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American Idol 6: Why Leslie Lostby David Bloomberg -- 03/05/2007
View Printable version of this article I liked Leslie Hunt. Not only was she from near my hometown, but I thought she was good and a bit different from most other Idol contestants. However, what I thought and what Idol viewers want are sometimes two different things. With this in mind, why did Leslie lose? Leslie has had some very intelligent things to say in answer to this question. So we will address those as we go through What ‘American Idol 6’ Contestants Need to Know and see where she was right and where she went wrong. 
After it was announced that A.J. would be going home, Paula Abdul made a comment about how American Idol is a singing competition, but singing was not what decided the votes last week. She made similar comments after the same announcement about Leslie. But the first rule is about singing and performing. So before we get to the other issues, let’s address this one. On the show, Randy thought it was just okay, Paula loved it, and Simon felt she was getting lost in the competition and was only vanilla ice cream compared to some more interesting flavors. Recapper Jenn pretty much agreed with Simon. The Foxes On Idol panel at We’ll Be the Judge of That! all felt Leslie had improved over the first week, but all of us felt the scatting was a dangerous move. Indeed, two out of four of us thought Leslie would be going (though even those two said it should be Antonella). So Leslie sang okay, certainly better than at least one, possibly more, of the other contestants. But her performance also included scatting, which isn’t exactly big on America’s pop charts. Which brings us to the second rule, regarding song choice. As Leslie was singing us out at the end of the results show, she added to her scat, “Why did I decide to scat? America don’t care for jazz.” You know what? She’s basically right. Or, I should say, most Americans watching American Idol are not going to be big jazz and scat fans. This is, after all, the search for a pop superstar. So why did Leslie pick that song? In a post-show interview, she said, “I chose songs that aren’t at the top of the charts. … I don’t know the show that well.” Frankly, that explains a lot. On the one hand, we have people like Chris Sligh around, who knows this is a contest and knows he has to play it as such. But then we have Leslie, who says she “auditioned on a whim and ended up going really far” – until she picked a bad song. The third rule tells singers to be consistent. As noted above, just about everybody thought Leslie was improving. On the flip side, this means her first performance wasn’t that great. Like it or not, in the semi-final rounds, even one poor performance can spell disaster, even a week or two later. If there aren’t other reasons to keep a contestant around (which we’ll get to in a moment), consistently good performances are the only way to make people call in for you. Fourth is to be unique. Leslie was different from the other contestants and from those who came before her. But as Simon said, she was somewhat vanilla. We did know a little bit about her, such as the fact that she has lupus. But I have to wonder if people even remembered stuff like that. Which brings us to the fifth rule and being memorable. If Leslie had a voice like LaKisha or Melinda, people might have remembered the other details about her. But without that, and without any real sign of Leslie in the early shows, she faded somewhat into the background while the powerhouses moved to the front. I suspect that even though I liked Leslie, I mostly remembered her for her hometown more than anything else. 
That’s not to say she didn’t try, though. Leslie showed some personality, in tune with the sixth rule noting that every contestant is a package. She played along with Ryan Seacrest when he read the “lyrics” to her scatting after her performance. Given a couple more weeks of getting to know Leslie, I think voters might have warmed to her. But the format is what it is – she didn’t have a couple more weeks, and she didn’t have much background out there before her first semi-final performance. This meant there wasn’t a whole lot of time to get herself a fan base, in accordance with the eighth rule (yes, we skipped the seventh – she didn’t argue with the judges so it wasn’t an issue). Indeed, Leslie even had bad luck when it came to geographical fan bases. Some people will vote according to who is from their area. But Leslie shared the Chicago area with Gina Glocksen, who was already more well-known from both her previous attempts to get on the show and the earlier rounds this season. So it’s likely that Chicago-area voters would tend to side more with Gina. Both Leslie and A.J. sang the same song. Both were eliminated. But frankly, it’s more a coincidence than a general dislike of Nina Simone by the American public. In both cases, Paula spoke up and noted that they were not voted out due to singing, but because of other issues. Yes, song choice played a definite role in Leslie’s ouster – though it was really the way she chose to sing and scat the song that was the bigger issue. However, Leslie had other problems in the areas of being a full package who would be remembered by viewers, spurring them to vote for her. She could have overcome her relative lack of early round exposure by blasting us all with great performances. But she didn’t. While she was unable to go beyond vanilla, several other contestants were wowing us with 31 flavors and then some. That is why Leslie lost. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent articles on Foxes On Idol:
David Bloomberg is the Editor of Foxes On Idol, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com. Be sure to sign up for the RealityNewsOnline/FoxesOnIdol e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on both sites! For all of our articles, check out our sections on American Idol, American Juniors, Nashville Star, and Canadian Idol. Also make sure to check out RealityNewsOnline for recaps and articles covering other reality TV shows. For even more news about reality TV, be sure to check SirLinksALot: American Idol and Reality TV Fever! View Printable version of this article
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