Yeah, that must have been Orianthi. I’m not going to be making any effort to get any of her music.
Cookie was a little underwhelming, too. Nothing wrong with him and his band, just nothing interesting going on.
I watched Michael Jackson’s This Is It a few weeks ago and saw Orianthi for the first time there. She was going to be one of the guitarists for MJ’s big concerts in London. She was pretty impressive in the movie. I’m not an expert on metal guitar, but she seemed like she had that genre of lead-playing down pretty well in the movie. I wasn’t very impressed with her on AI. She didn’t handle playing lead and singing very well, and I didn’t like the song much.
I agree the David Cook brought nothing interesting to Jumping Jack Flash, and he really needs a new guitar player. Does Cook have a complicated comb-over going on up top?
Cook’s guitarist was okay. Not fantastic, but good enough for the level the band is playing at.
David Cook’s biggest problem is that he has too much tendency to go for the ‘rawk’ - bombastic, shouting, big notes, high drama. He has very little subtlety or complexity in what he’s doing. It’s all basic power chords, straight beats, and cliche song structures (start soft, hit a big crescendo, blast out a verse at full volume, then drop back for the soft, sensitive ending). He’s capable of singing a lot of nuance - he did just fine with all kinds of genres when he was on AI - but his own material lacks the qualities that made him sound so great when interpreting songs written by others. On ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, he just went for the rawk, and lost the special qualities of the song.
I still think he’s a promising artist, but he’s got some growing to do.
As for Orianthi, I thought her song sucked, her singing was only average, and her guitar playing was technically okay but totally unimaginative. Slash she’s not. A great lead player doesn’t just shred - a great lead player writes hooks that emphasis the best qualities of the song (see: Slash. Don’t see: Yngvie Malmsteen). Finger-tapping arpeggios looks cool on TV, but there was nothing about it that fit in with the song.
Maybe her other material is better, and she was just going for something showy on the show. I’ll reserve judgment until I hear her other stuff, but what she did on the show I did not like one bit.
Totally disagree. She should have ended with the scream, and not done the sensitive finish. There are two ways to sing that song - one is in a gothic, menacing, depressing way, like Mick Jagger did. The other way is to start off sounding quiet and sensible, and then slowly exposing the rage and frustration inherent in the lyrics. Siobhan went for the latter option, and it worked well. But having built to a complete banshee wail of insanity and frustration, she should have just cut the scream off and turned away from the camera. It would have been awesome. But other than that quibble, I think she interpreted the song great.
I never got a bitchy vibe from Lacey at all. My only complaint with her was that her voice was too weak and her interpretive skills were too weak. There was someone like her last year (tiny elfen girl - can’t remember her name. Went out on Dolly Parton night with “Jolene”) who had about twice as much vocal ability, and still didn’t last much longer than Lacey did.
I went and listened to a couple of Lilly Scott’s performances on Youtube, without watching her perform. She was amazing. Her elimination before the top 12 has to go down as one of the worst eliminations in AI history. However, she’s been bagging on the show and the audience ever since, which makes me dislike her as a person a bit. Still, she would have been more entertaining to watch than anyone but the top two or three performers that are left.
Sam Stone - I respect your opinion, but here’s a link to a David Cook performance where he’s not all going for the ‘rawk’. wonder what you think
Poor song choice by (or assigned to) David Cook. It’s a shouty song that works for Jagger because his voice is so prickly. From Cook, it just sounded kind of flat.
Orianthe played it safe by playing her one hit that’s been around for however long, rather than using the huge opportunity to debut something new. She looked at her hands a lot while riffing.
I wouldn’t have sent Lacey home last night, but I inevitably would have at some point over the next few weeks, so I can’t get upset.
Ke$ha was kind of shouty, too, and the TVS just seemed like such a Gaga ripoff.
As opposed to all other times? 
Sam - I also enjoy your comments and respect your opinions. My beef with Cook’s guitar player was not his technical ability, but what he chose to play. No feel, no melody. It reminded me of what I think was an old Harry Chapin line, in a song about an old bluesman and a young wannabe “That ain’t no typewriter, boy!” I am hoping that the guy has a lot more going on than what we saw last night, because I think he’s the guitarist for the new album, which I am really looking forward to.
re David Cook’s lead guitarist (Neal Tiemann) - here are two videos that show his range
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD05Z8VwOoo (watch him bowing the guitar during ‘Permanent’)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny1pGxhG0Ag
That song is actually a perfect example of what I’m talking about. The structure of that song is straight out of “Rock Power Ballads 101”. Start slow, sing soft and quiet with maybe a lone guitar or piano. Sing a soft, sensitive verse - then the stage lights hit, the drummer and distorted guitars come in, and you start blasting out the power verses. Then it all fades away, and you stand there and sings the last verse like the first, and… fade to black. There are a million songs exactly like that one. A professional song writer could knock one of those out before noon on a Monday morning for the new Coke commercial, and forget about it by supper time. When I was watching that, I knew exactly what was coming at every step of the way. The little a capella bit he did was a slight change, but not much more than that.
I’m not criticizing the lyrics (I didn’t listen to them). I’m not criticizing Cook’s singing ability, or his stage presence, or any of that stuff. I’m taking about songwriting. Great songs are unique in ways that may not be obvious - they play strange chords that leave tension that gets resolved later, they go off on tangents during the bridge that still fit with the song but make it unique. Maybe they have a unique riff that underlays the song and gives it structure (i.e. “Werewolves of London”). They do something that makes them individual pieces of art, and which makes them memorable.
I haven’t heard anything like that from David Cook - yet. I have hope that he’ll manage it, because I think he’s talented and has the right attitude. Maybe his next record will break through. But so far, it’s all been straight-forward, simplistic arena rock and power ballads, and those are a dime a dozen.
Maybe a better way to say it would be to contrast with a couple of similar songs that have the qualities I’m talking about.
Here’s Hate it Here by Wilco. It’s got a roughly similar structure - it’s a ballad with sections that go loud and distorted, and which ends on a softer note. But notice the chorus with it’s big walking chord progression up and down - it’s unique and unexpected. The drum breaks are different. The guitar solos are tasteful and fill the song perfectly (Nels Cline - great guitarist). The whole song has a kind of call-and-response from the beginning verse to the end. And the verses have a groove to them that really makes them flow. You may not like the song, but it’s songwriting on a whole different level than what Cook has showed so far.
Here’s another song that fits in the ‘Power Ballad’ model: The Black Keys - Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be. It’s a simple song structure, but they’re doing some very creative things that make it memorable. For example, you can hear the guitar doubling the vocals on the verses, sometimes playing harmony and sometimes following the vocal, so it always sounds different. There are organ chords which add tension to the music. There’s a theremin playing very quietly in the opening verses which gives it an ethereal quality - something you wouldn’t expect in a blues-rock song.
The song is actually very simple - the verses are all built around the same musical phrase, repeated over and over, giving the song a hook and a structure that all the other stuff hangs off of. It’s also what makes it stick in your head.
To me, this kind of creativity and uniqueness is what makes music memorable and enjoyable. And it’s exactly what’s missing from almost every post-AI album put out by the winners, because 19 entertainment saddles them with a group of hack songwriters like Kara DiGuardia and covers up the lack of interesting expression in the songwriting by over-producing the albums and turning them into unmemorable sonic pablum. That’s also why the few good albums that have come out of the AI winners often come somewhere down the road after the artists manage to break away from the cloying grip of the American Idol machine.
So it may not be Cook’s fault - he was probably quite constrained on that first album. We’ll have to see what he does on the next one.
Sam Stone - thanks for the thoughtful and interesting post.
I’m hopeful for what Cook comes up with on his second album because I do believe he is very talented.
This brings up a good point - it’s hard to really make great music when you’re an individual singer/guitarist saddled with studio hacks who are just collecting a paycheck and going home. A great band can make all the difference, because each person brings something unique to the song. When Nels Cline joined Wilco, it added a whole new dimension to their music.
So if Cook has finally found a band with some talented people who can really play and improvise and who have a vested interest in making each song the best it can be , he’s got a much better chance of putting out a good album.
To see how bad 19 entertainment really is at making music, listen to the original live version of Heartless Kris Allen did on the show, which was great, and then listen to what they did to it when they recorded the studio version: Heartless - sucky studio version. They completely destroyed everything that was unique and interesting about Allen’s own version and turned it into over-produced crap.
Taylor Hicks is, to me, the biggest victim of the shit producers at 19. I was a huge fan of his, and picked up his album “Under the Radar” that was released before he was on AI. He wrote, performed and produced much of the music, and it was fantastic - you could hear hints of Van Morrison, Delbert McClinton and some good gospel/soul.
Too bad 19 sucked all of the life out of him, because he does not at all deserve his “Worst Winner Evar!” title. IMO, he is the most talented of them all.
God, THIS.
Apparently next week’s theme is “teen idols,” so expect an especially crappy night of Britney and Jonas Brothers. Even if they dig deep in the catalog, it only upgrades us to Shaun Cassidy.
Hell, Sinatra could be considered a teen idol, for a significantly grown-up portion of teens.
I wonder who will do “I Think I Love You”? And what the FUCK is Crystal gonna do?
Wow - they really de-nutted that. Took the funk right out of it (Jim says, “People are scared of funk.”)
That’s a huge improvement, IMHO, compared to previous years.
One of the biggest problems with the show in past seasons was making the singers spend week after week trying to make the Bee Gees, Barry Manilow, Tony Bennett, and a host of other artists who last hit the charts in 1980, fresh. This is 2010 - Do they really need a disco week or an Andrew Lloyd Weber week. Really?
Maybe somebody finally noticed that there aren’t a lot of disco re-makes in the Top 40 these days.
I guess it depends on if “teen idol” means “teenaged idol” or “idol to teens.” I assumed it meant the former but if it’s the latter, you can do Elvis or Sinatra or early Beatles.
Tim Urban should find next week very easy.
See? See how crappy these contestants are? We’re all talking about Cook! ahahaha:D
If they’re defining ‘Teen Idol’ as anyone under, say 18 years of age who had hit songs, then there’s plenty to choose from. If they go by the traditional definition of a teen idol as someone who had fanatical young teen and tween fans, then the roster gets even bigger. Hell, even the early Beatles were teen idols.
But I’m guessing they’re talking about people like:
Donny Osmond
David Cassidy
Shaun Cassidy
The Bay City Rollers
Leif Garrett
Andy Gibb
The Jonas Brothers
Hanson
Tiffany
Debbie Gibson
Rick Astley (of ‘rick-roll’ fame)
N’Sync
Backstreet Boys
Taylor Swift
Ricky Nelson
Avril Lavigne
LeeAnn Rimes
Tanya Tucker
Britney Spears
Miley Cyrus
Justin Timberlake
If we’re lucky, they’ll also include people like Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, just for Casey.
There’s a lot of dreck spewed out by that crowd, but there are enough good songs in there to make good show if the producers have the sense to include them and the performers have the sense to pick them. Hanson actually makes pretty good music these days. Justin Timberlake has done good stuff (And I’d give a hundred bucks to see someone do "Dick in a Box’). Ricky Nelson had some good songs. Even Avril Lavigne has done a couple of things that didn’t suck.
But given the way this season’s going, we’ll probably be treated to renditions of “Puppy Love”, “Oops I did it Again”, and other such sterling examples of fine music.
This is a prime opportunity to do the first nationally-televised Rick-Roll. They should totally do it. Have a surprise announcement that some huge artist like Lada Gaga is about to perform for the show, then have a contestant come out and sing “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Because if you don’t have good music, go for the comedy.