American Idol 6: Why Phil Lost

I’ve been expecting Phil to go for weeks now. Even when I didn’t officially pick him in my weekly prediction article, it was only because he kept sticking around when I didn’t think he should have. But it seemed like he was picking up steam. So why did Phil lose?

As I noted for Sanjaya a couple weeks ago, even when it’s somebody we’ve expected to lose for weeks, we still answer this question the same way – by using What ‘American Idol 6’ Contestants Need to Know and as a guide, and looking at how well the contestant did. We’ve waited long enough for this, so let’s get to it.

The first rule goes a long way in explaining why I thought Phil should go for as long as I did. It talks about how important singing and performing talent are in this competition. Even though they are not the only issue, they are the primary one. So how did Phil do in the past two weeks (since the votes were combined)?

Last week, Phil really settled into becoming a country singer and had positive comments across the board from the on-site judges. Recapper Betsy said the performance wasn’t exciting, but was pretty good. The “We’ll Be the Judge of That” panel similarly felt that he was pretty good, though Bruce noted his wooden performance took away somewhat from his vocals.

OK, pretty good. What about this week? Randy and Paula thought it was really good – among his best. Simon, however, wanted more authenticity. Recapper Jenn felt he had definitely improved over the past few weeks, a sentiment with which I agree. Indeed, so did all the “We’ll Be the Judge of That” judges! He was finally starting to stand out.

A large part of the reason he was improving was that he seemed to find his groove. It started with country night, he picked a countryish song for inspiration night, and even his Bon Jovi song brought out a bit of a twang. Phil finally found a place where he belonged and he picked good songs to help him in that regard, thus following the second rule.

But before he got to that point, he had a problem with the third rule. It says to be consistent and able to sing different genres. Phil was zero for two in that area until a few weeks ago. The on-site and off-site judges hammered him frequently and rightfully. By the time he was hitting his stride, it was really getting to be too late.

Phil did a pretty good job with the fourth rule, being unique. While Chris Daughtry had sported the bald look last season, nobody ever really thought of Phil as an imitator of that style. Furthermore, he stood out because of his back story, which we all knew about – both the armed forces portion and the part about missing his own baby’s birth to apply for American Idol. That set him apart immediately.

His look also served to help him in terms of the fifth rule, making him memorable. It’s one thing to present a good back story, but another to ensure people recall it throughout the show. Having his pals there in uniform, for example, was a great idea. Being both unique and memorable certainly helped push Phil along to realms that his vocals alone would not have taken him.

That’s because those items were part of the complete Phil package. One thing that could have helped him further was showing more personality while performing. He wasn’t really able to become great at that – reference Bruce’s comment earlier about him being wooden – so that part of the Phil package was missing. I do think that impacted his ability to get new fans.

Phil certainly did okay in terms of the seventh rule, as he even said this week that he still liked Simon, even as Simon criticized him. So it wasn’t an issue.

But the eighth rule was. It says to create a fan base. Obviously, Phil had a bigger fan base than I realized, and they kept him around quite a bit longer than I expected (and than I think was justified based on his ability alone). But just as obviously, that fan base was not expanding just when he needed it to. It is ironic, because Phil was finally kicking into gear just as his fans fizzled out. When the number of contestants shrank, his fan base needed to grow, picking up fans from contestants whose time had ended. But there were no obvious candidates for that, and it just didn’t happen.

In the end, Phil’s loss comes as no surprise, even if I didn’t specifically predict it for this week. When we look at the final six, he was without a doubt number six on the talent scale. He was certainly getting better, but it was too little, too late. Even with those improvements, Phil could not pick up enough new fans to overcome the top four, all of whom have been building a serious fan base since the beginning of the competition. Phil had a lot going for him, but his early inconsistency doomed his time on the show. That is why Phil lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent articles on Foxes On Idol and RealityNewsOnline:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of Foxes On Idol, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com. Thanks to Sandy, Betsy, and Jenn for their thoughts and suggestions!

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