RATINGS UPDATE: The Olympics beat an American Idol results show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. This is only the second day the Olympics beat Idol, which is a testament to the strength of Idol and the poor ratings of this year's Olympics. The Olympics -- highlighted by the most popular event, the women's ice skating finale -- scored 22.9 million people on Thursday. Idol's results show hit a season low of 17.8 million. Four years ago at Turin, the Winter Olympics were historically low. But eight years ago on US soil in Salt Lake, the Olympics were drawing 30 million+. Perhaps because no women were medal contenders, this year's finale for ice skating was down 10% even from low-rated Torino.
SHOW COVERAGE: American Idol contestants faced their first possible elimination on Thursday night and no wonder so many of them looked freaked: very, very few of them have given performances that stand out. Going home are Janell Wheeler, Ashley Rodriguez, Joe Munoz and Tyler Grady. When each one was paired off with another singer and they knew one of them was going home, three out of four times the person saved looked genuinely stunned.
When Janell said goodbye, young Katie Stevens was probably too shell-shocked to react. But when Ashley Rodriguez was paired with Didi Benami, Ashley looked confident and Didi looked miserably resigned to going home. It's hard to say which one of them was more surprised.
Joe Munoz and Tim Urban were told one of them was going home and, again, Tim looked crushed. When Tim was told to sit, he dropped down so fast it was hilarious. For the next minute the camera kept cutting back to him because his look of disbelief (and almost embarrassment) was priceless.
Finally, Tyler Grady and Alex Lambert were paired off. Alex had a woebegone, hangdog expression. When Ryan announced in fact it was Tyler going home, Alex was anything but speechless: he freaked out and then wrapped his arms around Tyler and said something expressing his amazement that was so colorful it had to be bleeped. Thank goodness for five second delays, right Fox?
The group sing-along at the beginning was lip-synced which is disconcerting and wildly out of whack with everything the show stands for. Is it just impossible to get 24 people to rehearse and perform a song decently? If so, don't do one. Allison Iraheta sang her single "Scars" with a good amount of style, proving this young singer could still develop into a real artist.
Kris Allen did a cover of the Beatles classic "Let It Be" (quite a good one) while footage showed him visiting Haiti. (The song is a benefit single available on iTunes.) By the way, his new tune "Live Like We're Dying" just broke into the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it sits at #19. So Kris's benefit single isn't just pro forma niceness. If people buy the "Let It Be" cover and ignore his hit, that could stall and never make the Top 10, not to mention weaken the album in the eyes of some. So if you're a fan, buy both.
All the acts saying goodbye performed one last time and reinforced the idea that no mistakes had been made. Sure, some of them deserved to hang around for another few weeks -- there were certainly worse performers -- but none of them seemed destined for the top 4. Tyler was especially stupid in blaming the judges for his early exit. Way to blow any good will you might have, Tyler.
I'd studied the Facebook and Twitter rankings of the contestants to see if that could indicate strong grassroots support...and it was a bust at predicting who would go home. However, John Park's huge online following is one indication of why the worst performer of the week gets another shot.
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1. Make Crystal Bowersox and Casey James the finalists right now.
2. First episode: Let them have one show where they each get to play what they think are their three best songs with either their own bands or solo, whichever they are more comfortable with, in their entirety, Take a vote
3. Second episode: They each play cover versions of three songs selected for them by the judges (preferably the same song for each of them). Take a vote.
4. Third Episode: Review the performances and announce the winner. Done.
5. Winner gets to record a combination of covers and originals.
6. Loser has to record horrible Clive Davis produced drivel.
For God's sake, they're not auditioning for a Bob Fossee show. Srop subjecting them, and us, to this torture!
Everyone is so critical of these young people who for the first time is performing live in front of audience, judges and critics like yourself. Give them a chance
By the way Jermaine Sellers is a great singer, He sings Gospel music which is mostly improvisation and some serious runs. You heard of Aretha she came from that genre. She is rated best singer of all time.
This year it's hard to nail a favorite from the selection process, though I think the unlikely oddities are again my favorites - such as Lilly, Crystal and Siobhan. Casey, yeah, for his looks and persona - his voice is nice, too.
However - the real test will be if those I mentioned above can hack the different genres that AI requires. I noticed that Crystal (the sweet faced dred-locks child) seemed truly out of place among the other "Glee-like" robots, dancing and emoting for the camera. Just not her thing. Does she, by chance, write her own songs? And if so, are they any good? She may not make it far on AI, but hopefully, if she is a singer/songwriter and not just "another coffee house singer" as Simon pointed out, she can carve out a place for herself.
I like Ellen, too, but not here. She and Kara add nothing but noise to this process. I was an early fan of AI, but actually flipped channels for the first time. I think the shark has been jumped. Bring back Paula
Are people confusing Tim Urban with Keith Urban somehow? Would he still be around if his last name was Kowolski ? I doubt it.
The group lip-synch was surreal. Somebody at "Idol" obviously figured they'd sell more iTunes if they went the "Glee" studio route, rather than revealing how bad they could sound live. Either that, or they tried it live and it was such a trainwreck, they figured we have to sweeten this in the studio. Either that, or drop the group performances altogether.
Michael thought Allen's version of "Let It Be" was "quite good"?? Seriously? Ray Charles did a "quite good" cover of the song. So did Joe Cocker. That about covers the "quite good" covers. There's a reason John Lennon asked McCartney during the recording of it if the rest of the band should "giggle" during the solo tune. As Lennon explained, it could have (should have) been done by Wings, and was McCartney's Herculean effort to craft his very own "Bridge Over Troubled Waters". He succeeded all too well.
It's an insipid tune, which was revealed in all its insipidness by the lightweight craftsmanship of Kris Allen. One imagines after that performance that the Haiti Relief Fund was left pondering, "Haven't we endured enough?".
Perhaps young Urban had the "cute" non-threatening factor going for him with the young girls who furiously vote, because surely his performance was far worse than Tyler's.
And as for Tyler and his parting comments about the judges, I think he was spot on. His criticism that they did not say the things they did until it was too late to fix them was accurate. Just watch the clip of his "backstory" before he got voted off. All you got was people telling him how cool his look was, and praising his singing, very little critical input for him to take in, only then to be told his look was a gimmick and he needed to be more original. They told him he was groovy and hip up until they told him he wasn't. He got no constructive criticism until it was too late. I appreciated the honesty of his statement, and the fact that it didn't appear to be said maliciously, but as a simple statement of fact.
As for Tyler's comments, I do agree with you and him that from the edited comments we saw he got a bum deal: you're cool, love the Seventies vibe, go home! But as far as public image is concerned, blaming the judges was not a smart move. He could be honest with them off camera. And more to the point, the constructive criticism of the judges is rarely that helpful. They often contradict each other and themselves from week to week, as I sometimes try to point out (like telling Andrew Garcia he should have done something like "Straight Up" -- rework a tune unexpectedly -- when that was exactly what he had just done). You could go crazy just trying to follow their advice. Ultimately, you've got vocal coaches and arrangers and family and friends and advisers backstage who are far more instrumental in what you do than the judges. I'd blame them if I thought there was something to blame. Personally, I thought he was fine and a little surprised he left early.