American Idol 9: Why Casey Lost

I have to admit, I didn’t rush to write this article like I sometimes do, because it just seemed so… right that Casey was sent packing before the finale. That’s not meant to be a slam against him, it’s just that the final two worked out exactly the way it should have, in my opinion and the opinions of many others. But there was certainly no assurance of this! We’ve seen plenty of examples of American Idol contestants advancing further than they should. Be that as it may, we still have the big question to answer: Why did Casey lose?

It would be too easy to just say that Casey lost because he wasn’t supposed to be in the top two – and it would also be circular reasoning. So we’ll follow the same path we have all season long to answer that and the related questions – going step by step through What ‘American Idol 9’ Contestants Need to Know. That way we’ll be certain to hit all the main points.

With that having been said, I am going to take a bit of a shortcut this time when it comes to the first rule. Usually in this spot, I mention that the first rule is the most important, as it discusses singing and performing well. Then I go on to quote the on-site judges and various Foxes On Idol columnists about how the losing contestant did in his/her final week.

But I don’t see much point in doing that this time around, as almost everybody said essentially the same thing. In a three-horse race, Casey was definitely the third horse. In the opinions of many, including the on-site judges, Lee owned the night with Crystal coming up right behind him. Lee? He was a distant memory by the time last Tuesday night was over.

It wasn’t that Casey sucked or anything like that. It’s just that he didn’t do anything spectacular to show why he belonged in the finale. The judges and viewers were looking for a “Wow!” but got only an “Eh” from him.

Part of the reason for this was his song choice. We can’t criticize Casey in this regard for the second performance of the night, since that was picked by Kara and Randy, but we can say something about his first choice.

First, he picked a song that was not all that familiar to many people (at least many people who I heard from – myself included!). Second, it just seemed like such standard fare for him. As I said in We’ll Be the Judge of That!, “Casey needed to kick off the show with something that would really stand out – and that performance did not. It seemed safe and business-as-usual.”

And even though I just said we can’t criticize the second song choice, I do want to mention it. While Casey didn’t pick the song, he did decide how to perform it. And while “Daughters” was a better performance than his first one, I’ll quote myself again: “He stood with his guitar like we’ve seen what seems like a million times before, showing us nothing new.”

I mean, heck, even Crystal put down the guitar and stepped out from behind the microphone stand for her second song of the night!

The third rule addresses consistency over the course of the competition, and here is where Casey faced his biggest problem. There was a several-week period in the heart of this competition where Casey really just took a nosedive. He had done well up to that point and eventually pulled out before hitting the ground, but not before seriously damaging himself as a viable product.

Even five weeks ago, in our pre-show prediction column for inspirational song week, Sting7 said, “Casey is in kind of a weird position. He’s been doing the same thing so often that it’s kind of gotten boring. But when he doesn’t do the same thing, the risks are great for him.”

A week later, I said in that column, “Week after recent week, the judges have told him they’re tired of seeing the same thing from him. Yet he hasn’t changed a bit. If anything, his performance quality has gone downhill somewhat. … Casey has gotten boring and he needs to do something to spice it up.”

And then, of course, there was big band week, which was just horrible for him.

After that, he came back with some better performances, but by then the damage had been done. This was not just one off week – it was a whole series of them. And it wasn’t just performing poorly, but rather falling into a rut of seeming to give the same performance time after time – and performing poorly sometimes as well!

Overall, I think Joseph of The NGH Report described it well when he noted in his most recent column, “Casey had an uneven record with a few brilliant moments, some average fun jaunts, and a couple of negative performances.”

Moving on to the fourth rule, how did Casey do in terms of being unique? I would say he did pretty well – on this season, anyway. Overall, he reminded me a bit of a not-quite-as-good Bo Bice (maybe I’m alone in that assessment), but Bo was on the show a while ago, so I don’t think that really affected anything for this season. Certainly, Casey stood on his own this time around.

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