American Idol 3: Why Matt Lost

Well, that was an interesting Bottom 3! To give you an idea of just how interesting, in our We’ll Be the Judge of That! article for the week, only two people (out of eight) picked Matt to even be in the Bottom 3. Nobody picked him to go home.

But home is exactly where Matt is headed, so now it’s our job to look back at What ‘American Idol 3’ Contestants Need to Know and determine why Matt lost.

We begin with the all-important Rule #1: Have Some Singing and Performing Talent. Frankly, I think this is where Matt began his downward slide. Compared with many of the others in the Top 12, Matt simply did not have as much singing talent. I’m not saying he’s horrible, but I think he made it into the Top 12 on personality plus some talent, not solely on a lot of talent. He was completely out of his league compared to some of the female singers, like LaToya, Diana, and Fantasia. And he wasn’t even close to being the best of the men, with George Huff easily taking that honor.

But besides singing, performance is also a large part of it. Matt’s performances were always a bit… odd. While I thought Country Week gave him his best singing performance yet, I can see how Simon and others were not happy with his schlocky performance – the silly grin, the sappy looks, etc. It was amusing to watch, but didn’t exactly make people want to jump up and grab the phone to vote for him. Compare that with, for example, Amy’s performance – she had been in the Bottom 3 the previous week and really gave a kick-ass performance that made people vote for her.

Matt also didn’t really appear serious about the whole thing. I mean, of course we want to see a performer having fun, but they also should show us that they really do deserve to be there. Matt’s performances almost seemed to tell us that he was doing this as a lark, just a way to have a bit of fun.

Second we have song choice. Simon obviously thought this was the problem for Matt, and I have to partially agree. He could have given us a faster country song, one that would have allowed him to act more like a performer and less like a lounge singer. Still, I don’t think song choice alone can explain the lack of a Matt vote. In fact, I don’t even think it was the main reason.

Third is to be different. Frankly, Matt was fine here in that he certainly is different. Unfortunately, he’s different in a way that isn’t really a good thing. Matt looked a lot older than he actually is, and I don’t think younger viewers could really relate to him as well as they could to some of the others. And he wasn’t cute enough in their eyes to warrant a positive reaction from younger girls – though some of the older fans thought he was.

The fourth rule is to be memorable. In that regard, I think Matt somewhat failed. What most people remembered Matt for, it seems, was either that he had been a football player (hey, did you know he played in the Rose Bowl?) or his comments about Simon – which we’ll get to in a bit. You didn’t hear a lot of, “Oh my God, that Matt knocked it out of the park! I’m going to vote for him forever!” If he had hit just one awesome performance, he would have been memorable enough to keep bringing in votes for at least a couple more weeks. But it just didn’t happen.

I do wonder if he tried to be memorable using his little movie clips. But instead he came off as fake – or, as Simon said, a politician. We found out that he was a football player (did you know he played in the Rose Bowl?), he takes bubble baths (such as the one he probably took after playing in the Rose Bowl), and he loves kids! Oh, and he played in the Rose Bowl. It was just a bit too much.

One area where Matt did fine was in avoiding karaoke. So we’ll move on.