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Tag: Lee Dewyze

  • American Idol Season 12: Cutting Down To 4, Again?

    Photo is a screen shot from the American Idol YouTube page
    Photo is a screen shot from the American Idol YouTube page

    On Wednesday night, Ryno said that there would be a surprise that would shake up the show. I didn’t know what it could be, but my first thought was that it would be something to do with the save that was never used. Maybe they would get to use it one more time? Well, I was close.

    After Wednesday night’s show, I wrote that I thought Kree (Summer) would go home. But as I was discussing the show with our own George Bounacos, I forgot an important American Idol rule.

    When a contestant receives nothing but praise for most of the season and finally receives a brow beating by the judges, that contestant’s fanbase will come out in droves to save them. There’s no way Kree (Summer) was leaving on Thursday.

    Who rocked the stage?

    Stefano Langone from season 10 performed a song called Yes To Love and maybe the thing that stood out most is that all four women are much better than he is. He loses to Janelle too. At least beats Lazaro.

    Nicki tries to imagine a Stefano vs. Lazaro final.

    GIF via http://denna157.tumblr.com/
    GIF via http://denna157.tumblr.com/

    Another person who is worse than the four remaining women is Lee DeWyze, who also performed on the show. He did his best Phillip Phillips impersonation and he was only about half as good as Phillip. I’m still hoping a story comes out in the future that they miscounted and DeWyze didn’t really win. Free Crystal Bowersox!

    Who were in the bottom two?

    Ryno put the women into two groups. In one group was the top two and in another, the bottom two.

    Amber and Angie were placed in separate groups, which meant one of them was in the bottom two. Candice was placed with Amber and Kree with Angie.

    Ryno said that Candice and Amber were in the bottom two and the judges looked a bit confused with that one. Yep, the Idol rule lives on.

    Who went home?

    Ryno was about to announce who was going home, but he gave a huge tell. Instead of saying, “The person going home is,” he said, “The person who could be going home is,” which spoiled the surprise.

    Of course, he said no one was going home. Because the judges didn’t use the save, there was an extra week before the final. They will combine this week’s votes with next week’s to see who goes home. Amber fans, y’all better start voting now.

  • American Idol Season 10 – Who Makes The Final 11?

    I understand the Black Eyed Peas perform tonight. Sigh. That just means I’m going to see the Fergie-monster in my nightmares when I go to sleep. And David Cook, I mean Kris Allen, I mean Lee DeWyze is also going to perform tonight.

    Last night, I thought Miss Haley and Miss Naima performed pretty badly. I think Miss Karen could also be on the cutting block, but J. Lo loves her too much for people to see how pedestrian she’s been so far.

    I think the Idol contestants are performing a Born This Way and Born To Be Wild mash-up. All the members of Steppenwolf decided to put on t-shirts made out of meat to show their disproval.

    Ryno calls Jacob, Lauren, and Casey to the stage. It’d be hard to imagine either of the three being in any real danger. Ryno tells Jacob he’s safe and he has to pretend that he was worried. Ryno tells Lauren that she’s safe too. Ryno tells Casey he is also safe. He thought he was a goner. I think he fell for the banana in the tailpipe. Come on Casey! You know you weren’t going anywhere son!

    Ryno calls up Haley and Paul. Haley already has the boo-boo face going. She knew what was coming. She and her red lipstick are in the bottom three, while Paul is safe. [sarcasm]Yay! More drunken dancing![/sarcasm]

    That ever original artist who sounded nothing like the two previous American Idol winners before him, Lee DeWyze is singing his new song Beautiful Like You. Blake Lewis just gave Lee a thumbs down and said at least he was a creative cookie-cutter white guy.

    Ryno asks Lee to give the Idol contestants advice and Lee starts with, “I mean …” No really Lee, it’s not like we didn’t understand you and you had to reiterate considering you didn’t say anything before saying, “I mean.” Crystal Bowersox lost to this dude?

    Ryno brings Scotty, Pia, and James to the stage. If either of these are in the bottom three, we riot. Ryno tells Scotty that he’s safe. He says that Pia is also safe. He finally tells Big Game James that he’s safe too.

    That leaves us with Stefano, Naima, Thia, and Karen.

    He brings up Stefano and Naima to the stage. One is safe and one is in the bottom three. Stefano, the new Elliott Yamin is safe, and Naima is in the bottom three. He then brings up Karen and Thia. Karen is in the bottom three. Maybe the audience is finally seeing through Karen’s very so-so performances.

    The Black Eyed Peas are on stage. Fergie has a dreamboat body, but a shipwreck face. They’re performing Just Can’t Get Enough. Fergie has either had bulldog cheek implants, or she had a bad day. Fergie’s one of those girls who looks good from afar. Oh yah, the song is pretty wack. Dirty bit.

    We’re back to the bottom three. Your girl Naima is safe. So it’s down to Haley’s lipstick and Karen. Whoa, Karen is the goner! Ryno’s trying to tell Karen that the judges may bring her back. We know that’s not happening. She could sing La Bamba with the ghost of Richie Valens behind her and they’re not bringing her back. She could’ve asked a very pregnant Mariah Carey waddle out on stage and sing Hero with her and they weren’t going to save her.

    Randall says they’re not going to use the save on Karen, but it wasn’t unanimous. I think we know who tried to keep her. Here’s a hint: her name is Jennifer Lopez.

    Seacrest out!

    Photo of Fergie by Wikipedia and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

  • The American Idol Tour Is Getting Cut Short. Is This Bad News?

    In what might be further proof of the faltering of the American Idol franchise, Billboard.com reported in a brief post yesterday that the American Idol summer tour, which features Season 9’s top 10 contestants including this year’s winner Lee DeWyze and shoulda-been winner Crystal Bowersox, will be coming to an early close at the end of August. But while I certainly sympathize with the show’s performers, I have to think this is a good thing – for the performers as well as their audiences. Although by its very definition, the American Idol concert tour should feel current, it has always struck me as a weirdly anachronistic concept, an ugly ghost of the recording industry’s past haunting the summer tour schedules each year. Like the travelling road shows of the 50s and 60s (famously sent up via the “Play-Tone Galaxy of Stars” tour in Tom Hanks’ wonderful 1996 movie That Thing You Do!), it always seemed more about advancing the Idol brand then promoting any of the individual artists.

    Especially as the franchise has maneuvered away from the by-the-numbers big-vocals pop performance template it began with, gradually culminating in this last, much-unloved season’s full-on embrace of “artist” values – varied and often idiosyncratic vocal styles, varied and often idiosyncratic stage personae, singers as both songwriters and (multi-)instrumentalists – the American Idol summer tour has begun to seem out of touch with its own brand. Moreover, as the show has started to find more and more artists who’ve already had their foot in (and slammed by) the music industry’s door, there’s an even greater disparity among its finalists’ in terms of level of experience and/or naivete. Even despite the relative compatibilities of their styles (compared to previous seasons’ first and second finishers), why, but for their common appearance on a hit TV show, should someone like Crystal Bowersox ever have to share a bill with a singer like Lee DeWyze? Or vice versa? (I don’t mean that as a diss to either.) In the real world, there’s no way David Cook would ever co-headline a tour with David Archuleta. I mean, c’mon. The sheer diversity of the show’s contestants has turned what used to be a pretty straightforward pop showcase into an increasingly hodge-podgy (in terms of both stage prowess and style) travelling version of a talent show for which the winner has already been declared, thereby limiting and cheapening what each of the performers can do, reducing their act to a least-common-denominator-ready instant replay of the season’s greatest hits and misses.

    That said, a far more palatable (and possibly far more profitable) alternative to the annual Idol tour is already presenting itself. This summer, last year’s runner up Adam Lambert is currently on tour with fellow Season 8 finalist Allison Iraheta. Not only does it offer Lambert, clearly the more seasoned and exciting performer, the showcase he clearly deserves while giving Iraheta a platform (and a sympathetic audience – surely more of Iraheta’s AI constituents gravitated toward Lambert than Season 8 winner Kris Allen in the final tallies) on which to grow as both an artist and a live performer. Maybe the venues they’re playing are smaller than the Idol tours, but I imagine that after spending nearly half a year watching these singers from the comforts of their living rooms, audiences would both crave and appreciate the intimacy that smaller venues might afford. Seriously, how many people really come to see all 10 artists?

    So. Note to American Idol producers. Ditch the “Top 10” road show. Instead of one big tour, why not criss-cross the country with three or four smaller tours with two or three artists on each bill. For every Adam, an Allison; for every Kris Allen, a Danny Gokey. It will better serve the artist. It could very well better serve the brand as well. The Idol tour might only hit any given concert market once or twice in the summer. With multiple tours, they could hit the same market half a dozen times. And there really may be folks who want to see all 10 artists bad enough to buy tickets every time one of the many AI tours comes to town. Just sayin’.