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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: American Idol

  • Sing Off with Glee

    NBC wanted a singing reality show too so the network dusted off Nick Lachey and decided to reinvent doo-wop and scatting by creating an a capella competition.   This pale imitation of American Idol has a couple of good things going for it and some things positively cringe-worthy.  You’re excused if you missed the flurry of three shows in 3 nights from the same network that brings you prime-time Jay Leno five nights a week.  That’s actually one of the good things.  Someone give me a backbeat and let’s talk about Sing-Off.

    Great Stuff About Sing-Out

    1.  No reality show back stories.     You sing, you mug a little for the camera, you get some judging criticism and you’re off the stage.

    2.  The lightning fast eliminations.   The show started with 8 groups and began cutting mid-show immediately.  That’s a fun concept. I love watching judges cut acts in mid-show.

    3.  Sing-Off is getting tons of song clearances with the winners promises a Sony/Epic contract.  Mind you, no one said anything about promoting that record, but you get a studio, and probably a producer too.

    4.   A couple of the performances have been fun to watch.  A capella isn’t for everyone.  I don’t know if it’s for me, but that’s where the show’s lightning pace helps.

    5.  Watching Shawn Stockman from Boyz II Men in the Simon Cowell role is a treat.  Think some amateur a capella singer is going to argue with Stockman?  And on last night’s show he rocked a bow tie and argyle sweater that still made him look like the coolest guy in the house.

    Not So Great Stuff About Sing-Off

    1.   Ben Folds is my man.  I love Ben Folds.  I have everything — the rarities, the imports, the whole catalog.  He has 100% musical credibility in my eyes. C’mon, he covered Snoop as a tender ballad!  Unfortunately, he’s Randy Jackson on Sing-Off.  I don’t know whether that makes me like Folds less or Jackson more. It’s just weird.

    2.   There are times that the show is trapped in a Glee casting session.  Watching the SoCals do Journey last night was actually pretty darn good until they went straight into Don’t Stop Believin’.    Between the Glee kids, the final episode of The Sopranos and now this, I don’t want to hear this song for another five years.  Amazingly well-crafted song.  Really good album.  Stop playing the song, and Lord, please stop covering the 30 year old track.

    3. The Beelzebubs are a hoot to watch.   They did campy stuff in the Straight No Chaser vein until last night when they did a Who medley (catch it below) that has 3 songs I would pay to download.

    Things I Hate About Sing-Off

    1.  Nicole Sherzinger, the Paula judge, makes Paula Abdul sound like a Rhodes Scholar lecturing on music theory.    Like Paula, Nicole can sing, had a string of hits off an album (although Abdul had bigger hits over a longer period of time), but this is one boring judge.  By the time she offered her opinion a third time, we were yelling at her through the television to shut up.  Alas, she did not.  Money Mike promised us Pussycat Dolls were no more, but I forgot to check if Nicole would continue talking.  Perhaps that’s a New Year’s resolution.

    2.  No one expects Nick Lachey to be Seacrest or Dick Clark.    Maybe next time we roll out Wayne Brady or someone who actually, you know, doesn’t sound like a young John Tesh.

    Bonus Thing I Loved:   Simon and Randy (I mean, Shawn Stockman and Ben Folds) arguing over a cover of Man in the Mirror.  Stockman ripped into the group, told them they were technically sound and missed the emotion of the song, which he happily sang to them.  Folds defended them, told them not to be afraid of the original, and Stockman leaped over the table and beat Folds with a chair calling him a “sissy cracker who makes fun of black people in songs”.    Actually, I made that last up.   What Stockman did was interrupt Folds and chastise the kids again.  He made his point by Slapping. The. Desk. With. Each. Word.    Got it?  Good.   Although I have a Franklin down on Stockman if he and Folds decide to throw hands in the finale.

    The finals are Sunday on NBC.  I do love that lightning fast get-em-outta-here aspect.   Meanwhile, enjoy The Who as sung by a bunch of a capella geeks.  I’m guessing Pete is smiling because it’s pretty darn good.

  • Just My Thoughts On Adam Lambert

    These are just my thoughts ladies and gentlemen, just my thoughts.

    I think that Adam Lambert is insufferable.
    Adam Lambert is what I call forced flamboyance. From the over the top album cover to his awful display of trying way too hard to shock people at the American Music Awards so that he’d be in the news the next day, none of what he’s doing seems natural. Some of your greatest performers in music are themselves, just turned up a couple of notches. When it comes to flamboyance, Cyndi Lauper seemed to have it right. It seemed like her energy and creativity was simply her, but just dialed up to a 10. I don’t feel the same way about Lambert. It all just feels so fake.

    For Your Entertainment
    For Your Entertainment
    I really enjoyed him on American Idol (and if you want proof, just read my Vital Idol blogs from last season) and was looking forward to buying his album. I heard he was really pushing the envelope and the gimmick early on in the production of his album, but I was still willing to give it a shot. Even if he didn’t do Mad World and Tracks Of My Tears type of songs, he was still interesting enough that I wanted to hear where he was going.

    And then I saw his American Music Awards performance (I had to find the edited portion online). His over the top performance told me that he didn’t trust his record to stand on its own merits. And I absolutely hated his comments after he was asked his thoughts on whether or not he thought ABC would censor the West Coast version of his performance.

    This is what he told Rolling Stone before knowing whether or not his performance would get edited on the West Coast feed of the American Music Awards:

    “It’s a shame because I think that there’s a double standard going on in the entertainment community right now.

    Female performers have been doing this for years . . . pushing the envelope about sexuality . . . and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out.

    We’re in 2009 . . . it’s time to take risks, be a little more brave, time to open people’s eyes and if it offends them, then maybe I’m not for them. My goal was not to piss people off, it was to promote freedom of expression and artistic freedom.”

    “In a roundabout way it’s a form of discrimination because it is a double standard. They didn’t censor BRITNEY [SPEARS] and MADONNA macking onstage did they? But yet two men kissing they’ll censor.”

    Discrimination? Ha!

    Well, they didn’t censor the kiss but ABC sure did censor the facial pelvic thrust. I understand the guy is young and he has to fight the stereotype that he’s simply a byproduct of a television show, but to already have a built in excuse for getting censored shows me that whatever he did was completely planned, not a spur of the moment like he said it was, and just irresponsible. If you really are a rebel, don’t throw anyone else under the bus with you.

    Oh, and Adam, lest you forget that what Madonna and Britney Spears did was on MTV which isn’t broadcast television.

    But here’s the bigger thing for me. The dude had probably 60-100 million pairs of eye balls on him at one time or another during Idol. There was no need to turn some of those folks off on a low rated music awards show performance. It was quite silly actually and bad marketing. How about you sell some records first before resorting to those kinds of tactics?

    Folks like me who were going to buy Lambert’s For Your Entertainment because of his body of “work” on Idol decided to skip out when we saw the shock value marketing ploy. The idea is to create a fanbase, not to turn off potential fans. It’s just not good business sense.

    He’s talented enough to come back from this, but whatever he did didn’t work. It looks like he’s getting trounced this week by Susan Boyle who is also a byproduct of a television show. And she didn’t have to pelvic thrust anyone in the face (thankfully) to do it.

  • First Listen: Carrie Underwood’s Cowboy Casanova

    This one came in a bit under the radar, but American Idol’s most successful act, (yes, in my opinion, bigger than Kelly Clarkson) Carrie Underwood has a new single to lead off her newest album Play On. The album doesn’t come out until November, but you can take a listen to the single from her YouTube page.

    Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.