American Idol - woe is me.

My wife got me hooked as well. Actually I could care less about the show, but do enjoy the cuddling on the couch.

I only watched from about the last 5-6 people to the end. From those I would have had to choose the following order.

1. Anthony
2. Carrie
3. Vonzelle
4. Bo
5. Constantine

I read somewhere that they raised the age requirement this year and that is a mistake in my book. Bo really has a very decent voice when picking the right song and has great stage presence. However his voice was not the top by far. He just performed (stage presence) so much better than his younger peers. I think they should drop the requirment back down so we don't have 29 year old people with loads of performing experience going up against 18-19 year olds who sing better, but don't know how to whip the crowd into a frenzy with certain signature moves.

Nick

With all due respect, are you deaf? Of the decent amount I heard Anthony sing, he was TERRIBLE! I was blown away each week that he stayed on the show. I'd have to say he definitely got the farthest with mediocre singing ability of anyone I've EVER seen on Idol...all 4 seasons.

Nick - a musician with brass ears?

I agree with Cosmo. In the early stages of the season after the auditions were all over, I thought Anthony was charming. But then I heard his horrible voice over and over and I just couldn't believe he could make the top 4.

My list is nearly identical to e's list.

1. Vonzel
2. Constantine
3. Bo
4. Nadia
5. Carrie

Especially after I heard Vonzel sing in the finale. She just had a much better voice than Carrie or Bo.

But I like Constantine much better than Bo. I just don't like the "Skynyrd" image Bo has. Constantine is artsy and handsome, even if he might seem a little conceited with the eye contact thing. But really, that's what killed him. The guys though he was more handsome than Bo, too, so there's no way they could vote for him because that would make them seem gay.

I'm looking forward to Constantine's next album (I'll skip the first).

Perhaps we both just look for different things in a voice. I prefer this little thing I like to call being in tune while singing. I also prefer the voice not sound strained or weak.

Anthony has a great range, excellent tuning, and could keep pumping as much power and air into his voice as he wanted without any sign of strain. The same could not be said for the others.

What Anthony suffered from was terrible song selection and you watched him get yelled at week after week about it. His best song was the Celine Dion cover, the worst was that Backstreet Boys "incomplete" song where something about his "in" sounded very nasal.

Bo has great tuning and stage presence. However it is clear he did not have quite the range of the others. He got much further as a result of good song selection. (which is trait you learn to cover vocal limitations)

Vonzelle is an absolutely beautiful woman. She has some decent vocal chops as well could continue to grow into a better vocalist. However when she really tried range, she would get quite thin and screechy in her voice. She also needed about half of each decent song to get her pitch in place. She smartened up on the song selection bit after seeing how others were doing and started and stuck with mostly midtempo songs with a bit of range, (what Bo did through the entire competition)

Carrie really did improve the last couple weeks of the competition. However I really don't consider her voice any better than Vonzelle's. She choose better songs but really isn't a better vocalist than most. Her voice always started weak and had pitch problems, just like Vonzelle. In every instance where she sang the same song as anyone else in the competition, she was beat by them every time. She was beat by Anthony with "If You Don't Know Me By Now" and by Bo when singing the same song in the finals. If there were a way to judge beauty objectively, I would say that she isn't even as beautiful as Vonzelle, but by American standards, she was probably prettier. Randy has to keep the comments short but "pitchy" translates to out of tune or bad notes, multiples of them, and "on the edge" translates into "You are hitting the note, but your voice is weak and strained." Both Carrie and Vonzelle earned those comments repeatedly.

Constantine was heavy on charisma but little else. I was seriously surprised that he did as well as he did with the Queen song. I mean you just don't touch Freddy Mercury. That's a rule, even if it isn't written down. His rendition sounded very strained and weak at times which again, just shows why you don't go touch songs by certain vocalists.

Nick

1. nadia
2. bo
3. carrie



i love nadia. i would date her in a second

Wow, I totally lost any respect I had for you.

Plus, I disagree about Anthony being in tune.

He was a crappy lounge act.

Anthony had no style, no soul and a undistinctive voice that was not in tune.

My picks:

1. Bo
2. Nadia
3. Antwan
4. Carrie
5. Vonzell

If that Mario kid would have stayed in he would've won it hands down.

Well I guess you won't be inviting me over for BBQ now.


That is fine. Everyone has their own judgement criteria. I have always been profoundly sensitive to tuning though. What plenty of other people can tolerate has me wincing.


I didn't make him the greatest thing since sliced bread. I simply declared him better than the others. Out of all the Idol performers from all three seasons, only Kelly Clarkson has shown any sort of staying power. It's sort of like claiming that most actors on Star Trek series are great actors. Most of them almost seem to get picked because they scream "B" status. I suspect the same is true of Idol.


You are right that he had no style. Obviously most style in pop music is manufactured so I don't consider that a fatal flaw. I didn't consider any of the performers to have "soul" beyond pretending to growl a few notes. As for the undistrinctive voice, again, you assign a trait as if the others have that which he does not. Is Vonzelle's voice distinctive? If it were among ten other R&B singers could you pick it out? The only person that might come close to being able to be picked out as distinctive was Bo, but even then that was simply because he was a "rocker" among all the other pop and R&B singers. If you put him in a room with ten other guys singing southern rock, I doubt you could pick him out from the crowd.

So, certainly Anthony has failings, but the reality is that they are no worse than the others in those areas. I mean Carrie is the "American Idol" and she couldn't even do Independence Day as well as Martina McBridge and that was supposed to be her strongest song.

Nick

The pop voice is a hard thing to pin down. While you cannot doubt that it is built out of limitations in the average instrument, each individuals limitations and character are so different that the repetoire of possible voices is gigantic. Authenticity seems to be the real problem.

I can fake a lot of pop, with just a little commitment and some over the top impersonation, I must confess to pulling off some pretty convincing ACDC, Elvis, Everly Bros, Dire Straights, George Michael, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen (those last two are so easy) and I can even do the do the odd Sheryl Crow, or David Bowie ditty (harder) They are all caricatures, of course, but they don't sound awful (except, probably to musicians!) Kareoke voice, strictly.

I know I could make an Idol appearance on a good day and get a polite "no" as opposed to getting laughed right off the stage, but it's because I know I sound totally fake to anyone with good ears, and most without. Passable, when hamming it up, but fake.

Most of the idol contestants sound fake to me. They either don't have a voice yet, or don't have particularly proficient vocals. They're just really good Kareoke nuts, most of them.

Konstantine was possibly the worst of the bunch.

Maybe this is all preamble to my take on the modern habit of poo-pooing mainstream stars. Even though it's fashionable to pretend pop stars are simply the products of marketting, contests like American idol illuminate just how much talent is actually out in the mainstream, and how much we take it for granted. If mainstream artists really had no talent, they would look and sound exactly like American Idol finalists.

Good point, however there are many who really don't have talent. Thank goodness for studio magic.

But the ones that do have talent tend to stay with us for quite some time, and if not the artists themselves then their music survives. One prime example of genuine talent in the pop music pantheon is U2.


When I said style I meant vocal style. Fashion style is a whole beast unto its own.

I just found Anthony to be a bore, off key, and grating on my nerves. Hey if you liked him, more power to you. I thought his only fans were grandmothers and 13 yr old girls.

Nadia was indeed pure hotness. But her virginal church girl image kind of ruined her physical beauty for me in the end. Same with Anwar.

I agree. I'd have to say that of the top 10, Anthony was the most out of tune.

And Vonzell was great in the high range. She was weak in the lows.

Are you sure you were watching the same show, Nick?

Well, I agree with Simon: that guy who did the on location emceeing during the finale is good. He'll definitely have a future in TV. Latoya London should stick to singing.

But Ruben is dead. Fantasia is dead (despite "Summertime" giving me chills). A few old ladies might still buy a few Clay Aitken records, though. Clay's probably sold the second highest number of records among all of the Idol finalists.

I was talking about vocal as well. I really didn't see anything distinctive about any of these singers.

Nick

I didn't see her.


I noted that I caught probably the last five shows or so. Whatever show had him singing the Celine song was the first show I saw. I couldn't even compare him to the top ten because I only saw the last five or six.


I agree with you except I do believe Kelly Clarkson has sold more records. I believe she has had quite a decent number of tunes chart here in the U.S. She has done well as a sort of Avril-lite.

As I noted earlier, all the Idol talent strikes me as "B" quality. The closest comparison for me is Star Trek actors. They seem to have never done anything but "B" work before or after their respective Star Trek roles.

Nick

I think Kelly has been the best Idol so far. I remember back in the 1st season thinking she'd go all the way. She has such an amazing voice, and she doesn't seem to have to work hard at all to be simply awesome.

It's funny you mention that. I'm listening right now to some Dream Theater, which is very Queen-like in that the singer (James LaBrie) can hit notes that I didn't think men could do. I guess the bottom line is that the really exceptional folks find a job before needing to contest at American Idol. Of course, the trouble is that all I hear on the radio these days is screechy crap. It's like a glimpse of the 50's-era male-falsetto, but without the quintet accompaniment.

Have you, by any chance, heard of Sigur Rós, and in particular, of Jónsi, the singer? Now that is a guy that can hit notes that other men just can't.

Check them out here, if you wish.

constantine was doing well and i wanted him to win (i'm a guy, not in the us and can't vote, and i don't have many guy friends, and i'm not afraid of being called gay -- because, um, i'm not..)

it was all over red rover though when he tried Nickelback's How You Remind Me and just crashed and burned

he's not really a rocker, he's more an artsy, intelligent performer... i hope he finds a better platform now that american idol has shed a lot of light on his talent...

i hope he doesn't go back to 'rocking out' ... although i do wonder how his (ex?) bandmates are feeling... \

I don't see it, I thought charisma was Constantine's biggest deficit. Every movement looked forced, and it didn't suggest an artsy intelligent performer but rather a complete and total narcissist.

Actually, I listen to them a bit in the 2001 time-frame. But to what I remember, the high notes were falsettos, and not clean notes. Maybe it's different now.

gawd i used to sing soprano in my high school choir until i was almost 15+ ... after that i got too homophobic and self-conscious and quit the choir...

jeez... it was an all-boys school as well

</confession>, carry on...

If Nadia was the tall black woman with big hair . . . she was hands down the most talented in terms of creativity and unique charisma . . . . which is exactly why she couldn't win American Idol

AIdol is all about the median: the two in the finalist catagories were the two most solidly mediocre of the lot . . . Nadia was too freaky for middle America . . . she was too close to an edge of weirdness, too unique . . . that's why even that fat-slob who was embarassingly terrible was voted off after she was . . . . that's 'Pop' and mainstream taste: semi-talented mediocrity makes the platinum albums

Methinks you doth protest too much. \

Their second album is pure genius. The videos are as surreal and haunting as the music.

More 18-25yo vote for trendy music singers then vote in elections.

Remember, most people who vote on Idol vote multiple times. There are also block voting pools where groups of people pool their resources to vote hundreds of times. It's only limited by what they can afford in terms of time and money for sms and call-in vote charges.

Somehow, I don't think this can be compared to voting for political candidates.

If you guys can admit that u watch Idol, then so can I.

I been a musican for 45 years, and I think I have some sort of "ear" for budding muscians or singers. I started watching in year 1 'cause I heard a raw natural voice going by the name of Kelly Clarkson. It took me about 10 seconds to hear the talent.

Since then, only two others have had the "voice". Carrie this year has a goodly dollop of it, if she stays within the song styles that she understands. She needs training and experience, but she may do the same in the cross pop/country genre that Kelly has done in the pop/rock genre. Carrie may not become a Shania Twain, but she should do OK and make tons of bucks for Clive and Simon.

Vonzell was good but has limited vocal range/ability. However, I would date her even if she never sang a note. Sizzle Sizzle

The guys this year were a dime-a-dozen Holiday Inn lounge singers. (Meaning no direspect to HI) The only exception to this was Bo's acapella thing. That was good.

The only other voice was a tall, black, totally beatiful woman that dumped the show early this year. Apparently due to family obligations...... I'm sorry I cannot remember her name. I haven't heard a vocal quality like since Dusty Springfield or Eartha Kitt. (am I dating myself?)

Paz

That accapella thing was a lame stunt . . . everyone is gaga about it, and yet it had the simple problem of not sounding good!!
Despite the fact that it was wearng billboards saying -"look at how DARING and courageous this is that I'm doing here!!!" it still sounded weak to me.

I kinda think that is important when you're trying to impress people in a mainstream sort-of way . . . no?!?!