American Idol - Season 9 (1 Viewer)

[Josh Dial]

Originally Posted by Chris Lockwood




Why don't you just start watching during Hollywood week, and those of us that want to see the auditions can tune in earlier?

Sadly, the bad audtions are often the best thing about this show.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Round 1:


Lee Dewyze - solid performance, but a perhaps a ground-rule double.


Crystal Bowersox - brought more energy and passion to her performance,

easily stretched out for a triple.


Round 1 goes to Crystal.


---


Round 2:


Lee DeWyze - That performance wasn't good, seemed lost at times, never

connected to the song.


Crystal Bowersox - horrible dress, but she's not at all nervous, and just

belting out her songs without caution, makes for winning performances

tonight.


Round 2 goes to Crystal.


---


Round 3:


Lee DeWyze - He's sung under the melody at times, almost mangling the

melodious long notes, and sort of just strangled the song throughout the

performance. Not a good night for Lee.


Crystal Bowersox - She did well tonight, went 3-for-3, and thrashed Lee.

Round 3 goes to Crystal.


---


If Crystal doesn't win, it's only due to the voting demographic.

 

[pitchman]

This column is an interesting read and does a good job of recapping what may go down in history as the worst season of Idol ever... I especially like the part about when Simon officially checked out.

 

[Hanson]

As the shittiest season of American Idol concludes, let’s take a look back at what went so horribly wrong this year. I lost track of how many times the show lost its way, but here are some of the main reasons it shit the bed so forcefully this year: Kara – How can one judge screw up an entire show? Easy – by giving out terrible advice and creating expectations for the contestants that place the emphasis on the wrong things. She also says incredibly stupid things like telling Casey his fans are mostly older and younger women. Well no duh, shit for brains – considering most of the votes cast are by older and younger women, you’ve actually described the fans of every contestant on the show. But it’s her incessant remarks about “artistry” and “a moment” that really screw up the contestants – they end up overthinking song choice and arrangements, and as a result, hardly anyone this season looked comfortable singing. Easy fix: Fire Kara. Casting – They take people like Aaron Kelly because of his backstory even though he showed over and again during Hollywood Week that he wasn’t cut out for the show. Aaron was also a country kid who was 16 (or 17, whatever) and those fit one of the archetypes they wanted in the cast. Haeley was a three for one deal – black, teenager, and country. Expect she couldn’t sing or talk (and her guitar playing wasn’t all that hot either). When you pick contestants for a singing competition and ignore the singing, this is what happens. I don’t think that backstories in and of themselves are awful – the problem is when the producers cast someone for their backstory even though their singing is shitty or they try to force a backstory on a contestant when it’s either non-compelling or even ludicrous. The backstory backlash started fairly early this season when Katelyn Epperly earnestly told the camera that her mom and dad were divorced during the auditions. It was such a lame sob story that it probably hurt her chances in the competition. Easy fix: Cast for talent over backstory and leave the backstory at home if it’s not compelling. No personality – If you’re going to take vocal abilities out of the equation when you cast the season, at least put in people who aren’t hella friggin boring. The producers didn’t help matters by having such weak filmed segments. If the contestants aren’t going to display any personality, the producers should edit one for them. Everyone is so cautious about turning off voters that they stay frozen in their shells. Crystal didn’t display any personality at all until top six (when she finally stopped making that face that looked like she bit into a lemon), and Lee is still personality free. Katie looked like she was starting to break out in Lennon and McCartney week, but she got voted off a week later. Aaron? Zero. Andrew? Zilch. Casey? Barely a pulse. Once they got to the hour long shows, they didn’t even have room for these segments, which meant that the personality vacuum just grew stronger. Mike and Siobhan had the two biggest personalities of the season, but Mike was a narcissist and Siobhan was Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. Easy fix: Cast people with some charisma. Instruments – I touched on this last week, but in a nutshell, introducing instruments to American Idol in season 7 was regrettable. Since instruments were introduced, every winner has played guitar. I can say this without hedging because both finalists this year are guitar players – in fact, the entire top 4 played guitar. Now the crux of the competition is to take a well known song, search YouTube for a rearranged cover, and then copy it. If you don’t do that, Kara tells the contestant that they “didn’t switch it up enough”. Which means it’s no longer a singing competition. Which is the problem. Once instruments were allowed, the show morphed from a singing competition to a talent competition. If they allow for original songs as well, it will morph into a songwriting contest. Get back to basics – you can throw a rock and hit a good musician. The show needs to go back to finding great singers. Easy fix: Shitcan the instruments Voters – Basically, the only way a female can win this competition any more is if they are moms. Are you pretty? Gone. Are you youthful? Outtahere. Are you paunchy, slightly homely looking guy with either a receding hairline or chin pubes and a blank stare? Then you are a God to the voters. Look, maybe I’m not the right person to say if a guy is attractive, but when I look a dudes like David Cook and Lee DeWyze, I’m pretty sure they aren’t conventionally good looking. But these voters enter a state of mass hysteria where Lee DeWyze is a hunk and his voice is sent from heaven. The demographics of voting are so narrow that the same bland nobodies end up on top every year. It’s telling that last year's vote total for the final three was over 90 million. This year’s total was 47 million. Easy fix: Put limits on voting Producer manipulation – It’s a well known and accepted fact that all “reality shows” are manipulated to some degree, because “story arcs” are considered the only way to keep these thing interesting. In Survivor, these arcs are created through careful a deliberate editing of the thousands of hours of footage. In American Idol, the producers like to have arcs like, “you lacked confidence but now you’re confidence is showing” or “you were a good singer before, but now you’re an artist”. Idol, and especially Simon, like these tidy stories so they can take credit for seeing the potential early on. But when they get it in their heads that contestant A and B should be in the finals, they jump through hoops in trying to manipulate the outcome. Take the egregious example of Casey James – it’s enough that he most likely wasn’t going to make the finals. But then again, Kris Allen wasn’t supposed to crash the party last year, and he not only got past Danny Gokey, he actually won the entire thing. So they took away James’ guitar at top five, made him duet with Mike at top four, and then forced him to change his song choice at the last minute for top three performance night. Meanwhile, Lee gets the pimp spot and a gospel choir and a moving stage with lighting and smoke effects and a unanimous review that placed his performance just north of The Sermon on the Mount when it was really just smoke and mirrors. The producers didn’t want another Kris Allen slipping into the finals and did a lot of fishy things to get their outcome. But when viewers see this, they are less likely to vote since the outcomes appear to be preordained. And when that happens, the voter demo shrinks even more. And then their plans backfire when the votes they’re looking for never come. Easy fix: Just let the season play out. Unfortunately, some of these problems aren’t likely to go away. For one thing, they have developed a tin ear for talent. For another, Idol and all the other talent shows may have fished the waters out a bit. But getting rid of Kara is an easy fix. And take Bruce Gowers with you – what the hell is the point of cutting to a dark, blurry audience shot? Are these people famous? No. Why do you do this, Gowers? Why do you pan around contestants so fast that it induces vertigo? What kind of hackery is this? So Casey didn’t get to the finals and is back to fronting bar bands at road houses all around Texas. But here's one answer to the great mystery that’s been unanswered since the semi-finals: What’s in the box? Well, it turns out, it was nothing. He was supposed to come up with a pre-show ritual but Casey didn’t have any, so he proffered an empty box and a mystery. Another C Student moment from Lazy Casey. It’s customary at the end of the school year to give your teacher a present. If I could pick out gifts for the Idol judges, I would choose the following items: For Kara, a pink slip. For Ellen, the axe. For Randy, the boot. And for dear old departing Simon, the other door. Don’t let it hit your ass on the way out. And just because I’m nice, one more thing for Kara – here are some Begging Strips. Good Dog. Now leave. Lee – The evening started off slow and boring when Lee did a low tempo, zero energy, totally coffeehouse version of The Boxer. It’s actually quite apropos that he chose this song, since he got suspended repeatedly for fighting in high school, and he eventually left to complete his education at a “special” school. It was also apropos that right after the line, “a pocket full of mumbles such are promises”, Lee proceeded to mumble and slur the lyrics so badly that I didn’t understand a single word he sang thereafter, and even though I know the lyrics, I couldn’t follow along. To make the performance visually repulsive, Lee showed off the same strands of gooey spittle that plagued him on 4/20, and someone pointed out that dry mouth is a symptom of pot smoking, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he toked a bowl before the show tonight. Lee smiled like a village idiot when Ellen said she felt like she had given birth to him. Which means the only display of excitement from Lee came as he contemplated Ellen’s vagina. Lee’s conversation with Ryan was the familiar stuttery, incoherent babble with fits and starts and swallowed words. After his post Idol career stalls, he can get a job dispensing high quality H2O. Randy said he was “not sure if it was, like, a really energetic kind of, exciting kind of thing”. Randy, it sure was… NOT. Lee’s second song was Everybody Hurts, which was also apropos for the same reason The Boxer was. This was pitchy all over the place, and the goddamned gospel choir assembled on stage again. I really have nothing else to comment on because there was nothing worth commenting on. My lasting impression of Lee (before I forget him and this lousy season in a few days) is a blank, open mouthed stare. Lee finished up with Beautiful Day. This was mostly out of tune, and he yelled a lot of the lyrics. Another very karaoke performance to end the night. Kara said that Lee had “one of the most commercial voices” even though he was a normal Joe working in a paint shop. Except most paint shop workers never released TWO albums like Lee has. They make it sound like he was mixing paint as a career path and just stumbled onto this music thing. Of course, Lee’s albums sold next to nothing, just like the post-Idol album he’ll put out. Because, much like Taylor Hicks, Lee wins based on the number of votes and not the number of voters – and after the mass hysteria subsides, even many of his voters will forget he ever existed. Also, they both suck. Crystal – Before she even sang, Crystal ran into a couple of technical glitches during the intro. First, she bumped into an audience member while walking down the aisle and dropped what she was holding (don’t worry about the bongwater staining the carpet, Andrew will clean that up in a jiffy). Then she realized that she missed her mark, which prompted her to run back to the green taped X. But she ended up hitting her mark too late, and so she had to haul ass to make it to the stage on time. Crystal did a reprise of Me And Bobby McGee, which was one of my least favorites of her performances this year, because half of it was just shouty na-nas. Also, the way she played guitar at the beginning of the song sounded like her vocals were out of synch with the strumming. On a side note: Whenever Kara pulls back her hair, her ears look massive and Dumbo like. This is one among many looks that don’t work for her. Also, Bill Bowersox was in the audience tonight, and his resemblance to Daniel Day Lewis is uncanny. I would love to hear him say, “I drink your milkshake”. The producer of Idol chose Black Velvet for Crystal, which was obviously meant to show how little taste he has (it’s no wonder the season was so shitty). I’m with Simon – this song sucks ass. You hear it in audition after audition – any white girl with even a teeny bit of growl in her voice picks this song. It’s a joke now. Crystal chose to perform the song as she walked down the steps, and maybe it was the heels or the lighting or perhaps the weed, but she was sure unsteady the whole way down, and she glanced down at her feet every couple of steps. And the straps in the back of her dress cut into her back fat. Crystal finished up with Up To The Mountain, and it was the only point in the evening where it appeared either contestant was going to put up a real fight, unsheathing the claws and declaring, “THERE WILL BE BLOOD!” It was one of her best this season and easily the best performance of the night, but I can’t say I was truly blown away or that I got goosebumps from hearing it. It was as good as it got this season, which is, unfortunately, faint praise. Crystal’s hair was also ready for a fight, looking like Chun Li’s from Street Fighter II. Crystal signed off the evening by saying, “meow’s the time!” I have no idea what that means. Crystal was clearly the better singer in each round, and absolutely blew Lee off the stage with her last performance. So in the end, who is going to win? Why, it’s Lee, of course. But I think the producers wanted Crystal to win – I mean, there was really no contest between them, and they cast a bunch of schmoes to ensure a girl would win this year. When all the other girls got the axe, they set up Lee as the contender, to rig a final that wasn’t as slam dunk as it appeared to be from the get go. But a funny thing happened as they pimped out Lee – all of Simon’s cheerleading and Jedi Mind tricks took root, and the mania that accompanies mass hysteria is in full force for Lee. Crystal may have more voters, but Lee has more votes – when you have a four hour window, only the loonies who have convinced themselves that Lee is a hottie with the voice of an angel will vote fervently for the entire four hours. Crystal doesn’t incite that kind of fervor because she doesn’t need to get viewers to some mental tipping point for them to believe she should win. So the crazies who voted for Kris last year are voting for Lee this year. And thus, another boring, untalented white guy will win Idol, three years running. F*ck you, Idol. You couldn't suck more ass.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Letting contestants play instruments was one of the best things the show ever did.

 

[Hanson]

Nope.

 

[Phil Taylor]

Hanson may I respectfully request that you retire your Idol blog/review. You obviously cannot find anything right with the show and it appears that it is making you a very angry person. Reading your incessant, troll-ish negativity is more tiring, disturbing and less humorous than sitting through some of the drivel on Idol. Is it a perfect show - no ... but the show and its contestants are not nearly as bad as you exclaim week after week. If you dislike the AI so strongly - just quit watching it. I, for one, won't be reading your pomposity and cruel attempts at being clever any longer. Congratulations, you've become more tiresome and way more irritating than even Seacrest - out!

 

[Josh Dial]

Originally Posted by Phil Taylor Congratulations, you've become more tiresome and way more irritating than even Seacrest - out!

No.

 

[Hanson]

But Phil, if you aren't going to read my pomposity and cruelty any longer, why do you need me to simultaneously retire it?


And why did you wait until the end of the season? You could have been writing reviews of my blog every week.


Ah, missed opportunities.

 

[EricSchulz]

I didn't get to see the show until this afternoon and IMMEDIATELY thought of Hanson when I saw what was in Lee's mouth during "The Boxer"!


I think Crystal blew away Lee in all three numbers, but Lee will be crowned tonight. That's just the way it goes.


I didn't catch it, but will Lee release "Beautiful Day" as his first single rather than one of Kara's abominations? Too bad he butchered one of my favorite U2 songs...


As for instruments, why not just allow them for say, three of the Top 12 weeks? It would help weed out those that got farther than they should have (Casey) and might make it interesting for others (Crystal).

 

[Hanson]

Originally Posted by EricSchulz

I didn't get to see the show until this afternoon and IMMEDIATELY thought of Hanson when I saw what was in Lee's mouth during "The Boxer"!

I'm going to take that in the best way possible.


It was weird that the producers wouldn't tell anyone that they scrapped the coronation song and replaced it with two separate covers. I saw no point in holding that so close to the vest.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Crystal blew away Lee last night. Which really isn't saying much. (More impressive was the way Jon Lester blew away the Rays! Boo-yah!)


Crystal dropping the mic and forgetting that you can't go back and reset during a live broadcast (together with the directorial gaffe that showed it) was possibly the most entertaining moment of the entire season.


All told, Ellen was the only judge who added anything to the show this season. She can stay. Randy and Kara are dead weight.


I nominate Lemmy Kilminster and Weird Al Yankovic to replace them. Top that! (Is Hanson available?)


Yes, Hanson goes way over the top with his weekly rants. I can accept that as long as he stays funny. (My .sig on another site is "Extremism in the defense of comedy is no vice." Learn it, love it, live it.)

 

[Quentin]

How can you rip on Hanson for being negative? His humor is always a little on the poking fun side - that's what it is!


Plus, this is easily the worst season ever. Kara is horrid and Simon hasn't given a rat's a$$ all year. Lee Dewyze is BY FAR the worst finalist the show has ever seen. And, that's saying something when you peek at the dreadful (and, thankfully, forgotten) Taylor Hicks. And, he's going to win!!! If that doesn't say everything you need to know about how far this show has fallen, I don't know what will.


I enjoyed Crystal last night. She's pretty good - but, let's not get carried away. While she is head and shoulders better than anyone this year, she's no better than last year's 4th place Allison Iraheta. If she can actually WRITE songs she may have a career ahead of her. If not, she will soon be forgotten. Though, not as fast as Lee.


The only satisfaction I'll get from a Lee win will be watching his label drop him faster than Taylor's dropped him.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Taylor Hicks had a million times the personality and charisma of Lee. And Allison Iraheta had way more personality and charisma than Crystal.


Lee and Crystal are good but not great singers and are lousy performers. Even Kris Allen is a star next to them.

 

[Phil Taylor]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo /forum/thread/291260/american-idol-season-9/570#post_3695184

 

[PatW]

You know Phil, I have to agree with you to a certain extent. Maybe our skins are getting thinner but some of the "jokes" leveled at Mike for instance, were a bit too much ie: calling him fat bastard among other things. As a person who has struggled with weight issues be it at the other end of the spectrum, this kind of cut deep. I have sympathy for anyone with weight issues and that particular rant got a bit too offensive for my liking. No, I didn't like Mike. The only one I liked in the top 12 was Crystal and I have no desire to buy her CD when she records. This season was a complete failure and though I disagree with some of Hanson's comments over the past few weeks, I do agree with alot of what he says as well as most of his suggestions for improving the show. This year sucked big time and I'll probably just forget about watching next year unless drastic changes are made.

 

[EricSchulz]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo




I'm going to take that in the best way possible.


It was weird that the producers wouldn't tell anyone that they scrapped the coronation song and replaced it with two separate covers. I saw no point in holding that so close to the vest.

LOL...guess I probably could have phrased that a bit differently!

 

[Hanson]

I read about this in the IDF forums, but for some reason I didn't understand it until today:


Kristy Lee Cook has been controlling the winner of American Idol for the past three years.



The winner of season 8 was


Kris


The (presumptive) winner of season 9 is

Lee


The winner of season 7 was


Cook


All the winners share parts of her name!



At this rate, the winner of season 10 will either be named Ty or have Lee for a last name.


Or maybe...Cook Pu?


Yes, the winner of AI Season 10 will be a girl, and it will be Cook Pu. You can bank it.

 

[Greg_S_H]

What I've long wanted to know, Hanson, is if you're a big fish in the little pond of the HTF, or if you're a huge name in Idol fandom. There's no hidden criticism or comment in this, it's just that I only read anything about Idol here, and I wondered if you were knocking yourself out week after week for us, or if this is just a place you reprint for us what you're writing for a different audience. I've wondered since you made a chop that ended up with Gokey. Another way to ask: if someone held up a sign at the finale that said, "Lee: Hanson says you suck," would a big chunk of the audience know what that was about?

 

[Malcolm R]

Not sure anyone really cares at this point, but the winner is...



Lee DeWyze