer the better as far as that goes because it's more front and centre in his mind.
- He has not failed, overnight superstardom is pretty much impossible. Kelly Clarkson’s first album didn’t do as well as people like to retrospectively imagine it did. And the market is a different place to how it was even 2 years ago let alone 10. Idol gives these kids the platform but they need to build on it and not just expect it to do all the work. He has been doing just that and hopefully it’ll pay off.
- He may not have won but he certainly knew how to use the stage to his best advantage. His whole style is responsible for his loss, not his lack of knowledge and savvy about the Idol machine.
- TBTP are not benevolent fairy godmothers getting their favourite son back on his feet (even if he actually needed it which he doesn’t). They are aware that last year’s Idol was a talking point across America where this year’s is not. They see Adam as a big feature of the water cooler moments last year and were hoping to reproduce that.
- Oh, and for those of you who think that Hudson, Clarkson, Underwood or Daughtry would have been better should take a look at the show back when they were on it and look at it now and tell me truthful if you think it’s the same show. It isn’t. It has changed into something completely different and therefore their experiences are completely different to that of the contestants now.
I did however worry that Adam would be too polite, too nice, to actually give any form of useful criticism.
I was wrong. Adam managed to say pretty much what everyone’s been thinking about each contestant and he managed to do it without sounding arrogant. He tried to help them with their performances, give them advice they could actually use. If they didn’t take it that’s not really his fault is it.
So yes I thought Adam was a great mentor. I also thought the performance was, in a statement that should surprise no one who read my blog last year, simply wonderful. There was one or two notes that I’m note 100% sure he nailed from the get go but I’m not a stickler for that if there’s something more to a performance. If a performance is emotionally connected I’ll take mildly dodgy notes any day. It was not my favourite rendition of the song, although I did love that opening and the way he built it, but it was still pretty fucking good. I loved that he came on, showed his phenomenal vocals, and then let his performance demonstrate exactly what he’d been trying to get the contestants to do; bring a connection to both the material and the audience, and an energy to the performance. I loved the lighting and the theatricality of the performance and I loved that in my head I heard Randy questioning its theatricality, Simon calling it self-indulgent rubbish (but obviously still kinda liking it), Kara being confused by it and Ellen thinking it was ‘great’ but actually meaning it for once. In her living room somewhere Paula would have been, were she watching, crying with his pain (she was always bizarrely connected to Adam’s pain).
This performance made me sit up and take notice in a way that not one of the actual contestants this year have. Cook and Kris both made me listen and, in Kris’s case, feel but neither brought an intense curiosity to what they would pull out; as soon as Kris said he was singing ‘Let It Be’ I knew it would be brilliant and I was aware that Cook doing The Stones would be fun but the curiosity wasn’t there. Admittedly Adam also made me do what Adam’s performances often do which is laugh. I have been brought up with prog rock and at times I still can’t quite believe what I’m seeing with Adam’s performances. He brings the theatre into every performance and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
One big problem with Idol’s insistence on bringing back its alumni is that they are really showing that this season’s batch are perhaps, for the most, simply not up to scratch. Sure they have at least one year’s worth of experience more than this crop but they make us think about performances of the past and wonder if we’re going to get any super memorable ones this year?