American Idol: New lines of thought
But first, the big AI news of the week for me:
“In other news, Joel is to join the pop star wannabes on American TV talent show American Idol. The “Piano Man” will join the final 12 contestants next week as part of a show where the finalists will sing a handful of his classics. Joel reportedly agreed to take part in the show because his daughter Alexa is a huge fan of the show.”
Sorry, I don’t know which news service that comes from, but it makes me very excited. =)
Last night’s first week of AMERICAN IDOL finals re-enforced some of my predictions, but derailed a couple of others. It’s still early, but based solely on last night’s performances, I think there might be a couple of changes I should make.
First of all, it’s horribly unfair to ask white people to sing Motown. ;-) Unless you’re Phil Collins and can pop it up a little, you’re sunk.
The biggest “uh oh” came from Kimberley Locke, who was one of my earliest picks. My one fear was that she might not be good at singing anything other than “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” While she didn’t stink last night, she didn’t look too enthusiastic on stage, and the song was definitely not meant for her.
On the other hand, Clay Aiken looked like a natural. The kid handles anything that comes his way.
Carmen Rasmusen was the biggest surprise for the night. I thought she did amazingly well. She did Motown with a twist of country and I think it really worked. She looked confident on stage, sang the song on her own terms, and stayed on key. The one or two times I thought her voice was failing her were an illusion — it’s just her twang. I got used to it quickly enough.
Every week, there’s one contestant that the knocks over the judges that I just don’t understand. This week it’s Cory Clark. They were drooling. I don’t get it. That high pitch is annoying, he missed a couple of notes, hit a couple really flat, and sang far too far ahead of the song. It was atrocious, but the judges all loved him. Go fig.
Kimberley Caldwell was great last night. Yes, she even borrowed clothes from Nikki McKibbin’s closet… But she was the first standout performance of the night. I guess working on stage for a summer in Branson doesn’t disqualify you from AMERICAN IDOL, eh?
Julia has a great and strong natural voice, but Paula is right that she needs to work on her stage presence a bit. And I beat Simon to the punch by about 30 seconds in hoping that she wasn’t going to lean forward at any point.
Trenyce is the dark horse candidate. She’s been amazing these past couple of weeks. I think she’ll go perhaps even further than I predicted.
Charles Grigsby has to be the one to go this week. He was awful, and I got motion sickness watching him bending at the knees in time with the music. (It’s the same affliction that sunk one of the guys last year. Was it AJ? Just kept bopping up and down to the music, even after Paula told him to stop it.)
In the end, I’m not totally embarrassed by my predictions yesterday for how the show will break down, but I think Ruben will last longer than I thought — even though his style is definitely not my thing — and Kimberley Locke will come up shorter than 3rd place. I still stand by the idea that we’ll have a male American Idol this year.
One last thing: Ryan made a big show last night about saying that the judges wouldn’t be able to complain about song choices this week because the guy who wrote and/or produced all the songs for the night was the celebrity judge. Right problem; wrong answer. They should really let the judges help the contestants with song selection. Let’s aim for the best every week. Let the judges help. The judges picked songs last year in the last week, but by then it was too late. Maybe they’ll consider doing something like this for next season. At the very least, let the judges select 3 or 4 possibilities for the singers. It would then be up to the singers to decided whether or not to accept one of them.
March 12th, 2003 at 11:32 am
I hope they’re paying Joel well to sit there and listen to his compositions get butchered. ;)
March 12th, 2003 at 1:53 pm
Me, too. I still can’t wait, though. I’m already working out in my head who I want to sing what. Who would dare try “Honesty” or “Innocent Man,” for example, which requires a young voice with full range? (Joel has one of his backup musicians, Crystal Taliaferro, doing those in concert now.)
Who will wimp out and go with “Always a Women” or “She’s Got A Way” or “This is the Time”?
A lot of his songs — as great as they are — aren’t the kinds of tunes to show off the voices they’re looking for on American Idol. That’s part of the reason I’m looking forward to this one so much.
And I’d pay any one of those kids $100 to commit career suicide by singing “We Didn’t Start The Fire”…
Or “Say Goodbye To Hollywood,” Joel’s ode to Phil Spector’s sound. heh heh
Maybe by Tuesday I’ll have a list put together for the next AI post.
-Augie
March 13th, 2003 at 12:45 pm
Taliefero is great; she sang backup for Mellencamp for a while (that may be her on Cherry Bomb). On the live album from Russia, Joel had someone else doing the high notes in Innocent man as well, but still a guy, which I think is the better way to go.
My take on Joel is that he missed his calling. His gift is for melody, not rock, and he’s hurt himself by trying to “rock” far too often. Joel should have been writing for Broadway - (And So It Goes has become something of a cabaret staple; Betty buckley does a fine rendition on one of her albums) all along; I’d bet that, had that been the course he’d taken, he’d be remembered much longer than he will be now. Honorable folk may disagree. ;)
March 14th, 2003 at 11:50 am
That’s OK. I like his voicean awful lot, though. He never got the credit for it that I thought he deserved. Yes, it’s lost a lot since he hit 40 or so, but that’s natural.
The fascinating thing about Joel, for me, is how he can write so many different types of songs and still have them be entertaining. Sure, there’s a clunker or two in his catalog (”All She Wants To Do Is Dance” on a steel drum), but for the most part, no two songs sound alike. As much as I love Elton John’s music, I get confused between a lot of his songs. They all start sounding alike after awhile.
Yes, Joel could do Broadway easily enough, but I think his talents lie in his performance ability and playing rock piano. It’s his thing, heavily influence by the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and the Beatles and Dylan and the rest. He synthesizes it all into something unique.
And nobody remembers Broadway. ;-)
-Augie