After having taken out the young padawan Allison last week, Gokey got his comeuppance this week at the hands of a Jedi Master, and as is the fate of many a Sith Lord, Gokey was cut in half by Adam. At the same time, Imperial Forces were taken down by a mere Ewok. I’m going to miss plastering Gokey’s face on all manner of grotesqueries to make fun of his fatness, his desire to be a model (that’s the honest to God’s truth), or his sign toting fans (who should be careful around Gokey). Ah, Gokey... I just can’t quit you. Okay, one more – Danny Gokey: Mall Cop. Hey, it’s an acceptable career path for Gokey. You know, after the album bombs. And in other Gokey news, a new publicity photo has an eye-raising detail in light of the cake fight/Gokey grope incident. As pointed out by Hunterdonn at Survior Sucks, Gropkey appears to be reaching back to touch Allison’s leg during in the photo. Eww. The less pervy version shows Megan on the floor in a strikingly familiar pose. Perhaps a full fledged poster is in the offing?
And so the showdown begins: in one corner is Adam Lambert, the ultra-pimped, ultra-heralded contestant with the headline making performances and charisma to spare. On the other corner is… what’s his name again? Is it Kurt Alice or something? Something like… Ken… Kan… It’s got an “A” in it… like… Kanada – wait, that’s not right. Let me look it up… okay, according to the American Idol site, it’s Kris Allen. Okay, so in the other corner is Kris Allen. God, even his name is boring and non-descript. As much as I hated Gokey, Adam vs Danny would have made for an exciting finale. It’s too bad Gokey couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain, and it might have still happened had it not been for the Gokey backlash arising from egregious producer interference. I think everyone enjoys their hotdogs more when they don’t know how they’re made – had they been less ham fisted about setting up the finale, we could have had the Gokey-Lambert showdown, aka Proposition 8, AI style. The producers’ efforts at shaping the voting results backfire on them all the time – why they persist on doing it anyway is beyond me. It like a time-travel yarn with a causal loop – the actions they take to prevent a disaster turn out to be the reason for the disaster in the first place. The judges’ constant stream of bat shit crazy comments have made this season seem fixed. If the producers don’t trust the viewers to determine the outcome next year, the audience will erode even further.
The press has been painting the finale as a Gay vs Straight battle, but Kris, to his credit wouldn’t take the bait. The former Idol Mansion roommates are reportedly still very good friends, and Kris has credited Adam with helping him with his maturation from a wooden puppet to a real artist. Adam’s fans consider Kris to be the pet monkey in the relationship, but this monkey may defeat his owner. Adam’s sexuality has widened the cultural divide between the voters, and Gokey’s Pastor Rolex has urged his flock to vote for Kris because of his religiosity. The reasoning goes, if Gokey’s fans call in for Kris, it will easily sway the contest in his favor. So even though Adam should have this one in the bag, it will be a tight contest because American Idol has always been about votes, not talent, and between the anti-Adam vote and the legion of ladies who find Kris to be adorable (some say he should be a model, but he’s already done some catalog work), Kris may not need a Little Bit of Luck to win after all. Also, Kris is Rasputin – he is impervious to bad critiques, bad performance order, and bad performances. These things kill Idol dreams week after week, but like the Russian mystic, Kris will not die.
American Idol has turned into “Stealing arrangements from YouTube” Idol, and it’s all David Cook’s fault. Last year, Cook won with a modicum of singing talent by scouring YouTube for alternate arrangements to his selected songs, and then routinely taking credit for the final product. Kris and Adam are the two contestants that have followed this template, and in a way, it’s no surprise that they are in the finals together – while Adam’s electric performances have played a large part in his popularity, “his” arrangements have bolstered his artistry cred, while Kris’ sole raison d’etre has been re-arranging songs and looking like he’s some sort of musical genius. Given enough time, either singer could conceivably come up with their own original takes, but in a deadline filled pressure-cooker like Idol, there’s no way they’re both coming up with arrangements straight from their brains week in, week out. To be fair, Adam has a better track record for either giving out credit or pointing out that the arrangements aren’t his (Kris hasn’t given credit to anyone this year). Next year, expect twice as many YouTube re-arrangers in the top 10. At some point, the pendulum is going to swing back to pure singing, but whether Adam or Kris wins, future contestants are going to take notice.
Adam – I never thought I’d see the day when someone could sing and walk down the stairs at the same time without getting pitchy or out of breath. Dozens have tried; all have failed. Walking down the stairs and singing is almost an automatic ticket to the bottom three if not outright elimination (look no further than Alexis Grace walking down the stairs singing Jolene before her ouster). But this was a flawless version of Mad World, stairs and all, and I liked it better than his original performance – vocally, it seemed more in control and less breathy, and that swell during the key change was killer. Instrumentally, they took out the drum part and put in a flangy guitar that made it sound more eerie and disconnected, both qualities that I thought were missing from the first performance. Paula’s tan was a bit out of control tonight – it looked like she was going for the Magda look from There’s Something About Mary. None of the judges said anything particularly crazy this go round. I understand Simon’s comment about the over the top theatricality of it all, what with the bank of dry ice fog and the dramatic lighting, but it made it sound like he was watching rather than listening, which is a seriously annoying habit of Simon’s.
Kris – My wife thought that Ain’t No Sunshine was Kris’ best performance to date, but I think I’ve heard a dozen different versions of that song, and in comparison to those versions, Kris’ was vocally meh and lacked soul. It was interesting that he reworked the arrangement even though he sang it already, but the spare piano and strings was just a bit too monotonous for me. I hated the way he sang the “I ought to leave the young thing alone” part – it was anticlimactic. Kara said that, “if you can’t feel a Kris Allen performance and it doesn’t move you, there’s something wrong with you”. STFU! I hate the stupid, crazy shit that comes out of your mouth! Your opinions have been worthless all year, and this is no different. Please do not use Kris as some sort of psychiatric diagnostic tool – if I am not moved (and I most certainly am not), it is because Kris is the most boring contestant to ever reach the finals (and possibly the most boring Idol winner, even more boring than Reuben or Jordin), and listening to him sing is like eating baby food – it’s soft, inoffensive, and totally flavorless. It’s so boring that babies will spit it out. The only remarkable trait Kris possesses are the crazy sex faces Kris makes when he sings, and at times, the neck craning and straining brings to mind a Galapagos Tortoise looking for food. My wife finds Kris unwatchable because of the faces. Paula said, “Kris, you’ve awakened the spirit in all of us with your unique way of ‘Allen-izing’ your trademark all over not only this inspirational song, but every song you sing, and that’s the true marking of a great artist”. The second part of that statement was syntactically jumbled and confusing (she really shouldn’t be having pill parties with Liza Minelli right before the show), but saying Kris “awakened the spirit in all of us” is crazy talk. Simon called it for Kris. Over Adam? Really? Nutso. Mad World shit all over Ain’t No Sunshine. Twice. No contest.
Adam – I didn’t think that A Change Is Gonna Come was a particularly apropos choice for Adam, mostly because it’s a very POV song about the civil rights movement. But in retrospect, it’s the perfect song for Adam much like Black & White was – both are ostensibly about the racial divide, but both are about wider issues of acceptance and equality, and Adam was able to tap into that emotion for his performance. By tapping into that (and by utilizing his crazy, crazy vocal skills) Adam sang the living hell out of it. The beginning verses were good – I wasn’t blown away, but he was able to hold my interest during a rather long, amelodic stretch – but everything after the first glory note was electrifying, and the song showed off his vocal prowess and preternatural range. Paula said that Adam was “going to be iconic” – I hope that his iconic status lasts longer than Terence Trent D’Arby’s did. Simon said, “you are 100% back in the game”. What kind of crazy shit is that? “Back in the game” means you were at some point “out of the game”. That implies that Kris was somehow blowing away Adam up until this point, and even if you thought Kris was better than Adam the first go round, it wasn’t by more than a hairsbreadth. “Back in the game?” Does he even know what he’s saying?
Kris – Having Kris in the finale is like pouring a too generous serving of skim milk in your coffee – it turns a complex blend of tastes and aromas into something watered down and lukewarm and doesn’t impart any flavor or texture (it just gets whiter). It had to be explained to me by the judges that What’s Going On was relevant to today’s problems, mostly because I was barely paying attention to the jangly, ordinary, coffeehouse piffle that went in one ear and out the other (actually, that’s the kind of song that’s always relevant, because there’s always shit going down in the world. Always). Kris does this irritating thing sometimes when he pauses in the middle of a lyric like, “We don’t need to… (strum, strum) escalate”, as if that’s turning the lyrics all funky and shit. It just sounds like he’s struggling to recall the words. The song had this deadly Idol moment where it’s just a bunch of ooh’s and ahh’s. Kris covered it up with a string of “tell me, tell me’s”, but it was meandering and that part, as well as the rest of the song, was slightly off-key. Kara’s said, “you’re the kind of artist that can deliver that message and uplift people and make them think, make them feel, and make them change.” That is the most massively shit-talking shit I’ve ever heard from a judge – seriously, she’s making out Kris to be some Christ-like figure just because – why? Because he can sort of carry a tune? Because he plays guitar and piano? Lady, get your head out of your ass – most people watching are either thinking, “who is this guy?”, feeling sleepy, and changing the channel to ABC for updates on Dancing With the Stars (and no, I don’t watch that show). Kara, you really have no grasp on reality. Paula said, “you tore up that song and made Marvin Gaye proud.” How does someone who never so much as met Marvin Gaye know what he would have been proud of? I mean, that is crazy shit-talking to the Nth degree. It’s one thing for, say, Yoko Ono to claim that someone would have made John Lennon proud or Priscilla Presley to say someone would have made Elvis proud, but what connection does Paula have with Marvin Gaye? Does she commune with the dead?
Adam – And now is the time for the Idol Coronation Song, the ne plus ultra of cheesy dreck, fake sentimentality, and trite imagery of mountains and roads and fulfilling your dreams, all wrapped in a melody that sounds generically familiar. This year’s Kara DioGuardi co-penned shit bomb tried to be a bit more contemporary and less ballady than previous year’s songs, but it sounded like something rejected by Miley Cyrus for being too corny. “You make it through the pain, weather the hurricanes”, is jut shitty writing, but, “Every step you climb another mountain”, is the undigested corn studding the shit log that is No Boundaries. And no, not even Adam could save this tripe, and it didn’t help that he was – *gasp* – occasionally pitchy (the first note was waveringly off-key, and Adam uncharacteristically scooped a bunch of notes) and the backup singers sang dissonant notes that rendered the last part of the song unlistenable. Or, to be more precise, even more unlistenable. Kara should have been apologizing to Adam profusely instead of thanking him for singing it, and Simon made it clear that he thought the song sucked (and this is the guy who created Il Divo). And if the song wasn’t bad enough, the audience signs they cut to were the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what was worse – that someone couldn’t write four letters neatly or that the best someone could do for the Idol season finale was to get a rolled up piece of poster board that had been sitting in a closet since the fourth grade and use a fat magic marker to write out, “VOTE ADAM” in a haphazard fashion. I’m going with the latter – none of the letters are aligned and the big space in the middle makes it look like it’s four Latin words – “VO TE AD AM”. The third sign gets a pass for using the proper form of “your/you’re”. In this day and age, that’s some sort of grammatical feat.
Kris – Remember how I was talking about how Adam and Kris used YouTube to inspire their arrangements? Well, I had an inkling that the lack of any versions of No Boundaries floating around the internet was going to hurt Kris more than Adam, and boy oh boy, was I right. The arrangement was aimless and meandering, and the song itself was too rangy for Kris to handle at all. If I go back through this season’s blogs, there aren’t that many mentions of pitchiness and off-key singing after the prelims, so it has been better this season as far as carrying a tune is concerned. But Kris chose the exact worst moment to caterwaul, Stevie Wright style – the first verse was mumbly and flat, sounding like Marlee Matlin from Children of a Lesser God. When Kris hit the higher part of the chorus, it just went all to hell – the constant straining for notes made it impossible to listen to without wincing, and his voice cracked in places like he was just hitting puberty. At one point, he messed up the lyrics (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing with such a crap song), and even Kris’ family and friends couldn’t muster up anything more than fakes smiles and polite clapping. Somewhere towards the end, Kris appeared to just want to get to the end, having realized that the song was kicking his ass all over the stage. Curiously, no “that was pitchy, dawg” comments came from Randy (even though it thoroughly deserved it) – in fact, the judges didn’t even bother to critique the performance, instead nattering on about how Kris sang well all season. It is true that the song would have probably destroyed just about anyone other than Adam (who actually had his own problems with the lowest part of the song), but that was just terrible.
In the final tally, the crazy judges’ comments scored this way – 2 for Kara, 2 for Paula, 2 for Simon, and none for Randy. But Kara deserves extra credit for being extra stupid, so the crown for Craziest Comments goes to Kara in a tie-breaker. They did sign her for another season, but between the ludicrous shit that came out of her mouth all season and the wretched song that was supposed to be an improvement from years past should be the last nail in the coffin for her Idol tenure. As much as Kara is touted as some sort of song writing genius and industry insider, she’s only had a handful of actual hits – the bulk of her songs are filler for crappy albums while her insights and advice verge on the preposterous (the contempt and condescension that Simon shows towards her highlight this point clearly). Kara (aka “Dogface” for the ugly, snarling, feral faces she makes when she’s running off at the mouth) should spend next year playing poker with her peeps. Whether Adam or Kris actually wins American Idol, the true loser this year is hands down Kara DioGuardi. Three words: you suck.