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Actual rock, sung properly. I was getting sick of the show last year, but this season they seem to have a few contestants who aren't being forced into the commercial pop mold, and there's some real diversity. It's actually gotten interesting again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpBDsE81LuA

I haven't watched any of the current season. I don't doubt that the inclusion of Steven Tyler amongst the judges has something to do with this. Just a hunch.

 :wink:

Well, at least they're stepping out of the pop singer mode for a bit. I mean, they had Iggy Pop perform, that guy covered Priest and performed with Zakk Wylde....kinda cool, I guess, but the show is still a guilty pleasure for me. Off topic: does anybody remember Adam Lambert singing Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire"? He sang it like some modern rock/emo type s**t and absolutely MASSACRED it. Randy was like "yo,yo, that was hot! like nine in nails doing johnny cash!" IDIOT. Simon's reaction was right: "now what the hell was THAT?"

I do miss Simon. Now the judges just seem to love everything, with maybe an occasional word of advice. There have been a few performances this year I'm sure Simon would have torn to bits. They do seem to have a good bunch of contestants this year, but Simon would have just set his expectations higher.

On the other hand, I think Simon had a lot to do with previous seasons being pop, pop and more pop.

But the Heavy Metal performance has addressed my biggest complaint with the show every year. Up to now, they never had anybody who knew how to sing a hard rock song. Or maybe the problem was that they always tried to sing what they should have been shrieking. That's another good thing about this season - there's not so much emphasis on perfect pitch all the time.

This is all well and good, but if you seriously wanted to be a great rock singer.....You DO NOT GO ON AMERICAN IDOL! It's oil and water, chalk and cheese, it's just not right. Go and play in sweaty rock clubs with like minded individuals, not get watered down and told what to do by a bunch of backstabbing tv producers and people like Simon Cowell who won't let you write one line of your own original material. This guy's a good singer, but he's a total loser to me.....

That's the interesting thing. The show seems to be drawing a different kind of contestant. In ten years, it's come to be a legitimate career opportunity for serious singers. They still get teenage amateurs hoping for instant stardom, but more actual professional singers are seeing it as a viable way to advance their careers. More of the contestants seem to know a thing or two about music, and have played professionally on their own.

I remember a few years ago, Billy Joel criticizing the show for artificially creating stars, citing exactly the same arguments, that musicians should play clubs, get seasoned, work their way up. Now they seem to be getting more contestants who have been doing that, and see American Idol as a way to go further. And even if they don't win, they get some international exposure, some training by veterans and some real industry experience they can use.

Personally, what fascinates me about American Idol is that I look at it for what it is - a gigantic marketing machine designed to discover talent, develop it, build an audience for it and start selling it in a few months, while testing ideas, polling the public, selling music, promoting other shows, movies and recording artists, and doing massive product placement. Do I agree morally or artistically with their approach? Not really. Do I think it's freaking ingenious? Yes.

And I don't really think I'm going to take much interest in James Durbin after this season is over. Can't say anybody who got famous on American Idol has gone on to do anything I liked, once they were packaged and given new material to sell. I just like that this guy went against the advice of the famous producer and did a metal song because he likes metal, and it paid off for him. This season seems to have more of a genuine rock component in general, and the boring diva crap isn't going over as well. Maybe popular music is due for a shift back toward shrieking vocals, power chords and pounding drum beats.

I have to say I also like Casey Abrams. Doing movie songs for the theme of the week, and one guy takes a Sammy Hagar tune from Heavy Metal, and Abrams goes the jazz route, doing a Nat King Cole song from The Boy With Green Hair, while playing an upright bass in a performance that seems right out of a smoky little night club. Again, totally against the advice given to him, and very successful. Not a big thing, but I like to see somebody show that record execs aren't always right about what the public will like if they're given a chance to hear it.

About the whole James Durbin thing.....while I think the show in general is an example of how shallow the misic business has become, it's a shame that he got the boot because he seemed to genuinely like rock music (REAL rock...not that emo s**t), and now that it's finally down to a country guy, a country girl, and a pop girl just shos me that the whole thing is about making money and nothing more, not that it's all that big of a surprise anyway.

What I can't figure out is why Haley wasn't gone weeks ago. She still doesn't seem to have a clue what kind of singer she wants to be, and she has that one trick, the growl, that she hamfistedly works into every song. And her performances this week were bad. James, on the other hand, was in a different league from the others. He looked like he'd been performing like that for years, and he once again did something different and difficult, that the audience loved.

It's very easy to get caught up in the drama of the show, but it's not as if getting eliminated at this stage is going to mean all that much. He's made an impression, he's going to have a career, and now he can get on with it. You look at all the competitors of past years who went on to be successful, and it doesn't amount to a hill of beans who actually won. They create this impression that one talented person is going to be made a star, while the others return to their old lives, while the truth is the people behind this show aren't going to throw away anyone with potential just because of a contest, nor are the many other people in the music business who have been watching.

You look at contestants like Casey or Paul, and they don't seem too concerned about not getting this far. That's probably because they never expected to win. They tried like hell to be distinctive and memorable, took some risks, got some exposure, built a bit of a fan base, met people in the industry and opened up opportunities. They seem happy as hell and ready to mug for the camera every chance they get. The stakes on American Idol are not really as high as we're supposed to think. Just about everybody who made it past the early eliminations is going to be better off just for having been on the show. The contestants are even starting to figure it out.

I have never seen the first placed artist and the runner up share the main prize: that happened last year on South African Idol where the final prize money (half a million SA Rand) was shared between the main winner and the runner up. So no losers there.  :teddyr: :thumbup:

I dunno, I just think its better to lose American Idol.  It worked for Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Chris Daughtry etc.

If they have the ability, I think the talented losers are definitely better off. They have a little more freedom than the winner, who has more contractual obligations. About the first thing they do with the winner is hand them a godawful crappy song in the season finale, meant to be their first hit single. Get eliminated late in the game, and you can sidestep some of that crap.

I know the producers manipulate the outcome of the show, pushing for certain contestants to win, but I wonder if some of the shocking eliminations are orchestrated because a contestant might be more marketable if they go in a different direction.

Certainly possible. The last season the girl that got second place seemed like a far more marketable artist than the guy that won.

I'm so not interested in American Idol that I hadn't realized IGGY POP had performed live!!  Found it on YouTube: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phBpFVviZBA

I bet half the people that watch Idol dont even know who he is. I havent watched AI in years and i'm sicking tired of all these talent shows to be honest. Pretty cool about Zakk Wylde and iggy being on there though.