Wednesday, January 19, 2011

SHE SAID, "I'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT WHERE WE'RE GOING": Bono knew where U2 stood on December 30, 1989, performing at Dublin's Point Depot as part of a series of hometown concerts ending what seemed like a never-ending tour between The Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum, during which the band's worst tendencies were magnified -- grandiosity, pretentiousness, and a level of self-righteousness which was difficult even for loyal fans like me to stomach after a while.  And so from that concert stage that night, a bootleg of which I've held onto for these two decades, Bono said:
I was explaining to people the other night, but I might've got it a bit wrong – this is just the end of something for U2. And that's what we're playing these concerts – and we're throwing a party for ourselves and you. It's no big deal, it's just – we have to go away and ... and dream it all up again.
Dream it all up again, disappear for a while, and two years later came Achtung Baby, a reinvention of U2's sound that was both a radical shift from the blues-based Rattle & Hum (produced by Jimmy Iovine), utterly contemporary in its seeking a more dance-based rhythm (given the contemporaneous Manchester thing) and yet ultimately something that felt very much like the same band.

American Idol, too, needed to dream it all up again.  After three straight seasons of increasing bloat and stuck with older white boys with guitars winning -- each defensible on its own merits, but troubling as a whole -- the show last year finally started to decline in the ratings and in our own interest here.  Given Simon Cowell's leaving, it was a perfect opportunity to rethink the show and rethink it they have.



We're not going to see most of the changes in tonight's premiere -- the reworked Hollywood (and Vegas) round, a compressed semifinals, the omnipresence of permanent mentor Jimmy Iovine and a run from the final 10-12 down to two which won't force performers into genres with which they're not comfortable. We will see the new judges making their snap decisions on the annual parade of the deluxe and the deluded, always the least-interesting part of the show cycle to me (except for twee urchin Josiah Leming), but as always we won't know what kind of talent the show has until we get to the semifinals, four weeks from now.

And that's what it ultimately comes down to: the talent: give me someone fresh to watch like Adam Lambert, Allison Iraheta, Fantasia Barrino or Chris Daughtry, and there's no amount of judicial hijinks or producer interference that can seriously mess things up. Yes, we watch Idol because it's fun to snark on its excess, but ultimately we're fans of music who would like to see great performances from great young performers.  Idol has delivered that so many times over its first nine years; it's time to see whether it still can.

18 comments:

  1. Paul Tabachneck10:39 AM

    If Jacob is still recapping it, I'll be a lot more likely to show interest this year.

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  2. Jacob is the only reason I'm watching this year. But maybe it will win me back over. 

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  3. I love U2, though I still haven't listened to "No Line On The Horizon" enough times to like it.

    But pairing U2 with AI, that just stabs me in the heart. 

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  4. Paul Tabachneck12:02 PM

    Confirmed -- Jacob will be recapping.

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  5. Paul Tabachneck12:21 PM

    One hyphenate, mec: Spider-Man.

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  6. Genevieve12:31 PM

    Where does Jacob recap?

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  7. TWOP.  Love his recaps.  Slezak has moved to TVline.com, so I don't know if the EW recaps will be anywhere near as entertaining as in past years.

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  8. I still don't know if I'll be watching.  I may try to join in during Hollywood week, but we'll see.  My reticence has nothing to do with the recent winners, though---as I still like one (David Cook) quite a bit, and enjoyed one (Kris Allen) a lot on the show.  While I personally think that last year's winner was the weakest winner ever, my real issues were how bloated the show was, how judge-heavy and music-light it had become, and how much of the top 12-13 in Seasons 8-9 were cannon fodder who seemed utterly incapable of producing a musical moment.  In many cases, the bottom half (or more) of those seasons' finalists seemed incapable of producing any good performances.  The changes that I've seen noted don't necessarily seem to me to be ones that will reverse that trend, and some of them (reducing the age limit) seem likely to hurt the show, not help it. 

    But, if I get the sense that the show has fixed the problems and become more entertaining that it was the last couple of years, well, maybe....

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  9. isaac_spaceman12:42 PM

    I eventually cooled off on original-recipe U2, but I still don't understand why anybody thought the new version was less grandiose or less pretentious.  There was a difference in the production style, and the aesthetics were retooled, but it was just dressing up the same U2.  Funny sunglasses and a rededication to artism instead of politics didn't change who they were. 

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  10. isaac_spaceman12:45 PM

    And Iraheta and Daughtry weren't fresh.  Iraheta was just a younger, less irritating model of the same Joplin/Etheridge clones they have every year, and Daughtry was unusual only that he played a style of music that the show hadn't incorporated before (but that was indistinguishable from what you could hear on the middle of the dial in any radio market in America). 

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  11. Paul Tabachneck1:23 PM

    Genevieve -- read his recaps of the season opener and finale of season two of the Office.  They're works of absolute mastery.

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  12. Then why did you watch?

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  13. Paul Tabachneck1:58 PM

    ...because it rains a lot in Seattle?  :-)

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  14. spacewoman2:05 PM

    We at the spacehold enjoy the mocking. 

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  15. Jenn.2:13 PM

    That would have been my guess, spacewoman.

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  16. StvMg2:29 PM

    EW is replacing Slezak with Annie Barrett, whose recaps for The OC (way back when) and Dancing With the Stars have always been entertaining. I don't even watch Dancing With the Stars, but I always make sure to read her recaps the following day because theyr'e so entertaining. That said, I'm not sure she'll be quite as invested as Slezak was. I assume Slezak's move means TVLine will have some sort of Idolatry-esque video recap as well. I wonder if EW will continue its weekly Idolatry show without Slezak.

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  17. StvMg2:32 PM

    I thought they were far more pretentious in the post-Achtung Baby incarnation before returning to form with All That You Can't Leave Behind, which remains my favorite U2 album.

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  18. isaac_spaceman4:03 PM

    There are a lot of things unsaid on Idol that are interesting.  It's not just who is popular, but who the Idol Machine wants to be popular and what it will and won't do to manufacture that, and where it crosses itself up, and how Idol thinks that people think, and what the voting blocs respond to.  And then there is the other stuff, like the sheer ridiculousness of some of the theme nights.  Incidentally, it has never taken me longer than a half-hour or so to watch this show, 20 on a good night.  Backstory, judges, the last 85 seconds of Disney songs -- gone. 

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