American Idol Season 8, 2009 discussion - ***possible spoilers***

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Chris R, Jan 11, 2009.

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  1. Well, at least it got him back into the headlines for 5 minutes. :rolleyes:
     
  2. lv70smusic

    lv70smusic Senior Member

    Location:
    San Francisco, CA
    I like the thread just fine. I just don't think anyone needs to continue to point out that he thinks Adam is too "camp" or like Liza Minnelli.

    And, honestly, I don't need you telling me not to read one of the few threads here that is of interest to me. Thanks. :wave:

     
  3. lv70smusic

    lv70smusic Senior Member

    Location:
    San Francisco, CA
    I honestly don't understand Clay's point. I think he's trying to say that AI used to be about finding undiscovered talent but now allows contestants who have had considerable stage and/or recording experience. If that is his point, he should have just said so more clearly.

     
  4. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    And we don't need you telling us what we can and cannot think or write. As for repetition, I could go back in the thread and find examples where you kept repeating the same thoughts.
     
  5. tcj

    tcj Senior Member

    Location:
    Phoenix
    Dumb. If the American public was so horrified by Adam's "gay campiness," they would have voted him out ages ago. They didn't and he made it to the number two spot. His sexual orientation had very little to do with why he lost. Kris won because that's what people like, at the most basic. Look at the majority of male singers on this show - what do they sound like? Kris, Danny, etc. Not Adam. I'm really amazed Adam made it as far as he did, actually.
     
  6. Hawkman

    Hawkman Supercar Gort Staff

    Location:
    New Jersey
    And it looks like those of you who wanted mused about Lambert fronting Queen weren't too far off...



    After Adam Lambert’s killer performance with Queen on Wednesday night’s season finale of American Idol, rumors flew that he had already been offered a job singing with the band. That’s slightly premature, according to the band’s guitarist, Brian May. “Amongst all that furor, there wasn’t really a quiet moment to talk,” May tells Rolling Stone in an e-mail interview. “But [drummer Roger Taylor] and I are definitely hoping to have a meaningful conversation with him at some point. It’s not like we, as Queen, would rush into coalescing with another singer just like that. It isn’t that easy. But I’d certainly like to work with Adam. That is one amazing instrument he has there.”

    May, whose band recently ended a four-year-long partnership with singer Paul Rodgers, is comfortable with Idol as a launching point for the careers of rock singers. “You’d have to define ‘legitimate’ first,” he writes. “The long-term answer has to be that, if you have enough talent and enough will to succeed, you will get there by whatever route presents itself. Once you have scaled the castle walls, with the sword in your hand, it matters little
    how you got there. I’ve not always been positive about shows like this, but there is no doubt that it offers a door to some real genuine talent along the way.”


    “Both those boys are well worthy of big success,” May continues, in regard to Lambert and Idol winner Kris Allen. “So it’s pointless for someone like me to stand on the sidelines jeering. I’m confident Adam will make great use of this wonderful opportunity. I hope I’m there to see it.”
     
  7. Hawkman

    Hawkman Supercar Gort Staff

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Usually when a thread gets to this point, it's time to call it a day. :D
     
  8. Chris R

    Chris R Forum Fones Thread Starter

    Come on Jeff. You and I are old-times here almost 7 years. :laugh:

    I start the official Idol thread every season. I don't think it's out of line once or twice in 1200+ posts, to maybe suggest:

    1. folks dial it back a bit, or

    2. if it appears that you don't like the posts, maybe sit it out for a while.

    ________________

    Back to the end of the season discussion...

    Scroll down the following page. You can watch a 6 min. excerpt from Larry King Live, Friday evening, with Seacrest, Kris and Adam. It's where Adam says he thinks Danny's votes went to Kris.

    http://www.rickey.org/?p=16584

    Which brings up the inevitable question? If Danny had squeaked in to the Top 2, would he have also won, then, getting Kris' votes?
     
  9. lv70smusic

    lv70smusic Senior Member

    Location:
    San Francisco, CA
    Okay, I'll be more explicit about what's bothering me. Some of these criticisms of Adam seem to be veiled (and sometimes not so veiled) homophobia to me. How many times does the word "camp" need to be used when describing him? How many times has he been compared to Liza Minnelli in this thread?

    As for repetition, it makes sense to continue to critique singer's good and weak points while the competition is still going on. At this point, given that the show is over and no one has an album released yet, I fail to see why continuing to critique the various contestants makes sense. Everyone who has been actively participating in this thread has made his opinions clear already.

     
  10. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    One can critique a performance that was "camp" without being homophobic. If I wrote, as I did a couple of times, that Adam is a good singer until he slips into his "Liza drag queen" mode, that's what I'm saying, that he sings like a drag queen pretending to be Liza. Where he's gay or straight is irrelevant.

    Turn on your radio. Both Kris' and Adam's versions of No Boundaries are being played and DJ's asking people to call in and comment. In this sense, the "competition" is still going on.
     
  11. Vinyl-Addict

    Vinyl-Addict Groovetracer Manufacturer

    Location:
    USA
    That's very interesting. I think Brian speaks very intelligentally about the prospect of Adam being successful given his A.I. exposure, and who knows, perhaps he will do something with Queen. I think Queen and Adam doing an album may be a stretch but perhaps they could release a single and see what the response is. It will be interesting to see what indeed happens.
     
  12. applebonkerz

    applebonkerz Senior Member

    Yes, I believe he would have also won. Considering how it came out that the voting wasn't even close, everyone had a good chance of winning over Adam. Allison may very well have beat Adam as well. She would have deserved it, but since she had a tougher time connecting to the audience, that outcome could have been tight. Backlash is a bitch. :laugh:
     
  13. DJ WILBUR

    DJ WILBUR The Cappuccino Kid

    so is Mr. Aiken the guy from 2003 with the "raw talent"? I seem to remember him being a part of the slick productions...and really did ANYONE in America assume Clay was straight when he made it all the way to the #2 slot? one thing that makes my ears bleed is the sound of Clay Aiken...mr. "spamalot", a fitting show for him to have starred in. He's the spam of meats and i mean in "raw talent"...:sigh:
     
  14. DJ WILBUR

    DJ WILBUR The Cappuccino Kid

    New York Times article

    ‘American Idol’: The Triumph of Soft Rock
    By JON CARAMANICA
    Published: May 21, 2009

    Kris Allen began the final sing-off on “American Idol” on Tuesday night driven by what appeared to be a combination of fear and good sense. He won the coin toss, and opted to let Adam Lambert perform first in each of the battle’s three rounds, knowing perfectly well that should the otherworldly Mr. Lambert follow him, all traces of the genial and flat Mr. Allen would be erased from the planet — and voters’ memories.

    At the end of the second hour, after all the performances were complete, the judges were already writing Mr. Allen’s eulogy. “You should be very proud of what you’ve done in this competition,” Randy Jackson told him. “You’ve done an amazing job to end up where you are right now,” Paula Abdul said. Compare that faint-praise damnation with how the constitutionally fussy Simon Cowell celebrated Mr. Lambert’s season. “Doing a show like this,” he said, “you hope that you can find a worldwide star. I genuinely believe with all my heart that we have found that with you.”

    And so, whether because of natural bearing or awareness of his surroundings, Mr. Allen was modest down to the very end of the Wednesday night results show, when he was crowned the winner. Perceived by many as an upset, it was actually an apt finish for a season, the show’s eighth, that privileged strenuous competence above all.

    At best Mr. Allen is a harmless singer: he makes Kenny Loggins look tough. At worst he’s indefensible, utterly lacking in texture and range and interpretive imagination. His aw-shucks demeanor spills over to his performances, in which his chin jerks violently to the right every time he aims for a big note, as if his mouth were struggling to deliver what his brain is asking for.

    Last week, in the episode that determined who would compete in the final showdown, Mr. Allen evoked two of the dullest successful bands in recent memory: OneRepublic (on “Apologize”) and the Fray (whose cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless” he conceptually pilfered). “Heartless” was effective, but was merely a brief flicker of flair after several weeks of airbrushing the life out of songs by Michael Jackson, the Beatles and others.

    And yet Mr. Allen’s innocuousness proved no liability; he was never in the bottom two of the voting results, a feat matched only by Danny Gokey, the last singer eliminated before the final battle. (And as church-worship-leader contestants go, Mr. Gokey is far superior to Mr. Allen; Mr. Gokey’s bravura reading of Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel” was one of this season’s best performances.)

    This year, more than any other, there was frequent discussion of the contestants’ post-“Idol” careers, both because of a newly added fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, with significant recent music industry experience, and because, as many nonwinners have made plain, you don’t need to win to capitalize on “Idol” exposure. The show, everyone now realizes, is in no small part an engaging advertisement for what might come next.

    By that measure Mr. Allen had the obvious advantage: it is completely clear what sort of record he’ll make. His anti-style is the stuff of adult-contemporary radio and VH1 playlists: in addition to OneRepublic and the Fray, artists like Jason Mraz, Parachute, Ingrid Michaelson, Matt Nathanson, Mat Kearney, Colbie Caillat. In other words, the new soft rock, a post-Coldplay movement that eludes taste-maker taste but is embraced by broad swaths of listeners. The pairing of Mr. Allen with Keith Urban on Wednesday night didn’t make sense from a genre perspective, but their attitudes were in alignment: neither one’s singing could hurt a fly.

    Mr. Allen’s denuded R&B was a comfortable fit on this season of “Idol,” which was largely driven by black music, never mind that only two African-American contestants made it to the Top 13. One, Lil Rounds, never evolved beyond a sound-alike retro snooze; the other, Jasmine Murray, was the most contemporary finalist, though she was undone by nerves.

    The charming Anoop Desai fancied himself a new jack swing revivalist; too bad no one else did. Mr. Gokey sang muscular, inspirational, church-informed soul, something another contestant, Michael Sarver, attempted with far less success. Matt Giraud had a lovely falsetto and little sense of how to apply it. Blues-rock shaped the sound of Allison Iraheta and Alexis Grace. And Megan Joy Corkrey delivered wacky jazz riffs.

    Almost none of this season’s eccentricity, though, made its way into Tuesday’s battle. After the ho-hum Jordin Sparks-Blake Lewis pairing in Season 6, this was the most anemic final competition in the show’s history — a new viewer tuning in would have been hard pressed to guess that it was the final showdown — and also the lowest rated.

    In the first round Mr. Lambert’s “Mad World” was dutifully restrained, only a faint tracing of his impressive rendition of the song earlier in the season. Mr. Allen’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” was a slight improvement on his initial version, but still fundamentally limp, without an ounce of the original’s pathos.

    The songs in the second round were selected by the creator of “Idol,” Simon Fuller, who burdened the contestants with politics they couldn’t carry. Mr. Allen drew Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” a protest song that he sapped of its anguish. Worse, he didn’t bother with an interpretation; the original has always felt definitive but has ample room for melodic improvisation, which Mr. Allen didn’t use. Mr. Lambert tried harder with his assignment, Sam Cooke’s civil-rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come.” In his fashion he transformed it into ecstatic theater, while suffocating its existential heft.

    Finally both contestants sparred fruitlessly with “No Boundaries,” a genuinely unpleasant spatter of treacle written by Cathy Dennis, Mitch Allan and Ms. DioGuardi. A studio recording of it is Mr. Allen’s first cash-in single, already available on iTunes.

    Losing spared Mr. Lambert this particular indignity and probably did no damage to his future prospects as a recording artist. Mr. Jackson once suggested that Mr. Lambert could make a record like one by the operatic emo band My Chemical Romance, but that presumes an emotional depth that he never displayed. Performative fireworks aside, Mr. Lambert does not seem to be a deep thinker, and his best appearances this season were also his most straightforward, his exceptional voice notwithstanding. (There’s no way, and little reason, to cover up an instrument so fascinating and dexterous.)

    Instead the theatrically trained Mr. Lambert was often saddled by muddled, conflicting signifiers. His reference points came in flurries: David Bowie and Freddie Mercury and Led Zeppelin, glam and goth and Broadway. His hairstyle changed by the week. His rock moves were vivid, but rarely completely convincing, the results-night performance with Kiss a notable exception. He only truly hit his stride toward the end of the season, leaving bizarre versions of “Ring of Fire” and “Play That Funky Music” and more in his wake. Those songs got him noticed, but they were too odd to sustain him.

    That he shined on softer material — “Mad World,” “Feeling Good,” “One” — demonstrates a little-acknowledged truth about Mr. Lambert. Histrionics aside, he’s just an old-fashioned song-and-dance man, without the dancing. A lifetime in and around musical theater will do that to you. “Idol” wanted him to be something more, and he may well have wanted that for himself. So if he was hiding something, it wasn’t his sexual preference, it was his conservatism. If only he had let America see the real him.
     
  15. Hawkman

    Hawkman Supercar Gort Staff

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Okay...I did not watch this season but for one episode. Is this the Tears For Fears 'Mad World' that everyone is speaking of?
     
  16. Ted Bell

    Ted Bell Forum Dentist

    Yup. I'm sure you can find Adam's versions on youtube.
     
  17. full moon

    full moon Forum Resident

    IMO, they are all forgetable...
     
  18. zebop

    zebop Well Known Stranger


    Yeah I think he might have won, also I think it would have been a fairer fight. AI rarely pits two acts that are actually the last best two standing. Underwood/Bice, Studdard/Aiken are the only instances I can think of. Lambert/Gokey would have been a fun finale.
     
  19. btomarra

    btomarra Classic Rock Audiophile

    Location:
    Little Rock, AR
    What about the two Davids from last season?
     
  20. zebop

    zebop Well Known Stranger

    Yeah, that was a good match up too, totally forgot about them.
     
  21. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    itunes has now packaged Adam's top 12 studio versions of songs in one digital "album" for $9.99, and that album is the second most popular album on all of itunes! The only album selling better on itunes is the brand new Eminem album. That really is pretty impressive. The studio versions of Adam's songs are usually a couple of minutes longer that the truncated live idol versions, and they seem less bombastic. They really do make for quite a good "album," that is very diverse. I like his version of "One," better than the U2 original, and I really like U2!
     
  22. Stefan

    Stefan Senior Member

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    Yes I've heard most of the studio versions as I wrote earlier in the thread and they're far better. I haven't heard the studio version of One but that live version helf promise until he started screaming. Does the itunes album include his version of No Boundaries? I heard it back to back with Kris' version on radio last week. I find the instrumentation on Adam's version far more interesting but his vocal is not that remarkable, unlike the other studio tracks on which he sounds like quite good. In contrast, Kris' version had less interesting instrumentation but the overall package sounded very current, like a Daughtry song or something by the Fray, Snow Patrol, etc.
     
  23. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    No, but everything else is there, you can get it as a single for a buck. I didn't like the live version at all, but the studio version is pretty good.

    P.S. you can fit all of the studio versions and all of the live versions of all the songs on one full CD.
     
  24. Chris R

    Chris R Forum Fones Thread Starter

    Larry King Live - tonight - Seacrest w/ the Top 10, Part 2

    Just a reminder.

    Round two of Larry's "American Idol" exclusive! Now it's the top ten finalists turn to answer your questions on the competition, and the upcoming tour! All top ten "American Idol" finalists, plus Ryan Seacrest!

    You can also watch some clips from Friday's show at the Web site.

    http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/
     
  25. stevef

    stevef Senior Member

    Location:
    Irvine, CA

    After first hearing Adam Lambert many weeks back at the beginning of AI, my first thoughts were how well he would fit in with Queen...who could use a new lead singer. I missed the "Bohemian Rhapsody" audition clip, but Lambert (like Freddie Mercury) sure has an incredible range in his vocals that would make him a natural fit with the band.
    I was surprised to see Queen and Lambert performing together in the finale, but it sure reinforced my initial thoughts about Adam singing with Queen. Just incredible IMO.

    http://tv.yahoo.com/contributor/2461071/news/urn:newsml:tv.tvguide.com:20090525:1006316__ER:1

    Noting would please me more than to see Queen get back on track again... and Adam is the new exciting singer who could make it happen for them. I'm very encouraged reading Brian May's comments... and I hope this possible opportunity for Adam and Queen comes true! :agree:
     
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