American Idol 9: Why Didi Lost

Didi Benami’s loss wasn’t quite as predictable as that of Paige the previous week, but it was close. In fact, if it hadn’t been for my deepest hope that Tim would be eliminated, I probably would have picked Didi as the one to go. Indeed, I noted several times that if Didi were to leave, it wouldn’t surprise me. But how did we get to this point when Didi was at one point hailed as a potential frontrunner? Why did Didi lose?

Despite Didi leaving when many of us may believe that Tim should have gone – and there is no doubt in my mind that he’ll leave within a few weeks, at the most – but we’ll worry about him when the time comes. Meanwhile, we’ll go through What ‘American Idol 9’ Contestants Need to Know in order to figure out why Didi did go this week.

The first and most important rule for Idol contestants is always – and despite the ongoing presence of Tim, always will be – to sing and perform well. Unfortunately, Didi had some serious problems in this area. Not as serious as Tim, but we’ll get to some other contributing factors later.

Let’s start with what the on-site judges had to say. None of them liked it. Randy thought it flat-lined. Ellen called it too dramatic. Kara couldn’t tell who Didi was anymore. And Simon called it over the top, old-fashioned, and off-key. Yeesh.

As for the writers here at Foxes On Idol, well, the feelings were about the same. Recapper Jenn thought it sounded stilted, over-rehearsed, and boring. At the We’ll Be the Judge of That! panel, Preston said she was never centered in the melody or her pitch, Tyler fell asleep, and I was yawning as well through this dull performance. Joseph, in The NGH Report ranked her only better than Tim and said she made the performance “incredibly uncomfortable to watch. … Everything felt forced and there was no soul involved.”

So, she was panned pretty much unanimously. That brings us to our second rule, which notes the importance of song choice. Quite frankly, Didi hadn’t shown a particularly impressive amount of skill in this area, to say the least. Her final performance was an epic fail in that regard because it broke one of the cardinal parts of this rule: “making sure to pick something the audience will enjoy, not one that you like.” Simon has called out contestants for being “self-indulgent” when they do this, yet it continues. Heck, I even mentioned it twice in the rule because we keep seeing it happen, and yet here we had another example of it.

Didi picked this song because it meant something to her, emotionally. As soon as she brought this up (or Ryan brought it up for her and repeatedly prodded her to talk about it), I knew it was problematic and noted in my “We’ll Be the Judge” contribution, “As far as the song choice, she told us repeatedly that the song meant a lot to her but apparently didn’t understand that’s not why you should choose a song on Idol! She needed to pick a song she could actually sing well!”

Moving to the third rule, how did Didi do (say that five times fast!) in terms of consistency and ability to sing in different genres. Um, you know how I mentioned the “epic fail” above. Yeah, it’s that again. As mentioned earlier, Didi started out with such promise, but she never really showed us why she had that promise. There was a spark here and there, but never any hint of consistency.

As far as whether she could sing from the different genres she had to choose – none of which were really very difficult yet at this point in the competition for those contestants who used their heads in picking songs – she just made excuses, as she did in her final week. She said R&B wasn’t really her thing. Too bad! Look at the rest of the contestants – R&B wasn’t really most of their thing either. But they sucked it up and performed. You complained and failed to turn your R&B song into one that could show who you are as a singer.

And that leads us into the fourth rule, which talks about being unique. I think Didi not only had the potential to be a good singer, but to follow this rule as well. However, she didn’t make herself stand out among a larger-than-usual crop of singer/songwriter types this season. Instead of showing who she wanted to be by standing out more, she moved towards the mainstream median, becoming less unique with every passing week. By the time she left, I suspect most viewers forgot what it was that made her stand out a bit to begin with – even Kara and Simon noted this very issue.

Without being able to show her uniqueness and without being able to put forth a stand-out performance, Didi also lost the ability to be memorable in accordance with the fifth rule. In the early rounds, she wasn’t necessarily singing great, but she was different, from the way she sang to the clothes she wore. Viewers/voters remembered her.

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