I'm about to talk about American Idol.

I've never watched more than one or two episodes of this show in my life until this season. This season I ended up watching quite a bit of it because Sara loves it. Her love for the show was infectious enough that I actually found myself watching it a couple of times when she wasn't even around.

Like last night.

I watched the American Idol finale because Sara was at work and we agreed we'd download or stream the Lost finale and watch it together tonight.

Taylor Hicks was probably my favorite contestant from the start. I know he was Sara's. He was definitely my favorite musician on the show, but sometimes I felt myself being swayed by Katherine McFeelme and her bumpy parts.

I never actually thought Taylor would win, though. That is until Tuesday of this week when they finally went head to head for the last time. While Taylor has always been a better and more interesting musician, I wasn't sure America would be able to get past whatever it is that makes the majority of people value pop music over infintely more valuable things like soul music, talent, or feeding starving children.

On Tuesday, though, McFeely just didn't bring it. Her musical performances were lackluster, she refused to stand up while singing, and there wasn't nearly enough cleavage to overcome Hick's down-home likeabillity and musical chops.

So obvious was Hick's talent on Tuesday that it even overshadowed the retarded, completely-innapropriate-for-his-style, sacharine-to-the-point-of-a-diabetic-coma song that the American Idol geniuses wrote to be his first single. God, could those people miss the point of Taylor Hicks anymore?

I didnt' watch the whole show. I tuned in peridocially between working on a couple of writing projects. Somehow I timed it out perfectly to see Prince perform and to see Taylor become the next American Idol. Those two both felt like serendipity. Not so when I tuned in once to see a strangely KD Lang-ish Clay Aiken singing a duet with that Golumn creature from those Hobbit movies. Neeeughh.

Anyway. I'm glad Hicks won just because it speaks well for America's taste in some way. Like Sara pointed out, though, American Idol really has no clue how to handle an artist like Hicks, so we can look forward to more retardo-ballads that don't come anywhere near utilizing his soulful voice. Also, we won't be able to escape that insufferable "soul patrol" crap for the next year. So you know... hooray.

Wow. I just wrote a longer column on American Idol than I have any other topic in probably the last six months. May God have mercy on my soul.

file under: random


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