American Idol 4: Why Joseph Lost

When asked by Ryan Seacrest why he thought he hadn’t received enough votes to stick around, Joseph blamed only one thing – his lack of earlier airtime. The problem is that standing right next to him on the stage was David, who had received plenty of earlier airtime and was still being sent home. Obviously, we can’t simply blame that one factor.

So if we can’t make it as simple as he wants, why did Joseph lose? We’ll do what we do every week, and look back at What ‘American Idol 4’ Contestants Need to Know to find out!

The first rule is to have singing and performing talent. Joseph must have had some talent, but I was personally hard-pressed to see much of it – though some people disagreed. As regular Foxes On Idol readers know, one of my pet peeves is a performer who feels he has to tell the audience to stand up, clap along, etc. If you’re doing your job, they will do that without such encouragement. And Joseph was one of the worst offenders I’ve seen in a long time, repeatedly shouting, “Come on!” to the audience. It distracted from his performance, and it annoyed me personally.

However, Joseph got a mix of negative and not-quite-negative comments from both the on-site and Foxes On Idol judges. While Paula felt he was “much better” the second week as compared to the first (which is interesting, considering that the first week she said it was one of his best performances), Randy wasn’t blown away and Simon thought it was something out of a 1974 Portuguese nightclub!

Recapper Donna Reynolds thought Joseph had a great voice and he was pitch perfect. And of the “We’ll Be the Judge of That” contributors, Betsy thought Joseph did a great job, Brian thought he was on pitch and would be saved by teenage girls, and Bruce said his voice was amazing. Gil, however, did not think it was anything extraordinary, and I was annoyed and felt he was all over the place.

This is definitely more of a mixed bag of reviews than we’ve had for the others who lost up to this point. However, I really do think he distracted from his performance with all the “Come on!”s and he did not provide us with an excellent performance to impress viewers.

The second rule is to make sure you pick a good song. Once again, Joseph picked an okay song, but nothing special that allowed him to stand out in a crowded field of talent. The second week, especially, the guys really raised the bar with both their song choices and performances of those songs. Joseph… didn’t.

Third we have the rule that says to be consistent. So far there have only been two opportunities to sing, but consistency was definitely not his strong point between the two. For example, “We’ll Be the Judge”’s Betsy, who was a fan of his this week, had this to say about him last week: “Zzzzzz.” Simon and Randy both thought his first performance was rather boring. I didn’t even remember it, which tells you right there how exciting I found it to be. At this stage of the competition, especially, contestants need to consistently force the viewers to remember who they are.

One way to do that is to be unique and stand out. Joseph once again failed here. He blended into the background both in his performances (as already discussed) and his personality – of which we knew nothing. He would apparently blame the latter on his lack of earlier airtime, but he had the opportunity in two performances to show us who he was. All I know about him is that he annoyed me.

And even that I will probably forget in the coming weeks. As I mentioned, I had already forgotten his performance from last week, which indicates he did not succeed in the fifth rule of being memorable. Who is memorable? Among the men: Anwar, Bo, Constantine, David, Anthony, Scott. Even Judd, who was booted last week, was more memorable than Joseph!

In the early stages of American Idol, whether you were shown previously or not, you need to do whatever you can to stand out in a good way. Joseph might blame that lack of previous airtime, and if it helps him sleep at night, fine. But how much previous airtime did Bo have? Looking back to previous seasons, LaToya came in with almost no previous airtime, as did a young woman named Kelly Clarkson. They both certainly made it past the early stages of the competition!

Complaining about a lack of time on our TV screens does nobody any good. Joseph had two weeks to do something about it. Bo did something – he jolted everybody out of their complacency and made us watch him. Joseph did nothing.

Moving on, we can pretty well skip the sixth and seventh rules – karaoke and arguing with Simon – as they didn’t apply here. That brings us to the eighth, which tells contestants that they are a package and their personality plays a big role. We’ve already discussed personality to some extent – basically the fact that we didn’t know a thing about Joseph’s. Again, whose fault is that? We could blame the American Idol producers, and certainly his lack of face-time earlier raised the bar a bit higher for him. But it was his job to impart that information to the viewers. He failed.

And that, really, is where this all ends up. Some viewers like Joseph’s performances – or at least the most recent one. Some didn’t. Were those who did blown away enough to vote for him instead of Mario, Bo, Anwar, Nikko, etc.? Apparently not. Even if we allow that many people liked him more than I did, the real question is if they liked him enough to run to the phone and dial in his favor.

One thing that would have helped him was if he had shown us more of who he really was. That, however, didn’t happen. We had two performances on which to base our voting decisions. The first one, last week, was not exactly stellar. The second one was by many accounts better, but wasn’t enough. Joseph could have used those two performances to impart his personality, to show us what he was all about, to give us a reason to vote for him – but he didn’t. That is why Joseph lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out RealityNewsOnline’s American Idol recap and the other columns about this episode here at Foxes On Idol:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of Foxes On Idol, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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