I don’t think anyone is saying that Country isn’t a legitimate form of music, I certainly wasn’t. I was saying that I think her insistence on singing it is going to hurt her eventually. Country music may have lots of fans but there are also lots of people that don’t like it, and people who sing it - even if they sing it well - do not appeal to this crowd. I have heard several Martina songs that have crossed over and I never heard this one.
My take - as usual, it’s against the grain:
Carrie - usually my favorite, but a bad song choice for two reasons. First, Forget the judges, you’ve already got the country loving vote tied up. If your going to do country, make it more of a cross-over hit. Second, you picked a song that minimizes your strengths, no range, no real sustained notes. Her worst performance in weeks, if not ever.
Bo - OK, another favorite, but I hated it. The slow vibratto thing he had going was awful. Probably his worst ever.
Anthony, Vonzell - Good, not great, but good.
Constantine - AAAAAGH, my ears - I don’t know if my TV is broadcasting a different soundtrack from everyone elses, but that was horrible. I’ve never been a huge fan, but he used to be able to sing. Hated it, he should go home.
Scott - I must be watching and listening to a different show. I’ve never been a fan of the Round Mound Of Sound, but I thought this was a great performance. After he got all the negative comments, I rewound the Tivo and played an MP3 of Vandross’ original. If I have a real negative comment it was that it was too close to the original, no real interpretation.
Overall - probably the worst week ever, even worse than the “Not-really-disco” night last week. If you’re going to make them do recent hits, give them a bigger library to choose from. I get the strong feeling that the song selection list is much shallower this year than in the past. Also, Bo and Carrie really had huge fashion screw-ups last night.
Last nights rankings
Vonzell
Anthony
Bo
Carrie
Scott
Constantine
Overall rankings - I think last night was an anomoly
Carrie
Bo
Vonzell
Constantine
Anthony
Scott
I really need to get TIVO 
But there are just as many people who don’t like the Hard Rock music Bo seems to favor, or the R&B style Vonzell seems to favor. They just don’t seem to frequent this board.
Also, in my previous post I praised Scott than ranked him low on last nights performance. I would rank him higher than that, actually, but only on last night’s performance.
Nope, just as many people do not dislike Rock music as country. Country has far, far smaller fan base. Just look at sales from around the country for the last 20 years or so. Rock outstrips both R&B and Country as this country’s favorite kind of music. Hip Hop has recently taken over Rock’s stranglehold on our Pop Music sensibilities and in so doing, pushing R&B up in popularity.
Sure you have your country crossovers but those guys remove most of that annoying twang before doing so.
Maybe, and I admit my basis for my statement in anecdotal at best, but I would say two things:
- Genre’s are hard things to pin down. It seems that pop has outsold everything else and Rock has been down the food chain a little, but it depends on your definition of Rock. Aerosmith, Metallica and Megadeth are great Rock groups, but I they have 1 number one hit between them after decades of producing albums. Heck, if you played a lot of country music today to someone who hadn’t heard it in a while, they would probably identify it as rock or pop (i.e. Big & Rich, Cowboy Troy)
- (And I admit #1 is kind of weak) I buy album from Genre A does not equal I hate Genre B. Just because pop outsells R&B, it does not follow that everyone who buys pop dislikes R&B. Just because country is outsold, doesn’t mean it’s disliked. I know very few people who dislike classical music, but it’s sales are very low.
Half way on topic: What’s this about some ABC special saying Paula slept with a contestant (Corey something)? My wife heard about it somewhere, but I can’t find anything on ABC’s website, and I don’t watch anything on ABC at the moment so I won’t see a preview. Anyone got a line on this?
Oh, and if it’s who I’m thinking about? Eww.
Considering that the first prize for this contest is a contract to create records, which presumably, the record company will be hoping to sell, it should be important to factor in predictable sales expectations. If there was a significant disconnect between the type of music people like to listen to for free and the type of music they are willing to pay for recordings of (ratio-wise), this show wouldn’t have had a second season, much less a fourth.
None of which accounts for the anomaly that is Fantasia Barrino.
I saw a clip of that earlier. I’d never seen him before,he is plugly! I don’t believe it for a minute.
There’s a link on one of the later pages of last week’s AI thread. Here it is. It’s still at the tawdry gossip stage, IMHO. But the profile appears to be getting higher.
Just for fun: Who were you thinking it was? 
I thought that was the coolest dashiki ever! The cheap sunglasses were a bit much, though.
He was great!
I loved Carrie’s performance, and her hair was beautiful au naturale.
My order:
Bo
Carrie
The Vonz (hee!)
Anthony
Connie
Scott
Plugly?
[Moe]
I’ve been called ugly, pug-ugly, fugly. But I ain’t never been called pug-fugly.
[/Moe]
The past two weeks have been kind of “blah” overall.
**Last night **
-
Anthony – I thought he knocked it out. Except the Titanic song, I really don’t know any Celine songs, so I don’t go into auto-hate when I hear her name.
-
Bo – Another good week.
-
Vonzell – But nothing special last night.
-
Constantine – OFF night.
-
Carrie – She has enough fans, that she could mumble each week until the final two.
-
Scott – Enough has been said
**Overall **
- Anthony (He’ll be in the bottom three tonight, but I hope he gets to come back for at least one more week)
- Constantine (Maybe last night will be a wake up call)
- Vonzell
- Bo
- Carrie
- Scott
As an aside, anyone but me now feel compelled to call Vonzell “Arthur Vonzarelli” now?
Carrie was mediocre. Even my husband thought so. :eek:
Bo’s jeans were nice, but the ass-hiding shirt and the ugly glasses were a mistake. Oh, and he sang well, but not as well as usual. I voted for him 100 times and got through about 70% of the time. Not a good sign.
Constantine sucked. Even my mother thought so. :eek:
Anthony was surprisingly good. Kelly Clarkson sang that song on the first season, when she was really hoarse, and nailed it. So I though that was brave of him. But he started off a little lackluster because he was sitting down. I kept saying, “Get up, dumbass!” and once he did, he sounded better.
Vonzell wasn’t very good at the beginning. She was flat…or sharp…or pitchy…or whatever. I don’t know what those words mean exactly, but she was one of them. But she sung the hell out of the end of it.
Scott…are you still here? Oh yeah, I almost forgot. You had that horrible note near the beginning. Even my cat cringed.
With that said, Scott has to go home tomorrow. But after watching Nashville Star last night, I guess anything’s possible when you leave the voting to the slack-jawed public.
[Full-on gossip mode]He was kicked off the show that season for having been arrested or some such ugliness. Can anyone refresh my memory? If it’s true that there was an affair, I wonder if that’s the real reason he was kicked off. I mean, Scott is still here after having been arrested in the past. Hmmmm…very interesting.[/F-ogm]
And yeah. Ewww.
Here it is, from this article:
Bolding mine:
So the charges were pending at the time. I guess that’s why he was booted and Scott wasn’t.
Actually the official reason given for Clark being booted and Savol getting to stay is that Savol disclosed his record before he bacame a serious contender, whereas Clark’s reveal came as a surprise to the producers of the contest.
I didn’t know that. Thanks. 
True, true - and just to be clear, I’m not arguing that a pop-star won’t sell more than a country star. I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of voters might not prefer country, but don’t actively dislike it.
Speaking of concerns about album sales, I wonder what Simon and his production company think of their track record. Kelly Clarkson seems to be a solid producer, but since then, the runners-up seem to be outpacing the Idols. At least in the second season, Ruben’s hopeless “Sorry for 2004” seems eclipsed by Clay Aiken and Kimberly’s efforts. I haven’t seen much of Fantasia, but the song she sang a couple of weeks ago isn’t prompting me to rush out to find the single. Speaking of country, The Singing Marine’s (fairly) new country album seems to be doing quite well, too.
Actually, that leads to a good question, which AI performers have released albums, and what are the sales like. A quick Yahoo search turned up a lot of stuff on AI, but not this info. ANybody know where to look?