The American Idolater

Well, the American Idol guys are back to doing what they did the first week. Namely, sucking the suck. What a crappy bunch of performances, guys.

Blake Lewis: I thought it was kind of a lackluster version of the song, but it was funny to hear him censor himself to make “All Mixed Up” suitable for American network television. It was even funnier to hear that the judges had never heard the song in their lives. Shouldn’t people in the music industry, especially when they’re judging a music contest, have some clue about music? Not every obscure song out there, but at least the popular hits that they played on the pop music radio stations? Like, say, 311’s “All Mixed Up”? It’s really amazing how out of it the judges are when it comes to music.

“Oh my god, what’s this crazy newfangled music you’re singing?!? This is so new and weird and it’s fresh and hip dawg and you’re bringing your thing and keeping it current and fresh and that’s awesome.” Way to keep American Idol fresh and current with a song from 1995, Blake. You rock.

But seriously, it wasn’t that great compared to the original. I was starting to worry that it might spell trouble for young Blake, who’s one of my favorites at this point. But then the judges were blown away by his crazy mystery song that was all over the radio, and he’s doing well in the DialIdol results, so I guess he’ll be safe.

Sanjaya Malakar: Oh, poor Sanjaya. He’s so boring and timid as a singer, and seems to be trying to become the next Michael Jackson with his girly hair. I hope his sister didn’t kill him and secretly take his place. He started off boring and timid, and then tried to kick it up and liven things up, which just made it sound like crap. He has to choose between sounding boring and weak or sounding just barely less timid but terribly out of tune. Even Paula couldn’t think of anything nice to say.

Speaking of Paula, wasn’t she just disturbingly lucid and accurate in her comments? She wasn’t fawning over every bad performance, and didn’t seem to be stumbling over her own tongue. It was strange and creepy.

Even stranger and creepier is that people keep voting for Sanjaya. What the hell? He was in fourth place last night according to DialIdol. I have no idea who his audience is. If you’ll excuse a brief non-PC diversion, I wonder if it’s Indians working in phone banks with easy access to lots of phones to mass-dial for him?

Sundance Head: Why do the Photoshop hacks at AI love messing with Sundance so much? Is it the only way to keep America interested in him after he gives one bad performance after another? Seriously, Sundance has one style of music he can sing reasonably well, and everything else is just terrible. He can’t keep singing the same style every week, because America will get bored, but he can’t mix it up, because he can’t sing anything else.

But “Jeremy”? Wow, what a weird song to hear on American Idol. He also had to censor out the “fuck” from the lyrics, though kept the line about biting the recess lady’s breast. But even with the new lyrics, it’s still a dark and weird song choice. It almost makes me like him more that he chose a “daring” song like that, but not really, since he didn’t pull it off.

Chris Richardson: Simon thought it was just a little bit nasal? Simon, have you listened to Chris sing at all? He’s over the top nasal every single time. He sang some boring country song and it was pretty boring.

Jared Cotter: What was with that argyle sweater? Was he channeling Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air? He was actually better than I expected, which isn’t saying much. But he was actually probably above average compared to the rest of the guys tonight, since they were as a whole so lackluster.

Brandon Rogers: I keep feeling like Brandon has potential, but he has yet to really impress me. That makes me start to think that maybe he doesn’t really have as much potential as I thought. Last night I was once again underwhelmed.

Phil Stacey: Ouch. Painful. That was one of the worst starts to a song I’ve ever heard on AI that wasn’t a crappy audition. And it didn’t get a whole lot better. No wonder Phil’s in last place according to DialIdol.

Chris Sligh: Good, probably the best of the night, but that’s really not saying much. I agreed with the judges that this was one of his weaker performances, though that’s really only because he’s usually much better. I read somewhere that this was some crazy Christian rock song that he did, though, which is a little troubling. But we can worry about that once we have the top 12 set up.

There are some people wondering if they’re going to stir things up on Thursday with this “big announcement.” Maybe kick off more than just two guys, simply because they’re so bad. I doubt it, I think it’ll be a pretty unimpressive announcement, but we’ll see.