Idol Rambling

The horrid "elimination" show is tonight. The first montage included a clip of Ace's hideous attempt at falsetto, and praised it. Ryan Seacrest's voiceover also praised Paris Bennett's attempt at singing like an elderly woman and focused on the negative part of Taylor Hicks' performance and Simon's judgment. I wonder how the producers put this show together. Obviously they can control some aspects of the production, and this is the most tightly controlled (and most wretched) of the shows in a given week.

Now we are treated to Carrie Underwood singing a song that was on top of the country charts (and kept playing on the radio in the mornings when I lay in bed wishing I didn't have to get up yet and cursing the alarm). She can sing, that's great, but you know what? I don't like her songs. I don't like this song. It isn't country. Hank Williams is country. Tom T. Hall is country. This is poptry. I hate poptry. I don't much care for pop at all. I don't much care for any previous winner of American Idol, for essentially that reason. (It's worth pointing out, of course, that the show is based on the British show "Pop Idol," and most of the viewers are little teenie boppers who want a pop star anyway. I'm in the target audience for this show, but I'm hardly their target.)

And that explains why I've been so much more interested in the show this year. They've got the crooner, David Radford. They've got Mandisa, who needs to just go ahead and do a big Aretha Franklin number, because she could win the contest on that alone (I'm gonna go with "Think," which I believe would be ideal). And they've got Taylor Hicks--who's CD arrived in the mail today. I'm going to pop it in the CD player in the car tomorrow and provide a review. There are simply people in the show this year who strike me as, shall we say, not the type of artists I generally run from at top speed.