Another One Bites the Dust
Disclaimer: This post is junk food. If you have come here looking for insight, you've come to the wrong place. Today, we're taking a pop culture detour.
OK, so I have to admit I've gotten a little bit into American Idol this season. I was only really into it Season 2 (hello, America, are we starting to realize what a joke it was that Ruben beat Clay???) but now that I have Tivo, it's infinitely more watchable, as I can just fast forward everything Paula says, and the bits where Ryan and Simon snipe at/gay-bait each other. Basically, I watch the singing parts, and about two sentences each from Randy and Simon in the critique parts. It's perfect.
Now, I don't watch the results show at all, because I prefer my torture meted out by Jack Bauer, thankyouverymuch. Besides, the results show, in a perfect world, should be 30 seconds long, because the only part of it anyone with brains cares about is, you know, who got kicked off (the results), which simply does not take one hour to impart. The rest is just squirmy and painful.
I also don't start watching until they get it narrowed down to at least the top twelve contestants, for similar reasons (I don't like to see real people humiliated on TV).
So there you go. Fine. Under this certain stringent set of circumstances, I do kind of dig American Idol.
Which is why my heart sank yesterday morning when I heard last night's show was going to be themed around the songs of Queen.
I happen to lurve Queen. I'm also going through a major Queen phase in my life right now, just like my ABBA phase (2004-2005), my Billy Joel phase (1997-1999), and my Beatles phase (most heavily concentrated 1994-1998). Queen was truly an outstanding band. Technically, they're still together, but sadly, even the best of bands cannot amount to all that much after the loss of the front man--and that goes double when the lead singer is an icon and a legend.
Which brings us to the main problem of last evening. Freddie Mercury's voice was remarkable, bizarre, and perfect. At his prime, Freddie Mercury was an insurpassable rock vocalist. Virtually none of his songs can be covered without resulting in huge disappointment. A possible exception is "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," which has been successfully covered. I guess the sound isn't signature Freddie Mercury enough for any comparison to seem like a pale imitation.
The second problem of last evening was the choice of songs for most of the contestants. Of course, choosing Queen was hardly fair on the contestants. Queen songs are really, really hard to sing. Many of the best ones have big choral parts or even operatic sections, hardly making them suitable for the karaoke-style arrangements necessitated by the show's format. And several of the contestants are under the age of 20. I doubt many of them were terribly well-versed in the band's catalogue.
That said, I had one prediction: "They're going to be scratching each other's eyes out over who gets to sing 'You're My Best Friend,' because it's the easiest, most accessible, catchy song in their catalogue." I was shocked. No one sang it.
"If any of them are really savvy and mature (maybe Katharine McPhee?) they'll choose the lesser-known but stunning and singable ballad 'Save Me.' If performed well," I thought to myself, "a passionate version of that song could be a career-maker."
No one was that savvy or mature.
The show opened with Bucky, who makes my skin crawl. He is disgusting, and reminds me of every white trash lecher I ever met in Podunkville, my home town. He doens't seem to have a personality beyond "hick," and I doubt he'll be on the show long. He chose "Fat Bottomed Girls," which was a really good choice for him, because it's got a real rockabilly feel well-suited to his voice. His performance was mediocrity. Paula praised him for "taking this song and giving it a country feel," thereby betraying that she had actually never heard the song before.
Apart from this performance and Elliott's, of another of my favorite Queen songs, "Somebody to Love," (Elliott's voice is very nice, but he always looks extremely nervous, and has no idea how to act a song) the rest of the choices ranged from boring (Ace's rendition of "We Will Rock You"--a song that isn't even sung, for heaven's sake, it's spoken) to tedious (Kellie Pickler's "Bohemian Rhapsody") to grating (Taylor Hicks's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"). Thank goodness, Taylor chose not to do his original selection, "We Are the Champions," which just would have been stupid. (Also, I have an indescribable hate deep in my belly for Taylor Hicks. I find him completely unbearable. Perhaps it's because he thinks he's 1000 times cooler than he actually is. And what's with the constant doubled-over-in-pain dance??? I wish you could vote against contestants, because it would be well worth the text messaging rates to get that one kicked off.)
Anyway. Chris Daughtry gave a really good performance of a fairly unknown song, and was by far the best of the night--not surprising, since he is an experienced rock frontman with a genuinely nice voice. Two of my favorites, Katharine and Paris, were just so-so. In the "package" clip, we see that Katharine has initially chosen "Mr. Fahrenheit," which would have been a truly inspired choice, as the intro is a beautiful ballad that would have showed off the lower part of her range beautifully, and the song them morphs into a sexy, uptempo rock song. She would have performed it really well. But she eventually changed her selection to "Who Wants to Live Forever," a gorgeous ballad that was just painfully out of her range.
I guess they all avoided "Another One Bites the Dust" for the inevitable unfortunate puns about their possible fates. I hope the next three to get voted off this little island are Taylor, Ace, and Bucky. Any order you please, America. Taylor isn't the worst singer of the bunch, he's just the most unbearable. Bucky, as I mentioned before, is gross. Ace would be the perfect coverboy for Lisa Simpson's favorite magazine, Nonthreatening Boys.
Who do I hope wins the whole thing? I don't really know. Right now, Chris may be the best of the bunch. Katharine can be really good (and her style of music is something I could really get behind). She's gorgeous, so she'll probably win. Elliott may be the dark horse. But I can't help loving Paris, because she's just so darn impressive.
Now, if any of you have made it to the bottom of this post--what is your vote? Who would you vote off? No, you can't choose Paula. Who would you like to see win? How totally wrong do you think my opinions are? Well, let's hear it!
OK, so I have to admit I've gotten a little bit into American Idol this season. I was only really into it Season 2 (hello, America, are we starting to realize what a joke it was that Ruben beat Clay???) but now that I have Tivo, it's infinitely more watchable, as I can just fast forward everything Paula says, and the bits where Ryan and Simon snipe at/gay-bait each other. Basically, I watch the singing parts, and about two sentences each from Randy and Simon in the critique parts. It's perfect.
Now, I don't watch the results show at all, because I prefer my torture meted out by Jack Bauer, thankyouverymuch. Besides, the results show, in a perfect world, should be 30 seconds long, because the only part of it anyone with brains cares about is, you know, who got kicked off (the results), which simply does not take one hour to impart. The rest is just squirmy and painful.
I also don't start watching until they get it narrowed down to at least the top twelve contestants, for similar reasons (I don't like to see real people humiliated on TV).
So there you go. Fine. Under this certain stringent set of circumstances, I do kind of dig American Idol.
Which is why my heart sank yesterday morning when I heard last night's show was going to be themed around the songs of Queen.
I happen to lurve Queen. I'm also going through a major Queen phase in my life right now, just like my ABBA phase (2004-2005), my Billy Joel phase (1997-1999), and my Beatles phase (most heavily concentrated 1994-1998). Queen was truly an outstanding band. Technically, they're still together, but sadly, even the best of bands cannot amount to all that much after the loss of the front man--and that goes double when the lead singer is an icon and a legend.
Which brings us to the main problem of last evening. Freddie Mercury's voice was remarkable, bizarre, and perfect. At his prime, Freddie Mercury was an insurpassable rock vocalist. Virtually none of his songs can be covered without resulting in huge disappointment. A possible exception is "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," which has been successfully covered. I guess the sound isn't signature Freddie Mercury enough for any comparison to seem like a pale imitation.
The second problem of last evening was the choice of songs for most of the contestants. Of course, choosing Queen was hardly fair on the contestants. Queen songs are really, really hard to sing. Many of the best ones have big choral parts or even operatic sections, hardly making them suitable for the karaoke-style arrangements necessitated by the show's format. And several of the contestants are under the age of 20. I doubt many of them were terribly well-versed in the band's catalogue.
That said, I had one prediction: "They're going to be scratching each other's eyes out over who gets to sing 'You're My Best Friend,' because it's the easiest, most accessible, catchy song in their catalogue." I was shocked. No one sang it.
"If any of them are really savvy and mature (maybe Katharine McPhee?) they'll choose the lesser-known but stunning and singable ballad 'Save Me.' If performed well," I thought to myself, "a passionate version of that song could be a career-maker."
No one was that savvy or mature.
The show opened with Bucky, who makes my skin crawl. He is disgusting, and reminds me of every white trash lecher I ever met in Podunkville, my home town. He doens't seem to have a personality beyond "hick," and I doubt he'll be on the show long. He chose "Fat Bottomed Girls," which was a really good choice for him, because it's got a real rockabilly feel well-suited to his voice. His performance was mediocrity. Paula praised him for "taking this song and giving it a country feel," thereby betraying that she had actually never heard the song before.
Apart from this performance and Elliott's, of another of my favorite Queen songs, "Somebody to Love," (Elliott's voice is very nice, but he always looks extremely nervous, and has no idea how to act a song) the rest of the choices ranged from boring (Ace's rendition of "We Will Rock You"--a song that isn't even sung, for heaven's sake, it's spoken) to tedious (Kellie Pickler's "Bohemian Rhapsody") to grating (Taylor Hicks's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"). Thank goodness, Taylor chose not to do his original selection, "We Are the Champions," which just would have been stupid. (Also, I have an indescribable hate deep in my belly for Taylor Hicks. I find him completely unbearable. Perhaps it's because he thinks he's 1000 times cooler than he actually is. And what's with the constant doubled-over-in-pain dance??? I wish you could vote against contestants, because it would be well worth the text messaging rates to get that one kicked off.)
Anyway. Chris Daughtry gave a really good performance of a fairly unknown song, and was by far the best of the night--not surprising, since he is an experienced rock frontman with a genuinely nice voice. Two of my favorites, Katharine and Paris, were just so-so. In the "package" clip, we see that Katharine has initially chosen "Mr. Fahrenheit," which would have been a truly inspired choice, as the intro is a beautiful ballad that would have showed off the lower part of her range beautifully, and the song them morphs into a sexy, uptempo rock song. She would have performed it really well. But she eventually changed her selection to "Who Wants to Live Forever," a gorgeous ballad that was just painfully out of her range.
I guess they all avoided "Another One Bites the Dust" for the inevitable unfortunate puns about their possible fates. I hope the next three to get voted off this little island are Taylor, Ace, and Bucky. Any order you please, America. Taylor isn't the worst singer of the bunch, he's just the most unbearable. Bucky, as I mentioned before, is gross. Ace would be the perfect coverboy for Lisa Simpson's favorite magazine, Nonthreatening Boys.
Who do I hope wins the whole thing? I don't really know. Right now, Chris may be the best of the bunch. Katharine can be really good (and her style of music is something I could really get behind). She's gorgeous, so she'll probably win. Elliott may be the dark horse. But I can't help loving Paris, because she's just so darn impressive.
Now, if any of you have made it to the bottom of this post--what is your vote? Who would you vote off? No, you can't choose Paula. Who would you like to see win? How totally wrong do you think my opinions are? Well, let's hear it!
posted by AmberO at Sleeping is for Sissies at 7:00 PM
4 comment(s)
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AmberO at Sleeping is for Sissies,
Queen, III,
4 Comments:
The only thing I take issue with in your post is that you don't seem to hate Bucky enough. Aside from his ick factor and the fact that he seems to have a room temperature IQ (like Kellie Pickler - apparently Southern equals retarded), he has the unique talent of being able to make any song (including Barry Manilow's and Stevie Wonder's in past weeks) a country song, and what's worse, a mediocre country song. He gives me deja vu; I feel certain I've seen him at GenericSportsBar in Wackytown on karaoke night. Paris is great, but she's super young and comes from a whole family of recording artists, so I think she'll be fine with or without this show. Katherine McPhee is awesome, but I don't know that she has a big fan base. Elliot probably has the best, most versatile voice, but he has no shot because, as you said, he always looks kind of uncomfortable up there, and, let's face it, he's physically unappealing. I agree with you about Taylor; he's just way overrated and he dances like he's constipated. Aaaanyhoo, I'd vote for Elliot except it would be a wasted vote, so I'm going for Katherine McPhee. As several cardboard signs in the audience proclaim weekly, "Catch the McPheever!"
Okay, I just reread the large amount I had to say about American Idol and my sense of self-worth dropped several percentage points. I'm going to go read a book.
I'm with you--I found Kellie's naivete appealing for about a minute, but then somebody told her that schtick was going to make her a star and she started shoving it down our throats. As schticks go, "moron" gets old pretty quick.
I think I want Chris to win (is he the guy who is married to that girl who's older than him and has two kids that are not his?) because it always makes me cry when the really good guys win. I mean he married a girl with kids that were not his and seems to be a really dedicated father and that is so hot! Anyway, his wife really loves him and I think that he's probably pretty sweet and a good person. I vote for him!!
p.s because of you Beatles phase, I know a lot about the Beatles and Baby Boomers are always really impressed with my above average knowledge! Thanks a-dub!!! Your obsession have made me a better person...uh...or at least more knowledgeable about pop culture...but that's the same thing right?
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