I watch American Idol for those magic moments when a transformation takes place, the crossroads moment, the moment when the kid on stage becomes a budding star in command of that stage.
And last night’s Idol offered up so many moments — both ill and golden — it was like watching one of those Cum-Shots-Only porn reels. I felt giddy and spent and wanted a cigarette afterwards. I was so tweaked I needed to clean myself up. The entire hour was one long clarifying moment when the gods and goddesses of Fame parted the veils and we saw right straight into the soul of each contestant. Fakers were exposed; true-blues glorified.
David Ogilvy, the godfather of Madison Avenue, would have understood the magic of last night’s show. In his seminal book On Advertising Ogilvy described how advertisements that feature before and after scenarios are always the most riveting. The public scrutinizes these ads intensely. It’s the fascination of the Cinderella story. Our curiosity about transitional moments works out of the unconscious as it tries to see into that mysterious middle space, the bardo realm, as the Buddhists call it, where magical life-change happens
If Ogilvy were watching the show with me last night, he would have marveled as I did when the frog became a prince, but also when a couple of swans turned back into ugly ducklings. Oh, I know. American Idol is just a cheesy karaoke show, but here’s the thing: This plastic pop marathon of winners and losers has actually changed the face of popular music — and popular culture. It isn’t as cheesy as it looks. In fact, it’s compelling and addictive. And most of us tune in regularly. Rabidly.
The Final Six each had their moment — of truth, yes, but not always of the pleasant sort.
Katharine McPhee, for instance. She tried to scale the heights of a Whitney Houston song. But it was as if the fallout of Houston‘s ongoing cataclysm blew through the theater and shrouded the once bright aura of McPhee in its dusty, drug-flecked fog.
And so she delivered an arrogant, camera-flirting performance that was more about posture than pipes. In the end all that was left were the judge’s harsh, pinpricking opinions and the roar of shock from the rafters as the audience realized how they had been hoodwinked. Within seconds, Kat went from puffed-up to depleted. I was expecting a stretcher to carry her away before Ryan even finished ticking off the phone numbers.
Kellie Pickler‘s denouement was the most sadistically satisfying of the evening. Last night proved she was just a goofy amateur — the beneficiary of a pre-pubescent voting block of little southern girls just like herself. They had secured her a spot in the competition several notches above her abilities.
Her performance was the equivalent of watching someone positioned atop a trap door that opened in excruciatingly slow motion. By the time we got around to hearing what the judges had to say (unanimous pans) all that was left of Ms. Pickler was the very tip-top of her Cameron Diaz bangs from There’s Something About Mary. The bulk of her was already gone, gone, gone; down the shoot towards obscurity. God Bless America.
Paris Bennett made a mighty mighty run at a Streisand classic but stumbled on her own youth. The performance threw into high relief Bennett’s lack of lived experience, a missing depth that limits the emotional impact of her overwrought singing. No matter how much she emotes and soul-shouts, the overall effect stays stuck at tepid levels. This tends to bring out the dreaded “pageant vibe curse.” And, well, we all know how those things turn out. (Paging Lisa Tucker.) Tonight’s vote-off, I suspect, will be Paris’ last moment on the big Idol stage. Wish her well my children.
Whenever I call my mom at work to discuss Idol, she always mentions the same news: “Everyone here is still voting for that old gray-haired guy.” I remind her that Taylor Hicks is 29-years-old. And she is always shocked: “Really?”
I suppose this is why Hicks shows up at the top of the heap week after week, according to Dial Idol — a site that eerily predicts the show’s winners and losers by tallying the number of busy signals for each contestant during the post-show voting blitz. Oldsters feel like one of their own has stormed the gates of Teenybop Land. And so they feel OK about doing something as girly as dialing the phone over and over again for their chosen Idolette.
Oh, and with Hicks, there’s also the Southern Thing. The Washington Post recently reported on The Southern Thing and its annual recurrence on Idol :
“For five years [the show has been] thoroughly, totally and completely [dominated] by kids from Southern Hicksville, USA. Seven of the eight top-two finishers in the first four years were from states that once formed the Confederacy, and five of the seven remaining finalists this season are, too.”
I guess it won’t matter that last night Taylor gave his worst performance ever. He seemed to have run out of all his tics and pre-packaged vocal gymnastics, leaving him at the mercy of just singing. And wow, a tender mercy it was not! It was a true Emperor Has No Clothes moment. (I see David Ogilvy smiling somewhere out there in the ether.) All we got was the lounge-act version of a James Ingram classic. Hicks’ rendition was bland and sedate, livened only at the very end when he upped his body spasms and started grunting and straining like a constipated bear. Cue Sweet Home Alabama … “Carry him home to see his kin…”
I was never a fan of Chris Daughtry (remember my tirade against him a couple of weeks ago?) But one of the nice things about Idol are those moments when I’m forced to reverse my opinion of a contestant, especially someone I vehemently dislike. And last night Daughtry’s take on Bryan Adams’ bizarro ballad Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman felt true, non-contrived and, more importantly, a sure sign that Daughtry was maturing into himself. He no longer seemed to be copying the affectations of his musical idols. I was impressed, dawg.
And then there was the show’s big golden moment. The one that made Paula Abdul cry and blew out the back walls of the theater when the audience started to applaud. The one that I’d been waiting for since I first glimpsed Elliott Yamin skittering around the fringes of the Hollywood tryouts where he was bookended between the horrifying Brittenum twins, yet still managed to flip skull caps with his rendition of It’s In His Kiss.
I’ve squirmed through so much with Elliot: his Amish haircuts, crooked teeth, deer-in-the-headlights stage fright, frumpy hoody attire and a nervous vibrato that sometimes sounded goaty. But last night Yamin fulfilled his three months of promise and finally delivered a showstopping performance that will secure him a spot in the show’s final top three. And he did it with an intricate, jazzy Donny Hathaway tune that the show’s teenage fans may not even recognize, no less
It wasn’t so much that his interpretation was stellar (I’d have preferred something a bit more intimate, to match the soul of the song, A Song for You, which when I listen to it with fresh ears is truly one of the greatest love songs of all time.) It was because Elliott finally crossed the line. This ugly duckling made it into Swan Lake. He went beyond American Idol, in one fell swoop. Fantastic.
© 2006, David K.. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com
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