Idol Thoughts

This week on American Idol it was “Inspirational Songs Week”, which turned out to be less than inspirational. My annotated Facebook ramblings:

:: I got home from Panera too late to hear Casey sing, so I don’t know how he did. I still hate Lee, though. I hate his neck-bobbing as though he’s got a hairball, I hate his voice (until Joe Cocker dies, he’s the only one who gets to sing like Joe Cocker), and I am unimpressed by his ability to sing a song whose lyrics are 60% the word “La”.

Seriously, more than half of Lee’s song consisted of “La la la la la la laaaaa”. It was really grating. The judges gushed, but I thought it was awful. But at this point, I can’t stand Lee at all and have no idea what everyone sees in him.

:: Oh, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim. He tries so hard. He’s like a basketball team of five-foot-tall guys trying to play the Lakers. Too bad the result is what you’d expect from a team of five-foot guys playing the Lakers.

Tim did some song by the Goo Goo Dolls, about whom I should really know a lot more seeing as how I’m from Buffalo. The kid has no chops at all.

:: Oh goody! It’s Aaron, who I’ve just realized is actually Ryan from “The Office” at the age of 16. I don’t care what he does with this song, because I hate this song. Not that big a fan of Aaron’s, either.

Aaron did “I Believe I Can Fly”, that ghastly R. Kelly ditty from the movie “Spacejam”. It’s a terrible, terrible song, and Aaron’s an incredibly unconvincing singer.

:: All of my doubts about Randy Jackson have just been confirmed. When did “I Believe I Can Fly” become this enormous titan of a song? It’s a crappy ballad from a forgettable 1990s movie with Michael Jordan. Come on, judges.

The judges all spoke of this song in reverent tones, referring to it as a “big song” that took a lot of guts for Aaron to sing. It’s a mawkish and stupid song from a movie barely anybody remembers anymore and was more notable for generating lots of merchandise for sale at the old Warner Bros. Stores in the malls, before they all went belly-up.

:: Started the stopwatch as soon as Siobhan started singing. 58 seconds until she screeched. I guess this is an OK performance, but the song is crap.

She didn’t screech the entire second half of her song, like she usually does, but she did some screeching. I didn’t care for the song, so I didn’t think much of Siobhan tonight. But then, as soon as she stopped singing and the criticism started — with the most pointed criticism coming from Simon — well….

:: And once again with Siobhan’s “What? Criticism? Unpossible!” facial expression. And why is she getting this long a rebuttal period? Did we stumble from Idol into a Presidential Election Debate?

Whenever she gets criticized, Siobhan’s face reflects her utter astonishment that anyone doesn’t like what she’s just done. And they gave her something like ninety seconds to ramble on and on about why she was actually 100% right to sing the song she’d chosen even though the song was crap!

It was roughly around this time that I realized that the week’s theme, “Inspirational Songs”, was leading to a lot of annoying and cloying and fakey performances, so I opined thusly:

:: OK, these “inspirational” songs are getting on my nerves. I wish one of these contestants would do Monty Python’s “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life”.

So Michael Lynch was next….

:: Michael: For the love of God, Simon’s complaining about Mike doing a song from “Spiderman”. Nobody said anything about that stupid-assed song from the Looney Tunes and Michael Jordan movie! Dumbasses. (Oh, and Mike was just OK. Didn’t light my fire, but didn’t douse the coals with a bucket of water, either.)

Apparently Mike’s song was from Spiderman. This vexed Simon, for some reason; apparently songs from superhero movies are somehow lesser songs, whereas idiotic songs from movies in which basketball players interact with cartoons are Big Powerful Songs That Idol Contestants Should Attempt At Their Own Risk. Give me a break.

:: Crystal: Finally someone picks a song that doesn’t suck! (Well, the Goo Goo Dolls song didn’t suck either, but Aaron sucks, so that’s a wash.) This is one of my favorite songs of all time.

In Crystal’s little “session with the celebrity mentor” video that precedes the performance, she indicated that she was doing “People Get Ready”. I was ready to crown her the night’s victor at that moment. “People Get Ready” is, as I noted, an all-time fave of mine. And then Crystal sang:

:: Crystal just beat the other contestants up, took their lunch money, went back in time, invested their lunch money in Microsoft in 1979, came back to the present, cashed in her stocks, and then bought a dump truck to carry away the wreckage of the other contestants’ dreams. THAT WAS THE BEST THING I’VE HEARD THIS SEASON ON IDOL.

Seriously, she was amazing. It was far and away better than any of the other performances.

To wrap up, here’s the great Rod Stewart/Jeff Beck cover of “People Get Ready”, from the mid-80s:

Next week…jeez, can I keep this up….

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