One thing Leads to Another…

So.  Jordin Sparks will win American Idol this year.  Yay.

The only truly interesting thing to watch on the competition finale was the culmination of the season-long push by the people behind the show to have the winner be female and, eventually, Jordin.

It started with frontloading female talent at the auditions.  What was it; 70% female going into Hollywood week?  In theory that means you’re getting twelve women on average significantly more talented than the twelve men distilled from a smaller pool.  That worked out well…

Lucky for them Bayley Brown can try out again next year.  She could be the next Gina!  Er, I mean Carrie.  But I digress.

They spent the season subtly and sometimes not so subtly pushing the women, sometimes one more than others.  As Jordin grew, Melinda stayed the same, so by a few weeks ago things looked solid for Jordin.

Last night was shameless.  Yet Blake still came impressively close, despite the pimping judging that all but demanded we vote Jordin.  Their hole card was the original song.  The insipid, pathetic, dreckful song that having a songwriting contest was supposed to prevent!  What a sad watershed in the now-endangered careers of the alleged songwriters.  I am so glad I didn’t encourage my brother to enter.

Of course, they buried the songwriting contest under the goofy Idol Gives Back nonsense, in which they fought Rachel Carson disease, plus hunger and maleducation happening in undisclosed parts of Africa for undisclosed reasons on account of undisclosed governments and undisclosed economic policies.  What should have been a cool adjunct, saving them from fan gripes about absurd finale songs was instead buried, allowing undisclosed producers to select a single song suitable for Jordin (or Melinda, or LaKisha) - if it can be called suitable for anyone - and unsuitable for Blake, or pretty much a male singer generally.

Which didn’t stop us from thinking he did surprisingly well with an awful song, while thinking Jordin sounded surprisingly bad, considering it was made for her.  The producers should be concerned, at a moment like this.

All in all, a Jordin win works out fine.  Second place is a bit less restrictive.  Blake would do fine even had he been Daughtryed, and I think the people who work with the idols on albums have learned from what they did to Bo, so it’s harder for anyone to get Biced again.  That is, be forced into making an album not much more suited to them than the finale song was to, well, anybody, so it can’t possibly be as well received as the real thing would have been.  Jordin benefits from the win to a degree Blake wouldn’t.  Idol gets its generic pop singer with tremendous future potential, and as she grows and improves, she might be able to break away and show us what she really has.  Blake gets to be a great entertainer, distinctive from anyone except perhaps Sting.  The difference last night was clear: Jordin bored me.  I came to like her and feel happy for her winning.  My problem is with the moral equivalent of bringing in Micah to give Nathan a landslide.

Overheard in our house during Jordin’s first song: “Melinda called and she wants her hair back.” What were they thinking?  They did her up to make her look surprisingly like an amalgam of Jordin, Melinda, and LaKisha.  Jordin is cute and appealing without being made over to look 10+ years older.  Weird.

We will probably buy whatever first album Blake puts out.  Ditto for Gina.  Possibly Phil, amazingly, and possibly Chris Sligh if it’s not too religious.  Anyone else is a hands down no or possibly get a feel for what’s on the album before considering it.  If Haley did an album that sounds like her best singing of the season, which I still listen to regularly, I might consider her too, but I don’t speak for Deb at all on that one.

We thought it was a neat trick to bring out Daughtry to wash the sound of that awful new song out of everyone’s ears, leaving them with only the memory that Jordin sang it better than Blake and the judges declared Jordin the one everyone should vote for.  Daughtry would have mopped the floor with the entire field this season.

Despite all that, I still look forward to seeing all the performances in the two hour concert tour and album promo tonight, seeing what they do with the contestants and whether they have guests that are better overall than what they’ve managed the rest of the season.  No doubt at least Sanjaya will be entertaining.

Posted by on 05/23 at 08:37 AM

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