Thursday, March 25, 2010

American Idol - Your Awful Top 10

Anyone who knows anything about how much of a gaywad I am knows that I love American Idol with a passion that's getting a little uncomfortable and may one day find me placed on some sort of list kept by the government. Because this is true, you have to understand how much it pains me to say this: American Idol has been god-awful this year.

I mean just terrible. Here we are at the Top 10 and there's literally ONE contestant... maybe two... that legitimately should be there. And it's not like they eliminated a bunch of awesome people or anything... these remaining contestants are sadly just the best of a bad crop. It's downright disheartening, but I guess not all that surprising, seeing as how this shows been chugging along for nearly ten years. The American talent well is getting pretty goddamned dry.

But anyway, since I did it last year, and because talking about American Idol still makes me both feel warm and fuzzy inside and hate myself, here's your Top 10. For better or worse. Mostly worse.

American Idol - Top 10

Aaron Kelly



Aaron is sixteen, and it's a young sixteen. Like he probably still thinks girls are gross and have cooties. He sings like a Sophomore that just got a supporting part in the high school's production of Anything Goes, yet the judges have decided he's "the next Justin Timberlake," which is only true in the sense that he'll at some point probably get deflowered by a Mouseketeer. There's all sorts of back story with him, too... adoptions and bad parents and once he hid in an attic and read "The Neverending Story"... but it's all too boring to really get worked up over. The only significant moment involving Aaron Kelly this season is when Ellen playfully accused him of copying her hairstyle. Congrats, kid... you just got told you have lesbian hair on national TV. How's fame taste?

Lee DeWyze



Here we have the Idol contestant most likely to sell you weed. He's the bro-iest bro that's ever bro-ed and he has the musical stylings of a Dave Matthews cover band that really wants to move away from Dave Matthews and start covering some REAL shit, like Daughtry or Kings of Leon. There's nothing interesting about him at all, even though he's been declared "a hunk" by several people that have apparently never seen men before. His parents love him, I guess, because there haven't been any heartbreaking montages of him carrying his guitar through an orphanage or whatever.

Oh, and one time he sang that Owl City song "Fireflies" just him and an acoustic guitar and it was so bland my TV had to go take a nap.

Tim Urban



Now HE'S a hunk. All young and floppy-haired and muscled... if I were a seventeen year old girl, I'd let him play with my boobs, all I'm saying. At the same time, there's a STRONG creepy religion vibe coming off of him; they showed his family one time and there's like fifteen brothers and sisters, all genes therein impeccable, and it made my skin crawl like I just discovered an ant infestation. Maybe it's just because I'm currently reading a book about icky Mormon cults, but this dude is TOTALLY (probably) the product of an icky Mormon cult.

Anyway, he sings terribly and he's only still on the show because girls and very, very disturbed older men want to touch his penis. True fact.

Katie Stevens



This is the other sixteen year old, but she's the kind that acts like they're 34 and have a very important job taking business meetings with clients in NoFunsville. She's kind of robotic and she suffers a little bit from an ailment I call "Man Voice," plus she's only marginally talented at singing. Odd, being as how this is a singing competition, but whatever.

Of all the contestants, she's the one that's going to freak out the worst when she gets voted off. You can just see it coming. When she gets critiqued, she appears to be listening intently to what the judges have to say, but you can tell she's just counting down the seconds until she can get back to her dressing room and dig deep cuts into her leg with a razor blade because SHE'S! NOT! GOOD! ENOUGH!

Seriously, when she goes, it's going to be epic. She might punch Ryan Seacrest, which would be like beating up all the world's happiness in the form of a manorexic pixie that can tell you to the SECOND when we're due back from commercial.

Andrew Garcia



Ugh. This guy, I can't even deal with. He has a neck tattoo. A NECK TATTOO. Seriously, he's just the worst and he should have been canned ages ago.
Oh, and I think he was in a gang once or something. I don't know. When he's on, I go to the fridge for a snack, or if I'm not hungry I just stand there out of earshot until I'm sure enough time has passed so that he's not on my TV anymore.

Casey James


Were you a big fan of Jonny Lang back in 1997? Then you'll LOOOOVE Casey James. Because he's basically that, but with longer hair and even less of a personality.
Look, he plays the guitar really well; there's no denying that. But he sings like every band that's ever played Friday nights at Sherlock's Pub here in Arlington, TX (which I realize is a very location-specific reference to make, but I think you catch my drift) and that's just not going to cut it, on this show or as a life choice.
He has also been declared "hunky," but personally I think he looks like he smells like dirty hair.
Didi Benami


Didi has sung so differently every time she's performed, I'm starting to think she's actually a set of identical triplets who are playing an elaborate prank on America. She's just... I mean, she's not BAD, per se. She actually has her moments where it's like, "I see what you did there, and I approve." Her version of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" was top shelf all the way. But then she does this weird, vibrato thing where it's like she's singing into a fan, and that's where I think Didi totally loses most of us at home.
I feel bad because she seems like a nice person, but she also seems like the sort that would greatly benefit from a strong drink and the admonition to settle the fuck down.
"Big" Mike Lynche


He's roughly nine feet tall and he just became a dad. These are important facts... I mean, they must be, because they've been mentioned every time he's on screen since the beginning of this fiasco. The man has literally been defined by the fact that he's fucking massive... and he is; Ryan looks like one of the more useless (though well-groomed) hobbits next to him... and the fact that he fucked his wife nine months ago.
It's the same thing as Danny Gokey last year being all about his dead wife, but with a happier, less morbid slant.
Anyway, he sings like you'd expect a huge black guy to sing. He uses too much falsetto for my taste (and he's not great at it), but otherwise he's okay.
Siobhan Magnus


I love her a little bit, but only because she's monkey-house crazy. And I mean that in the most positive way possible, I really do. Siobhan (that's pronounced "Shu-VON, btw) has this vibe that reminds me of an art student starting a band with her roommate because they're bored on a Saturday, but then discovering that they're actually the best thing to come out of New York City since Le Tigre. She had a mohawk once... seriously, they showed a picture. It made me want to smash beer bottles and use the pieces to spell out "marry me."
She has a great voice, but she also does this really high-note screechy thing that was impressive once, still okay twice, and now that she's done it three times in a row, we're all kind of worried that that's all she's got. To us, the fans, she was our one shot at Adam Lambert-level weirdness. If she doesn't pull some amazing shit out of the Phantom Zone (or wherever she gets her ideas) pretty damn quick, she's going to be dunzo. America does not tolerate the merely strange. We want fabulousness too.
Crystal Bowersox



This is your next American Idol. Seriously. She's going to win. No one really even has a chance at this point and... given what we've seen thus far... none of the other contestants are even capable of rising to the challenge. It's been said several times by the judges that she's quite simply on another level than her competition... one that's much higher and just flat-out BETTER... and that statement could not be more true.
Her whole deal is that folksy, Melissa Ethridge, Janis and Alanis, lady guitar soul... which frankly I'm kind of over as a concept... but when Bowersox lays it down, it feels all fresh and new, like when you heard "Fast Car" for the first time. She's SO good, it's kind of retarded that we have to have ten more weeks of this show.
The anti-establismentarian in me loves, too, that she's totally a gross hippie, which is so not the product Idol usually tries to sell us. She has dreads and weird teeth and she carries around a sack of "lucky charms;" it's all so Austin, TX that I was thunderstruck to hear that she's from Ohio or some godforsaken place (no offense, Ohio). All of it wraps up nicely into an amazing package that deserves all the fame and fortune she gets off this show. I hope it's tons, because she's really the only one on the big stage keeping things awesome.
No joke, if there's an erosion of common sense and she gets sent home, I'm fucking done with this show. Fucking DONE. Until next year, of course.

6 Comments:

Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

I can't watch this train wreck. And I use to! A little. I miss Paula. I miss her kookiness. The two women on the panel are annoying know-nothings. They commit the most grievous sin a performer can commit: they're dull. I know what Randy is gong to say before he opens his stupid mouth. He's a ball of overused, tired cliches. But I'd like to have a beer with Simon. You should do a mini-post on the judges.

3:04 PM  
Blogger Cray said...

Dude, just got word from Ohio. ...pissed.

2:18 AM  
Blogger Bill From Gainesville said...

That is a funny ass post right there! Pretty close to the way I see it as well Except I do think Big Mike has some serious talent and if the universe is watching and paying attention he should come in second to Bowersox's marvelousness. Also I think he is called Big Mike not because of his height, but because he can bench press your house.

10:26 AM  
Blogger LSL said...

I don't even watch that damn show and I loved this entry! Classic ZFS!

1:32 AM  
Blogger K10 said...

Hey, new reader here. And I grew up in Arlington, so...there's that. And I feel your pain.

Excellent review! I checked out after that headband-making girl butchered The Beatles.

3:47 PM  
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