American Idol 6: Why Antonella Lost

What a shocker! No, this article isn’t about Sundance. But it is still somewhat surprising to me that Antonella didn’t make it to the finals. Obviously, it wouldn’t have been based on talent, but she didn’t make it as far as she did based on talent either. So what happened to the Idol tidal wave of support for her? How did she make it as far as she did? And why did Antonella lose?

To answer these questions, we will of course use What ‘American Idol 6’ Contestants Need to Know as a guide. But in this case, we will also pull information from a few other sources that I’ve been looking at over the past few weeks. Let’s take a look.

The point of American Idol is, of course, to find the best singer/performer. So it makes sense that the first and most important rule is to have talent in these areas. It’s safe to say that Antonella was not a superstar in these areas from what we have seen. But we always go through the fine points, so let’s do so here, just to be thorough.

Randy felt she was pitchy and just okay. Paula said the bottom notes were trouble (as we’ve seen before, when Paula criticizes your performance, you know you’re in trouble). And Simon took on his smart judge role. Simon knows that sometimes when he slams people, they get sympathy votes. So he made it obvious she should be gone without calling her names or comparing her to a drunk wedding guest or what have you. He said she has gone as far as she can go because she’s surrounded by a lot of talented women and her voice probably won’t get any better. He said it wasn’t her worst performance, but she needed to sing better.

As for the thoughts of those not on the show, Recapper Jenn said Antonella butchered a song she had otherwise liked and it didn’t work for her. The Foxes On Idol panel at We’ll Be the Judge of That! all felt similarly. Sandy echoed Simon in saying she didn’t deserve to still be there and was outclassed by the others; Tyler screamed in agony; Bruce discussed how she slid into a monotone; Kathy noted, “I’m starting to think her sitting on the toilet isn’t the worst thing she’s ever had captured on film” (a line so great I had to quote it directly here); and I said she was all over the place with her pitch and needed to go.

So it was unanimous. But the problem was that it had been pretty much unanimous for three weeks now! Indeed, for this reason we’ll temporarily skip to the third rule, which says contestants need to be consistent.

Antonella was fairly consistent – consistently bad, that is. It is interesting to note that just as Bruce described Antonella as monotone this week, I did likewise last week. Similarly, people have been talking about all the notes she missed for three weeks now. She never lit the world on fire. In fact, she never even had a spark. There was not even a hint that there might be something greater in her voice and she just kept missing (like there was with Sundance, for example). She had three weeks to show us a reason she should make the top 12 – longer than many comparable singers. She never did it, though.

Going back to the second rule, it talks about how important song choice is. While Randy and Paula thought her song choice this week was good, I have to disagree. One of the items discussed in this rule is that contestants should not pick recent hits. As recapper Jenn noted, Antonella “completely ignored the … rule about not singing current popular songs.” After Antonella whined that she didn’t want to be compared with other singers, Jenn added, “Then stop singing current songs.” That is the point Antonella didn’t get.

The fourth rule tells singers to be unique. Frankly, the only thing unique about Antonella was her photo scandal. Besides that, she really was a fade-into-the-background type. She didn’t stand out because of her singing or her look or her back story or her personality. She stood out for one reason only: Nude and semi-nude photos. While that reason certainly carried her for two weeks, eventually it had to drop out of the news headlines.

Now is as good a time as any to discuss that very issue. Running an Idol website, I have some stats that help me determine what is popular and what isn’t. I also tend to follow other news outlets and websites to see what articles are appearing there. And I can tell you by looking at website traffic and articles on other sites that the Antonella story has died down – a lot.