by Ruth Anne Boulet
We’ve finally hit the last night of auditions. And there was much rejoicing. Even Steven Tyler has had it at this point. Jennifer thinks Steven is mean! Gosh!
And I think the viewing audience also reaches that point with the Idol auditions. Thankfully we only had 7 audition shows, but the formula is pretty predictable.
1. Pretend that all the auditions happen over the span of 2 days. They don’t. Most people know that they don’t. Can we stop the charade? It’s ok to acknowledge that the celeb judges only see about 100 folks in each town.
2. Begin with a funny/really bad audition. In this episode we began with the woman whose audition was apparently cut short by a fart. I’m sure she’s thrilled that her meltdown was the featured funny of the night.
3. Intersperse bad/comedic singers in with the good ones, but give the audience a funny setup for the bad singers so that we know what’s coming.
Drew Beaumier was one such example of a bad and entertaining contestant. Drew built his own Transformers suit. It’s pretty damn cool. Upright, he’s a dude in a red plastic suit that you can tell is a car. On the floor in an all-fours posture he’s a Ford Mustang. He sings Born to Be Wild. He’s a Mustang people, of course he would sing that. They’re always telling contestants to be true to themselves. Of course he doesn’t make it to Hollywood. He had the suit going for him, and that’s about it.
4. TRAGEDY! TRAGEDY! TRAGEDY! Most good singers without tragedy are annoying to those of us in the viewing audience. Make sure many good singers that are featured and going to Hollywood have a tragic backstory. The guy who makes it through who’s like Jim from Jim’s Journal does not make for exciting TV.
Emily Anne Reed had one of the few truly unique voices in these San Francisco auditions. She also had recent tragedy. Score! First, the voice. She had kind of a China Forbes style to her voice that I liked. And if you don’t know who China Forbes is, go listen to some Pink Martini right now! Her tragedy was that her house recently burned down. We don’t really get much more than that. I assume that she’s found some alternate housing because if she were homeless we’d hear all about it.
James Durbin is the last contestant we see and he, yes, has a tragic backstory. His dad wasn’t around because he was a musician. He ODed. We also find out that James has Tourette Syndrome and has Aspergers Syndrome. He also looks a little in the eyes like Adam Lambert. And he sings like Adam Lambert. So he’s good, but will he get comparisons that will ultimately bring him down. We’ve already seen Adam Lambert and where Adam was über-confident, this kid is so NOT confident. It’ll be interesting to see how far James gets in comparison.
Sure there were other good singers with tragedies tonight, but these two I think would’ve made it through anyway. The other ones, I’m not so sure. I don’t know how unique their voices were if they didn’t have the tragic backstory. Take the girl from Columbia. If her parents hadn’t escaped from the Guerrilla warfare & she not worn really sparkly shoes to the audition, would she have made it through? I’m not so sure.
But now comes the real competition. You judges were so nice, putting so many through to Hollywood. Now it’s time to start cutting. Not everyone can win for this…. is American Idol.
HA! I love the Jim’s Journal reference!