Mark this on your calendar as a red-letter day: Lib and Dio are in complete agreement about a matter involving God type stuff. 
DialIdol’s been nearly useless this season.
Only last week did their estimated lowest three match the actual lowest three. Every other week they’ve been wildly off. They have a solid #1 this week, and everyone else is estimated as being anywhere from 2 to 6. Real helpful there, guys.
[hijack]Why,oh why has Imagine become John Lennon’s signature song? It’s a terrible song. Even Run for Your Life, which might’ve been his worst song, is marginally redeemed by a catchy tune. Revolution, Working Class Hero, *Whatever Gets You Through The Night * (my idea of an inspirational song) if you must have social content, Julia for a beautiful melody, In My Life for a perfect song – but Imagine?
Everyone always mentions the “no religion” line. I can get past the “no possessions” one. I loved you John, but no, I could not imagine you without possessions any more than I could ever imagine all the shiny, happy people sharing all the world.
Have I mentioned that I hate this song. 
[/hijack]
I don’t think it’s appealing or a sign of “range” to have every song you sing sound the same. And every song she has sung, regardless of what genre it was written in, she has sung as if it were the same genre. I’d be perfectly content to never ever ever hear her sing again… I’ve already heard what she has to offer and in her case it’s one of those “seen one, seen 'em all” kinds of things. (Mind you, I’ll still watch her in the show, just because it’s a competition and I always listen to…well, at least to half of each contestant’s song so that I can compare them to each other. I’m just saying that her singing has zero appeal to me and I wouldn’t miss it for a nanosecond if it were to go away.)
Did Ella Fitzgerald suck because she made all her songs sound like jazz? How many genres did Ray Charles span? Or Loretta Lynn?
I think your standards of versatility are odd and don’t really make much sense.
Two things:
-
They are singers who sing in a distinct style, to market to a specific audience, and are different from singers who are in a competition which attempts to cover many genres. I feel that she doesn’t participate in the spirit of the competition.
-
Even within one genre, you can have variety. With the exception of country week, all of Melinda’s songs have sounded exactly the same to me. If someone told me she sang the same song every week I’d have very little evidence mentally to refute it.
I think Melinda does well in jazz, blues, and R&B genres. Actually, the biggest problem I have with the show is that they make them change it up each week. No current non-AI music stars bounce all over the map with their music. They find what fits and they go with it. It’s not natural to expect someone to excel in genres they’re not cut out for. It bothers me that they told Lightbulb Head that he should stay with C&W music when they won’t let him.
Melinda’s best song was early in the competition. Her version of *My Funny Valentine * was great.
I honestly don’t even know what that means. Take an opera singer and give her a pop song and her voice still has the same timbre, but the genre is different. She isn’t singing the pop song as if it were opera; she just has an operatic voice. I mean, what you’re saying about Melinda applies to every artist. Karen Carpenter sounds like Karen Carpenter no matter what she’s singing. Consider what Lissener and Kalhoun are saying: most artists fit a particular genre more than another mostly because of how they’ve been trained and what they’ve been exposed to. But that’s just a matter of comfort, not range. Loretta Lynn could sing jazz if she wanted to, but she’d still sound like Loretta Lynn. And speaking of country, I thought Melinda slam-dunked Trouble Is A Woman. She still sounded like Melinda, but I mean, thank God for that.
It seems likely to me that you simply don’t like her style of singing, Opal. I greatly disliked the modern R&B style for most of my adult life. Then Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill came along, and were so astonishingly cool that they inoculated me against the sound I’d previously hated. Now I have a pretty substantial collection of everyone from Missy to Mary J. and everyone in between.
Maybe that’s why I like Melinda’s performances, why you don’t.
Hey, somebody remembers me!
I wanna say that I haven’t been around for the last two weeks because I knew, deep down in my soul, that my girly-boy Sandy was gonna go home to Lakisha’s daughter even before the show came on and my contrary, wicked heart couldn’t take it. I wanna say that because that’s so much cooler than I was busy and very tired and just could not stay up for AI these two weeks.
I actually voted last night and was kind of disappointed how easily I was able to get through for Blake. Jordin’s line was pretty busy but I was able to get through twice.
It’s one of the few times I’ve actually voted on AI. I figured I’d do my part to get past the 50m votes to max out the corporate match.
Wow, that wasn’t good. Like a bad church musical.
For a second just now, I switched to it. I saw some poor, nappy-headed (I had to! I want to get fired!) boy crying and being consoled by Randy. And then I saw big-bellied, starving children.
What happened? I don’t want to watch this!
With bad costumes. Sheesh!
Fund-raising. This week is American Idol Gives Back. They raised a shitload of money and they’re raising more tonight.
That’s nice. Raising money, I mean.
Still, I miss three shows and instead of Bono I get Sally Struthers. That’s my punishment, I guess.
Plus, I cannot stand fake, smaltzy caring.
Who is Il Devo (other than the ones currently singing)?
Jeeeez…the Placido Domingo thing was beautiful.
I think Simon owns him. Didn’t Chris S. make a joke about him earlier this season?
I am now watching Emiril. That’s how much I hated what was going on on Idle.
Ah, nice crack from Simon… “Better than Sanjaya (who is in the audience!)” after Jack Black’s singing…
And Seal has a good sense of humor…