Our prescient and delightful and winsome pick Ashley Rodriguez was voted off the American Idol island last
night proving, in spades, that the wrong song can kill you because it gives the producers the power to pull the plug on you without leaving anyone, like us, left to feign outrage in her dimming.
I confess to being a whore for American Idol. I have watched the show every year and every year it gets worse and worse. The pinnacle of its awfulness is now Ellen DeGeneres — who wouldn’t know funny if it ran up and bit her on the ear — but I digress. If you’re an Idol fan like me, you know the show is never about finding the best singer. American Idol is all about packaging a face and a body that can sell records — and that’s why I am telling you this year’s obvious winner of American Idol 9 is Ashley Rodriguez.
The depressing news that Ellen DeGeneres has been hired to weigh down American Idol as the new fourth judge is the only proof we need that the show is cooked, done and over and a satire unto itself.
One of lost gems during the American Idol finale wasn’t just Adam Lambert’s unjustified loss; it was the mainstream media’s overlooking Steve Martin’s delightful performance of “Pretty Flowers” from his new musical masterpiece, “The Crow — New Songs for the Five String Banjo.”
The great Adam Lambert — seen below exchanging glee with another man in a previous moment of ecstasy — was the real winner of American Idol and AT&T have confessed their text thuggery in giving the win to Kris, Adam’s fundamentalist Christian, competitor.
We previously loved American Idol 8, but now that we’re down to the nut of it, we realize the show is fatally flawed. American
Idol has become Karaoke with the worst singers. The contestants are
painful to listen to and when they get eliminated the show drags on and
on and on…
Is it bragging if you foretell the future with perfect success? I am pleased to announce two months and a week ago I made a prediction here about this year’s American Idol contestants and, in the end, I was right. Peering into tomorrow is a practiced knack and here’s why I was right about who won and who finished second.
TAYLOR HICKS Taylor Hicks
, as I predicted, is your new Idol but he was never a favorite of judge Simon Cowell.
That is a dangerous thing because Simon can kill a contestant he doesn’t like and for the first six weeks of the show, Simon took every opportunity he had to slay Taylor’s chances of winning it all. What Simon failed to recognize — but that the rest of us knew and loved — is that Taylor Hicks wasn’t just a great singer and musician, he was one of us. He was older. He had a bit of a gut. His chin was doubled. He was grey haired.
We loved him because he wasn’t about surface beauty or false charity. Taylor Hicks is a real talent, nobly divined and of Great Spirit. He sweats honor and compassion. He controls the stage. He sings with grit and a passion missing in today’s popular recorded music. Taylor will always be better live than on tape but that’s the beauty of the man. He transcends the faked by being human in the moment and he cannot be artificially captured.
I have watched and generally enjoyed every season of American Idol. I did not believe Fantasia deserved to win but she lucked out by finding herself stuck in a bland year of contestants and so she won by default. Her career after her win demonstrates the failure of the American Idol producers to pick a winner beyond Tuesday nights.
Here is a quick examination so far of my top three stars and my least favorite three fakes from this year’s competition. The other contestants I do not mention are just doing time until they’re tossed off the show.
STARS
Taylor Hicks must win American Idol because he is the most interesting, most talented and the most compelling musician of the current crop of contenders.
Because of his immense talents and abilities he will not win. American Idol is not about talent and perfection, it is instead merely about marketability. Marketability means selling millions of records to teenage girls who want to swoon with Puppy Love as they hand over their weekly allowance to iTunes and Tower Records. Taylor’s singing has depth and emotion and great human reverberance.
He is technically supreme. If American Idol had any guts they’d promote him more and allow him to win and make the American Idol niche deeper and wider from its hoary teenaged core. You can listen to Taylor Hicks here and my favorite song is “Heart and Soul.”
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