Adam: For the third straight season, America rejected the ready-made, already professional singer and chose the humble finalist whose full talents were revealed (and improved) over the course of the season. That's all this was. We like a good story, and we like the idea that the show can elevate someone from the sticks into stardom. (Okay, "the sticks" doesn't fit Jordin, but she was less in-the-industry than Melinda, and less polished than Blake.)
Regardless, the overall talent level of the finalists season was as high as the show has ever had, and America pretty much winnowed down the field in the right order. Yes, the producers/judges overmanipulated things and it may have bitten them in the ass, the switch from 24-20-16-12 semifinals back to three groups and a wild card was a mistake, and the "judge's save" was a poorly-thought and poorly-employed innovation. But on the whole, the show sustained my interest and entertained from start to finish, and we will certainly be hearing from Adam Lambert and Allison Iraheta again.
Kris Allen won, and he earned it. In this new era of Idol where musicianship and narrative were as important as raw singing talent, he became someone we looked forward to seeing every week. He made interesting, challenging and utterly contemporary choices whenever he could ("Falling Slowly," among others, was a real risk), and he's got a real chance to go far in the industry. It's all up to him.
Isaac: The lesson from this season, trite as it may sound, is "be yourself." The final two had a better understanding of what kind of music they wanted to make in June, not just in May, and put a lot of thought into how they could present their ambition within the context of the competition. Lambert shrewdly alternated between his sensitive falsetto and his power-scream and picked songs that would let him feature those features. Allen bent each theme and song to his strengths, carefully building a body of work that was cumulatively more revealing and more consistent than that of most, perhaps all, of his competitors. Both Lambert and Allen made music that they seemed to enjoy, and it was apparent. The rest of the contestants, all of them, just played the hands dealt them, waffling or whining about song selection and flapping whichever way the useless judicial-advice breeze was blowing. They approached this competition as job applicants, doing what they thought would advance their candidacy without any particular joy or enthusiasm, and sometimes with open apprehension. Not everybody who stays true to himself will last in this show -- some people just suck, Scott -- but it may be that the days of the winners who sing straight versions of Disneyana and "Vincent (Starry Starry Night)" are over, and it seems to me that failing on your own terms is better than failing on somebody else's.
Kim: To replicate the path by which Kris Allen beat out Adam Lambert for the title, I think you'd need to follow the following course: Come From a Sociologically Cohesive, Smallish But Not Too Smallish State* with Liberal Text-Messaging Plans. According to lots of internet reports including the website of Arkansas's Speaker of the House Robbie Wills, AT&T has confirmed that of the nearly 100 million votes cast last night, 38 million of them came from Kris Allen's home state. That comes out to about 13 votes per resident of Arkansas.
*bummer for you, Jasmine Trias, that Hawaii has fewer than half as many people** as Arkansas
** sadly for you, Jorge Núñez, this analysis provides you no excuse
Taken another way: of Arkansas's 2,855,390 people, 17.8% are between 5 and 17 years old. That's 508,259 people. Let's say for the sake of argument that a quarter of them were in a position to do some voting. That's 127,065 tweenies and teenagers, about half of which are female. 63,532 girls voting 600 times each gets you 38 million votes if no other human being in Arkansas voted even once. And since the Speaker of the House has reported that between himself, his wife, and his 7 year old daughter, over 1000 votes were cast for Kris Allen last night, these numbers seem quite reasonable. Pity Adam Lambert for not hailing from Oklahoma. (Or maybe not.)
In reading and listening to interviews with both Kris and Adam over the last couple of weeks, the thing that has struck me most is the extent to which these two guys seem to really like each other. When asked by EW about his friendship with Adam, Kris responded:
It was just like this closeness, you know? I don't know what happened. I think we just felt each other's energy, and it was nice. It just became this really good friendship. Yeah, I adore the guy. I think he's a really great guy. I'm proud of him.Asked a similar question, Adam said:
We were roommates, so we were kind of thrown in together, and he's just like a really open-minded, good person. He's got a great view of the world. We share a lot of philosophies on the world, even though we have different backgrounds. You know, I've learned a lot about his relationship with his wife. She's great. We've hung out. He's just a good guy, you know? I'm so happy for him. He deserves it. He's so talented, and he's a good person.In a show that has rewarded a great American success story for at least the second consecutive year, the mutual backstage respect between two talented musicians is another story worth remembering.
***
That's it from us. What will you remember about Season Eight?
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