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Metro News - Toronto - Idiot Box Rick McGinnis

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CeeeJay:
Idol audiences getting older
AGING IDOL: The ominous idea that American Idol’s audience is aging got a new burst of speed with a story in the Philadelphia Enquirer this weekend on an episode of The New Adventures Of Old Christine where Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her mommy friends obsess over Idol. For Enquirer TV columnist David Hiltbrand, it wasn’t just that last week’s Idol featured guest coaches who haven’t had hits since Petticoat Junction was on the air, but that the CBS sitcom — which Hiltbrand calls “TV’s ultimate  mommy show,” featuring characters that he calls “late boomer” — made Idol both a part of the plot and a character point.
“That’s a deadly cultural marker for the Fox singing contest,” writes Hiltbrand, “the equivalent of looking up to see vultures circling.
It’s the ultimate confirmation that the kids have moved on and the adults have taken over.  Now if only they could figure out how to text-message in their votes!”
In his column in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, TV columnist Alan Sepinwall takes issue with the theory that we have Howard Stern
and the votefortheworst.com website to blame for the persistence of Sanjaya on the show. The website, whose express mission is
to mess with Idol by stuffing its digital ballot boxes, has been taking a lot of credit for Sanjaya’s safe status despite his wildly  inadequate performances, but Sepinwall isn’t having any of it.
“Remember,” he writes,“only three weeks ago, the  Web site was backing Antonella and Sundance, and did either of them make it
to the finals? No. They didn’t have enough juice to get Sundance past Sanjaya, and they didn’t have enough to get Antonella
past Stephanie or Haley...”
“Sanjaya is still around for the same reason Kevin Covais made it two weeks into the finals last year, for the same reason John
Stevens outlasted Jennifer Hudson in season three (pre-VFTW): He’s a nonthreatening teenage boy whom young girls and older women (by far the two biggest voting blocs the show has) find cute. No more, no less.”
And, I’d hasten to add, he’s here because guys with big record collections and snarky young people whose favorite bands include
The Arcade Fire don’t watch Idol — or don’t admit to it — and certainly don’t vote. The young girls have been there from the
beginning, but as I’ve said over and over, the tipping point for the older women — the “Old Christine” demographic — was probably
Taylor Hicks’ win last year. Idol’s producers can either ignore this demographic shift, or cater to it knowing that these women have
more money than teenage girls.
So on next year’s Idol I say we can expect more commercials for menopause relief, musical guests like Neil Diamond and Christopher Cross, and the altogether depressing spectacle of young people singing songs from albums that were hits before they were born, like Carole King’s Tapestry, the Eagles’ Hotel California, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, a cultural fetish as boomer ubiquitous as copies of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

TexasLady:
Interesting comments CeeJay!  Thanks for posting.

CeeeJay:

published march 28, 2007

Gwen Stefani quite useless Tells two Idols she can’t help them
 
Introducing last night's Gwen Stefani episode of Idol, host Ryan Seacrest explained to the audience that the remaining ten Idol contestants are allowed to perform songs that influenced Stefani and her band No Doubt, which is good, because the next two hours would be hell if we had to listen to versions of Hollaback Girl and Don't Speak all night.

Stefani tells the camera that the bands she loves aren't known for their "big singing and amazing voice," which is a nice thing to let us know, and utterly at odds with the Idol ethos. She also looks like she's had her nose done, but that's got nothing to do with anything - I'm just saying, is all.

Coaching LaKisha on a Donna Summer's Last Dance, she says that "I should be asking her for advice," which is flattering - and true. What LaKisha doesn't have is Stefani's abundant personality, which has little to do with singing ability, though it might ultimately be the cause of the downfall we've all begun to anticipate.

Chris Sligh does Everything She Does Is Magic, pulls off a decent enough Sting impression, and does little to lift the evening out of its hyperkaraoke rut. Gina Glocksen is contestant closest to Stefani in terms of image and vocal ability, and she chooses to do I'll Stand By You, a latter day Pretenders ballad that's a long way from Kid or Brass In Pocket. It's clear that the Pretenders have influenced Stefani, but so have The Smiths, and this was like choosing a tune from a Morrissey solo album instead of How Soon Is Now. It was also dull.

Sanjaya is the first contestant to actually take on a song Stefani actually sang, which he sings in a sort of topknot fauxhawk that'll be all over the internet today. His actual performance is immaterial, as we all know by now, and while I'm at it I think I'll just skip over Haley Scarnato as well.

There's more Police with Phil Stacey, and more big tent karaoke, and more Donna Summer from Melinda Doolittle, whom Stefani also admits that she had nothing to teach. It was a very predictable Idol less than halfway through, right down to Melinda's performance which was up to its usual high standards.

Blake does The Cure and spares us the beatbox, which is the best thing he's done so far. Simon calls him the "frontrunning guy," which is, in case you aren't English, called damning with faint praise. Jordin Sparks does the first No Doubt song of the night; she was only 11 when it came out, which would explain why she sings it with an easy familiarity no other performer could probably manage.

Chris Richardson closes the night with Don't Speak, undersells the chorus big time, and underlines why a decent voice doesn't always sell a song that, like much of the music Stefani says influenced her, doesn't have much life beyond its original performance.
 
 

CeeeJay:
published march 29, 2007

Fat and funny shot down

The obligatory joke about Sanjaya’s hair was dispensed with on the top of last night’s American Idol results episode, as Ryan Seacrest walked out on the stage wearing a wig modeled after the pony mane fauxhawk that generated the most buzz after Tuesday night’s tepid performance show.

Before the night’s drama, there’s the weekly Ford commercial, featuring the final 10 in cowboy drag singing the Bobby Fuller Four’s I Fought The Law.

It’s the most insipid Ford spot so far, compared with the swaggering original, never mind the Clash cover. Swagger isn’t something we’re seeing much of in this season of Idol.

Commercial break over, Seacrest goes through the semifinalists to net the final three; Phil Stacey is the first one called, Hayley Scarnato is the second, and Sanjaya is safe for another week, which either validates some gnomic strategy, chalks up another pyrrhic victory for votefortheworst.com, or testifies to the text-messaging skills of soccer moms.

Gwen Stefani performs one of her utterly forgettable solo numbers, which features a lot of cute but dreary choreography, a small but sturdy chorus repeated incessantly, and chants of “oh” and “ah” that are supposed to fill in the bits in the middle.

A fellow named Akon runs around the stage a lot in the role of what the industry calls “street.”

Chris Sligh joins Phil and Hayley in the center of the stage, but Ryan gives Phil a reprieve and sends him back to join the rest of the pack.

Simon predicts that “it’s bye-bye Curly” tonight, and he’s right, proving that fat and funny goes about as far in Idol as it does getting dates in college.

He exits singing and telling Phil Stacey that “you owe me 50 bucks.”
 
 

TexasLady:
LOL on Phil and owing him money. Phil just KNEW he was safe and he had such a smug look on his face. OOPS.. you are in the bottom 3!

BTW, We need a Fauxhawk smiley face!!! Please Rob find us one!

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