YOU ONLY GET ONE CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION: If you watch no other aspect of tonight's Idol elimination show, watch the group number at the beginning -- Crystal Bowersox and these Silver Platters numbers are an uneasy fit, so enjoy moments like this until her personality is assimilated into the 19 Entertainment Borg.
I'll go to one of my standby tropes of Idol analysis: do I think they eliminated someone tonight who could have won the competition? No. Do I think they eliminated the right four people? Hell no. Spoilers, after the break.
I'm more upset about Tim Urban's surviving this week than about any of the four people who were eliminated -- Ashley Rodriguez and Joe Munoz were utterly unmemorable, and weren't going to win. Lost Sweathog Tyler Grady had a nice look and shtick, but he sang a mediocre song boringly. So, yeah, Alex Lambert was worse, but Tyler wasn't actively good. And Janell Wheeler's "What About Love" just completely sucked, so no big loss. America may have gotten it wrong, but not too wrong.
There's a long way to go, and someone always winds up surprising you by the end of the season. But right now, this looks like the least talented (or maybe just the least interesting) group of contestant in a long time. There are maybe three girls and three guys that I'd want to hear once more. And maybe only once more.
ReplyDeleteI still think it's way too early to write this season off. I think Didi, Crystal, Lilly, Siobhan and Andrew Garcia have shown a lot of promise. Katelyn surprised me this week. Maybe a couple of other people will surprise me next week now that they've gotten over their first-week jitters.
ReplyDeleteDavid cook's "Hello" wasn't until week 3 of the semis. Crap like "Happy Together" came first.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I will miss Tyler Grady come motown week.
ReplyDeleteDo I think Tyler Grady could have won it all? No. Would I have liked to see him for a couple of more weeks? Yes. More than Alex Lambert and Joe Munoz, to be sure. It's, once again, all about song choice. That arrangement of American Woman is one that never really gets started, doesn't build, and just kind of ends when it ends. So not the right song for AI, especially in the first week.
ReplyDeleteEveryone always begins the AI season complaining about how untalented all the contestants are, and how it's the worst group ever. By the time we're down to four contestants, it's impossible to imagine a better season. The contestants really do improve through the spring, and as we become more familiar with them and invested in them, we grow fonder of their voices.
ReplyDeleteI think Janell Wheeler has to be the most disappointed about all of this. She certainly wasn't going to win, but she didn't need to win to get what she needed out of this contest. She needed only to make it to the middle rounds doing a flirty pop-country thing (like in her auditions), and then she could have made a record on the cheap (like Brooke White, except for an audience less resistant to AI notoriety) and survived a couple of years on the state-fair circuit, where either she'd take off or she would say she gave it a shot. Losing in the semis of AI, though, is no different than never having gone on the show at all, maybe worse. The other bootees weren't as polished or prepackaged as Wheeler, so they wouldn't have benefited as much from a few more weeks of exposure.
ReplyDeleteOn the group-sing: It seems to be behind the rest of the show by several seasons. The front-runners right now all seem to be in the earnest singer/songwriter-with-guitar mode. Whether that was by design or coincidence, it's who the show has. Whoever is making the group-sing decisions, however, is still cranking out these square Brady Bunch jazz-hands arrangements of R&B songs, and it's not what most of these people do well. It seems like there is a widening gulf, and a lack of communication, between the judges and the producers. The judges may be slow in reacting to changes in popular tastes, but their resistance at least eventually breaks down. The producers, on the other hand, are more like Soviet central planners, cranking out hundreds of millions of size-9 shoes even if the kids growing up are wearing size-11s.
Given the talent which they have, is there a group format which would work?
ReplyDeleteThere's no need for group numbers. But if they're going to do group numbers, make some people sing harmony, or do some call-and-response stuff. I've never understood why they arrange these songs as if there's a single vocalist and then split into groups that sing in unison. Then again, the whole setup is completely cornball, and maybe there's no way to fix it.
ReplyDeleteROUND!
ReplyDelete<span>I'm more of a lurker, less of a commenter, and I only really pipe up during wacky things like Emmy Liveblogs and posts about Sing-Off, but I have strong feelings about American Idol game theory.
ReplyDeleteI always get mad when people try to pimp their personal blogs in comment sections, but I figure it's more polite to post a Tumblr link than repost a 600+ word rant from another page's comment section. http://shutupdanny.tumblr.com/post/369809509
Basically, my five theories come down to this:
A.) Special interest groups stuff the ballot (race, sexual orientation, etc) NOTE: this rarely works with Hispanic contestants, although it's probably because of varying countries/cultures of origin
B.) Small town contests do better and big city/large population center contestants do worse, especially if it's a nice place to live (it means more to small town folks to see their own win)
C.) Religion. Keep saying Jesus and you'll keep advancing.
D.) This is the one where I had to show a lot of work, but it's essentially this: Conventionally attractive female contestants will do poorly for the same reason Twilight <span>is popular. Never underestimate the power of an 11-14 year old girl and her middle-aged mother's fantasy lives.</span>
<span>E.) Country singers, or country-sounding singers, will get you far.</span>
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<span>Finally, take all those with the caveat that singers do need a modicum of talent to keep going. If they suck, they'll generally get passed up for some other contestant that appeals to similar demographics.
SO, abject of performance quality, my theories pan out this week. </span>
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<span>Janell Wheeler</span>
Rule B.) hails from Orlando, not a lot of community mobilization coming out of a warm and sunny city like that.
Rule D.) Uh, yeah. She's attractive, and in a blonde bombshell way that is sure to piss off every girl who's either like her or unlike her. She dated Tim Tebow, so she's lucky the entire jealous population of Florida didn't firebomb her house.
Rule E.) On her website she calls herself "Sunshine Cowgirl</span>
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<span>Ashley Rodriguez</span>
Rule B.) From Chelsea, Massachusetts and living in Boston. AI doesn't have the same clout in the Northeast. Chelsea is a well-off enough town for this not to mean anything to them, and people in New England don't get jazzed up to support our own that much (I know, as Recycled Percussion from America's Got Talent is from my home town)
MAJOR Rule D.) She's right there with Janell as the most conventionally attractive contestant in the final 24
<span>Joe Muñoz</span>
No hard and fast corallaries here, although there's a bit of the Rule A condition that hispanic contestants have a hard time advancing. Ashley Rodriguez is exempt from hispanic status because she's from Massachusetts and went to Berkely. Also, not really cute enough for Rule D to kick in.
<span>Tyler Grady</span>
Again, nothing solid here. There's a bit of Rule D, because Tyler might be a little to rock and roll for the Michael Bublé/Justin Bieber crowd, and there are a lot of cuter contestants.
I know (D) is true -- it's the Heather Cox/Becky O'Donohue rule.
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