|
|
American Idol 9: Which Idol Will Fall First?by Sting7 and David Bloomberg -- 03/16/2010
View Printable version of this article This season of American Idol is already full of surprises! Just ask Lilly Scott, who looked like a lock for the top12 – then suddenly wasn’t! Sting7 and David Bloomberg weigh in. Sting’s comments are in black, David’s comments are in red. 
Well, since this is the first time David and I have actually made predictions on the top 24, we can’t claim much of a precedent. Still, when David and I are completely in lockstep agreement, surely the four horsemen of the apocalypse are saddling up! And, lo and behold, something cataclysmic happened as a result. Lilly Scott is gone. David, I know you went into greater detail in your Why Lilly Lost article, so I am going to take a stab at might have been the downfall for the lady I ranked number three among the women and number four overall! I think the biggest thing might have been that Lilly doesn’t have the conventional pitch-perfect voice. I’ve been railing against this kind of thinking since American Idol began. Some of the greatest performers of our generation (Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Bjork, Rickie Lee Jones) do not have textbook, head/chest voices in which every note must be hefted onto a scale to see if sung correctly. I firmly believe many voters are doing that because the judges, in their incredibly inconsistent way (especially this season), throw that out there as a means to determine whether a performance is good or not. To further this point, some of the epic performances in American Idol history have not been pitch perfect. Fantasia’s “Summertime” occasionally went sharp in places. Same with Bo Bice’s “Whipping Post.” Yet, those were fantastic performances because of the dynamics, the emotion, the power of the performances. Lilly’s voice is quite unique – so unique that her pitch is not the same as, say, Siobhan Magnus’s. I think that quirkiness on a song as familiar as “I Fall to Pieces” just didn’t rest well on the ears – it didn’t sound the way we are used to hearing it, so we decided something must have been wrong with it. Different isn’t necessarily bad, but we’ve been conditioned to reject it. Lilly would have been better served finding lesser-known songs that she could bend to her strengths without arousing comparisons. I’m hoping we’ll hear more from Lilly down the line. 
As you noted, I went into more detail in “Why Lilly Lost,” and I’m not going to disagree with you on your points. But I do think there was more to it than that. Indeed, I think Lilly’s fans have to look at themselves in the mirror a bit when the blame is being handed out. But for more detail, I encourage readers to check out Why Lilly Lost. As for our last predictions, David and I agreed the eliminated parties would be Lacey, Katie, Todrick, and Tim. We were only right on Todrick, to our horror. Frankly, I hoped Todrick could pull the rabbit out of the hat and make it to the top 12 after his “Somebody To Love!” Eh. I didn’t love his “Somebody to Love,” and I wasn’t surprised to see him go. I just wish our other three picks had followed his lead! Alex Lambert was actually beginning to grow on me. He was beginning to grow on a lot of people, especially the mainstream entertainment media. Heck, even I thought that was a decent performance! Katelyn, frankly, was a Denim Skirt with a good week under her belt. David, are you happy to see Lacey, Katie, or Tim on your television screen next week? Happy? No. Any of them could have gone and I’d have been perfectly satisfied. In fact, I wish Tim had gone – not because I was a fan of Alex, but because I’m not one of Tim. To decide who is the next to go, in our usual way, let’s first decide who is safe. Among these, I would place Crystal, Siobhan, Michael, Casey, and Lee. Crystal and Siobhan are far ahead of the other girls. Michael, Casey, and Lee appear to be the class of the men. David, who are your safe picks? I’d definitely go with yours. I’m not 100% convinced that Lee belongs there just yet, but I’ll roll with it for now. That said, I do think I would still add Andrew. I’m not ready to jump off the Andrew train just yet. One more poor performance and I’ll be there, but I think he’s still got enough fans to keep him around. Other than those five, for me, it could anyone. Now, I have to look into the crystal ball and predict what performing Rolling Stones music will do to our other contestants. Among the girls, I think Lacey and Didi have enough of a music vocabulary to figure out the best fit for the voices in the Rolling Stones catalog. Lacey could do a nice “Tumbling Dice” if she dares take on that faster tempo. I could even see her doing a nice “Angie.” I would only give permission to do “Wild Horses” to Didi. I think she could handle it without making us think of Susan Boyle. I’m not convinced about either of them, to be honest. Either could give us something great or something horrible – I’m just not sure which Lacey and Didi we’ll be seeing this week! 1 2 Next-->View Printable version of this article
| Follow us on Twitter and on Facebook! On Twitter, get up to the minute notifications on article postings and other reality TV news. And become a fan on Facebook, join discussions, and more! |
and 
and you can also 
