American Idol Feb 27-Mar 1

Cafe Society
201

This has got absolutely NOTHING to do with Frenchie for me. If Dial Idol is to believed, Gina will be going home tonight. Why? Because Jersey Girl is the worst singer of them all. And, if people are following Dio’s lead, because we haven’t seen her tits and cooter.

Seriously Dio, would you have voted for either of the two who are leaving if you’d seen their privates on the internet? Is that the standard here? Poor, poor Antonella. We’ve all seen upshots of her so I’m gonna vote a thousand times for her. Sheesh!

202

The pictures, in themselves, don’t mean anything to me. Once again, I’m not voting for her because of the pictures but because of the response to the pictures. I just have a thing about seeing people get piled on. If Ant wasn’t getting such Biblical judgement about the pictures, I wouldn’t have voted for her.

I kind of wonder if the producers encouraged her to sing a Celine song just because they knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’m sure they would like to get rid of this distraction but they have to do it in a way that makes it look fair. Feeding her song choices that are too big for her ((Aerosmith, Celine Dion) might be their strategy for getting her voted off on lack of merit. I don’t think she’s that terrible. If it wasn’t for the pictures, she could probably coast by under the radar by doing easier songs.

203

I know they’re looking for the total package, but I have to laugh when the judges talk about how shitty the singing was, “But you look great tonight!” Who gives a shit when they sang terribly?

I’m happy Paula adjusted her hairdo.

204

Oh AI, AI…what are you trying to do to us? Choose between the blandest of the bland, with a couple of firecrackers thrown in for good measure? I can’t recall a season where there’ve been so many forgettable performers shakes head

I’m not going to comment on the guys because I didn’t see enough of the show. What I did see, though, made me pine for Bo, Chris, and Anwar.

Gina - I didn’t think she was horrible, except when she went flat. Heart-type songs, as Randy said, seem to suit her. But she wasn’t outstanding either. Borderline.

Alaina - Meh. I’m no Dixie Chick fan, so I can’t make comparisons. Borderline.

LaKeisha - One of the better performances. Never did care for the song, but she did it justice.

Melinda – YES! She was by far the strongest performer of the night. I pray she doesn’t lose her humility through this, but yeah, she does need to develop more confidence if she’s going to survive. Plus I loved the fact she picked a standard.

Antonella - Go home. Please. If you stick around, it’ll only prove they’re keeping you to fuel the gossip fodder.

Jordin - Great voice, great presence, but I question her song choice. If she picks carefully the next time, I truly think she has a shot.

Stephanie - Meh. I can’t even remember what she sang. Borderline.

Leslie - She surprised me. Not a great performance, but it wasn’t horrible either. Borderline.

Haley - I loved her stage presence, but there’s something about her I can’t place which makes me think she’s not long for being cut. Borderline.

Sabrina - Same as Haley. The difference is that Sabrina has the pipes, so maybe I’d put her not so much on “borderline” as a little over into the “stay” category.

205

I don’t really know who Frenchie is. I do think that Antonella is the worst singer of the top 24.

206

Ah, I see. You voted a bunch of times for a contestant based on nothing said contestant did. She could have not even come last night and you still would have voted for her because of what you think other people think about what she did that has nothing to do with her singing at all.

That makes perfect sense!

207

Even without the photos, everyone would seriously dislike Antonella. Her total lack of grace when the judges gave her their feedback was disappointing because I was hoping she’d show that her personality is better than that. It would maybe be excusable if she was more talented, but she’s not.
But at least she acts reasonably nice to the other contestants. I haven’t seen anything to make me think otherwise. This is my first season, so I don’t know how it usually goes but I’ve heard that in past seasons some of the singers were rude or disrepectful to some of the others. The fact that I haven’t seen Antonella act like that keeps me from totally disliking her.

Considering just the photos, Frenchie sounds like the more classy one. Or at least more respectable. She’s a lot better from a feminist point of view, or at least my interpretation of it.

208

This “Vote for the Worst” phenomenon is really beginning to bother me. Right now, according to Dial Idol’s predictions, Sundance and Sanjaya are pulling in the most votes among the guys, and Antonella is third among the girls. Does anyone else think this voting style might derail the Idol concept completely? I mean, over time, if jokers keep voting for bad singers, the show will become unwatchable. I think that most regular viewers (I hesitate to say silent majority, but it’s looking that way) will eventually be turned off by the shenanigans. It’s not a world-shattering issue, of course, and we can’t prove definitively that people voting for the weaker singers don’t find them otherwise appealing. But what happens when the results of the TV show turn completely against the producers’ best interests? If the show loses viewers, sponsors lose interest. If the finalists truly objectively suck, they won’t sell albums. What happens then? Will the producers rig the votes? Or will the show fade away as its concept becomes untenable? I suppose only time will tell…not that I’m losing any sleep over this or anything. It’s just a thought exercise.

209

VTFW is only really effective in the early rounds when the votes are most fragmented. It’s easier to get a significant plurality of votes in a field of 10 or 12 than when it gets down to like 5 or 6. A lot of the contestants are just cannon fodder at this point anyway, so it really doesn’t much matter in what order hey get voted off. VTFW will keep Antonella and Sanjaya around for a few more weeks but they won’t have a chance to win or go deep.

Incidentally, I think it’s only fair to point out that Sundance had a legitimately strong performance this week. He also had a strong audition and has shown hints of genuine talent. I think a lot of his votes may be legit.

210

I don’t think VFTW had a guy pick this week. They were down for a while and now they are deciding whether to dump Sundance for Sanjaya.

211

If you don’t want to keep seeing her get piled on, don’t vote for her. The longer she stays on, the longer she will be in the public eye and up for ridicule. Once she’s off the show everything will die down in about a week. Do you remember the terrible way John Stevens and Kevin Covais were treated online? They were just kids and whether you like their singing or not they certainly didn’t deserve to be tormented that way. But had you voted for them because you felt sorry for them you would have only been prolonging their agony.

212

While I admire your wanting to stand up for her while she’s being treated badly, I question your method.

Sympathy votes for her strike me as meaningless. She’ll never know, nor will her tormentors. Please forgive my saying this, but it seems to me that the only entities getting any benefit from such sympathy votes are the egos of said voters. The statement made neither comforts the victim nor confronts the perpetrators. It does, however, arguably decrease the enjoyment for legitimate fans of the show.

I ask you to recondsider.

213

I probably won’t vote again. The TWOP board just got to me last night so I picked up the phone (which I usually never do for this show) and dialed her number a bunch of times out of spite. I wouldn’t have done it if I thought she had a chance to win or anything, but I don’t see what difference one more week makes. Her staying can only displace one person at a time and in these early rounds, that one person would be gone the next week anyway. I also don’t believe that keeping her for an extra week is going to hurt any of the really good contenders (Melinda, LaKisha) and that the top five or six will still be the ones who deserve to be there.

Since it bothers people, I won’t participate in any more VFTW tactics, though.

214

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that Idol producers decided some time ago to deal with their intrinsically fucked up voting system. I seem to recall that they reserve the right to discard votes that they find to be “cheating”, such as voting in large blocks or auto-dialing.

215

You could listen to Beyonce’s versions of it (I think she’s up to three now), which aren’t bad, but this is a very, very good song (full props to Beyonce for writing it) - I would LOVE to hear a really good singer take it on. Someone like k.d. lang would turn this into a monster torch song. Monster, I tell you.

(Yeah, the timing was all over the place. It sounded fast to me, and slow to my husband.)

216

Now I feel kinda bad for piling on. Of course everyone is entitled to vote as they see fit for whatever reason they feel like. I am the first one to admit to my irrationality.

I think seeing the Dial Idol results angry-upped my blood. If the bottom 2 had been either of Alaina, Hilary or Leslie my reaction would not have been so strident.

217

I’ve mentioned in the past that my husband and I stopped watching AI the night they kicked Jennifer Hudson off, because it was clear there was something undeniably wrong with their voting practices at that point (man, vindication feels GOOOOOD!). This is the first season we’ve watched at all since then. I don’t think the producers want the obviously best singers kicked off, either - if Lakisha and Melinda get booted early this year, there won’t be any point for anyone to watch after that. I’m hoping the producers have reserved some kind of veto capacity to prevent something that neither they nor the viewing public want to happen.

On the other hand, it IS supposed to be a contest based on public voting. It’s just too bad the public is so stupid.

218

  1. Melinda Doolittle

  2. Everyone else can book their flight home.
    I think we’ve had enough Pop Star in America for a while. Her voice was mature and strong, her phrasing was perfect (very reminiscent of Ella, in my opinion), and she’s a doll on top of it all. She’s the one that came from Backup Singer World, right? I’d love to see her take it. She’s a breath of fresh air. LOVE her!

219

That was exactly my take on it. I thought for sure they’d rip her for that, but evidently it only sounded like that to us. They must have heard it as intended.

That sounded like an extremely difficult song. I like her, but that performance was sub-par in my opinion.

220

Diogenes, I find your reasoning about the fragmented vote factor very interesting. However, I wonder if it would still hold true if the quality of contestants decreased drastically.

Every week, we have a pool of voters. I’d assume that most of this pool is drawn from people who enjoy watching Idol, though I suppose some voters are friends and family who are only watching the show for their favorite and wouldn’t watch otherwise. Now let’s suppose that in the early rounds of competition, several poor singers are put through repeatedly while better ones are cut. I imagine that voters who appreciate singing talent might grow frustrated with the show. If they stop watching and voting, the voting pool shrinks. Assuming the VFTW voters persist in their chicanery, wouldn’t their votes gain more influence over time? (Let’s say the friends and family votes remain constant, though I suppose in reality they could grow as “fanclubs” form.) Would this be enough to balance the effect of having the rest of the pool’s votes converge over fewer contestants? My math is very rusty, so I’m not sure how you could calculate this, but I think that if the number of “real” voters diminishes while the number of “joke” voters is maintained, the vote could continue skewing towards the less-deserving candidates.

Oh, and random thoughts: I had forgotten that Sundance put in a good performance last show, my bad, I missed it. Liberal, I hadn’t realized there were some anti-“cheating” methods in place. I’d be curious to know their criteria. And featherlou, I agree completely that from the public’s point of view, it’s supposed to be a contest based on public votes. I just wonder how far the producers (who have a financial stake in the winners) can be pushed before they do exercise a veto, and what the public reaction would be to such a move.