I admit that I will follow the results of American Idol in passing, mostly thanks to my mom who really likes the show. I’m always amused when people get up in arms about how people who were deserving got kicked off the show because they were outvoted, like has happened with Michael Johns last week. I think this highlights AI’s biggest weakness as a vehicle of finding new talent. At the end of the day, the show can dissolve into little more than a personality contest with people voting for a particular singer even if they don’t deserve it because they like them, or they hate that the judges are mean to them, etc. Remember that little girl Jasmine Trias that was on a few years back? Simon was especially mean to her because she was not a great singer, but the voters banded together (especially in Hawaii, where she was from) and kept her on the show until damn near the bitter end. Who knows if they finally just rigged the voting to get her off because it would have been a travesty to have her win? Cowell was only doing his job. Music industry people aren’t paid to be nice to mediocre talent. They’re paid to find someone who will make huge loads of money by selling a large number of albums. This is the way of things.
The fact remains that the fact that who moves on is based on the voters has really highlighted the mixed success of the show. Kelly Clarkson is the only winner to really “make it” after her time on the show. Could anyone have imagined she would turn into a worldwide pop superstar? Maybe only she did, but it happened. The other success stories from Idol have all come from people like Chris Daughtry who were voted off the show by fickle fans only to have been memorable enough to launch their own careers.
At the end of the day, people who get so involved with the singers on this show need to sit back and remember the reality of what this show is. It can be a launch pad to a career if a singer plays it right. Beyond that, though, it’s a popularity contest; a spectacle left up to the will of voters who seem to love generic blonde country wannabes and those who they feel the judges have come down way too hard on. Nothing more and nothing less.
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