American Idolatry :: Worst Idol Ever?
I have some good news and some bad news. Wednesday, February 3, marked the end of the auditions. Now the bad news: The episode was billed as the best performances from all of the auditions’ weeks, which means we are on target to get a worse Idol than last year.
Did you know that Kris Allen’s debut album sold only 240,000 copies, and his debut single "Live Like We’re Dying" died at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100? Idol has an average of 30 million viewers per week. That means less then 1 percent of the viewing audience was motivated enough to buy his CD. Only Bernie Madoff could spin those number and make them look like a good investment.
The problem with Kris Allen and everyone else we have seen so far is that they have failed to be interesting or unique. There are hundreds of thousands of people in America with nice singing voices, but they wont be stars.
No one we saw changed a song from its original version and made it a unique listening experience. No one had a voice that was so amazing that their YouTube clip spread across the world as something that must be heard.
No one had a personality that was so fascinating that I would be interested in learning more about them. Maybe the potential stars are being held back to carry us thought the rest of the season. Maybe.
"It’s not a Lifetime movie, sweetheart."
Another problem with the Season 9 audition weeks was that we had groupthink. How interesting is it to hear four people agree about nearly every contestant?
Only very rarely did the panel members express any disagreement about any of the performances. This is probably the key factor that made the auditions weeks the worst in all nine seasons--we saw very few conflicts among the judges.
As a result, we had a record number of sob stories, ranging from Tourette’s guy to partial paralysis girl. As Katy Perry said, "It’s not a Lifetime movie, sweetheart."
The only interesting guest judge was La Perry, especially when she challenged Kara about putting people through based on their personal tragedies over their musical talents. For some reason, singers’ horrible afflictions don’t gets us riled up to buy music. In sports, on the other hand, the more tragic the ailment, the more we want them to win. Think Lance Armstrong or any future Olympian.
At least when Paula was there she would fight for people she though were interesting, talented, cute, potential lovers, or whatever other criteria she dreamed up. In addition, she would go though a range of emotions each week from crying to jumping out of her seat and waving her hands in the air like she just didn’t care.
Sometimes Paula made some good points--and almost all of the time she made the show entertaining. Who did we talk about the next day? Paula and Simon.
Who do we talk about now? No one, not even Simon. Simon without Paula is becoming predictable and less interesting. Can Ellen be Simon’s muse?
I think not, if he thought so he would have stayed on Idol and take the $100 million he was offered by the producers. I guess we will have to wait ’till next year to see some interesting television, when Paula and Simon are re-united again on X-Factor.
Watch the audition that made Kati Perry feel dirty.
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Mark Russo is a part-time computer software engineer and full-time pop-culture maven.
