JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum American Idol 2009

I was at least entertained by Tatiana. I could easily work with her. Who wants to work with a timid wallflower? She's outrageous and melodramatic and there's all sorts of possibilities there. Her problem wasn't all that (that's ratings gold) it was that she didn't sing the song well all the way through, and even though she had the most power in her voice, she blew the lead up parts and so her very slim chance disappeared. She had to be perfect to move forward.

Their choices were annoyingly predictable. Jasmine was one of the very worst singers of the final 36. Even though she had a decent performance (in relative terms) last night, she never should have still been there to sing again. She'll likely tank quickly and be gone after a couple of the anonymous types they put through disappear. She looks a lot like a famous actress (can't think of her name but she was in those cheerleader movies Bring It On I think) so that will carry her a while.

I still think this is by far the most boring top 13 ever. Though I liked Anoop early on, he was terrible his first performance and only slightly better last night. But everyone knew he was moving forward. It was all so lame. I think they had decided on 3 they were going to move forward and they left 1 open for the show. But they didn't pick the best male or female vocalist of the night so it was stupid.

Megan and Jasmine both can't sing. Anoop is average. Matt is inconsistent but at least has some potential. I'd much rather work with Tatiana than any of those 4. And they didn't put Norman through because he had the balls to expose the show for what it is.. a bunch of ridiculous melodramatic hype with boring judges that are phoning it in at best and a major fix in on who made the top 13 and where further efforts will be made via performance order, song styles and carefully planned out feedback on performances by the judges to nudge the results in the direction they want. And that assumes that there's not systematic persuasion in what phones register votes etc.. during the voting process. You heard one of the contestants acknowledge that they couldn't register a vote for themselves. It would be SOOOOO easy for them to selectively affect which lines had the most bandwidth.

That said, it's still good for the young singers that make it. Even the most abused bad contestant gets in front of more people than they ever will again in their lives. Commercial music is solely about exploiting the "product" and all these singers want commercial success. Anyone else who wants commercial success is being disingenous to say that it's not a great shortcut. And any decent singer on the planet would want to take advantage of the chance to be on the show if their goals are to get out in front of the masses. So even when it's all bad, it's still all good. It's a nice break for me from listening to JPF music which is always far superior to anything on these TV shows.

By the way, JPF member Kristin McNamara was ripped off. She was the strongest female vocalist that night by far and they just decided they didn't want someone who failed on Nashville Star to be in their Top 13.

Brian