Anoop On My Mind (Idol 8 Round of 11)

Last Christmas, my local radio station played a recording of David Bowie singing a duet on Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby. It should have been beyond strange, but it wasn’t. Idol theme nights frequently present those sorts of situations. It’s often hard enough for a young artist to master one genre. Most of the winners have found some way to adapt and even flourish when forced into unfamiliar musical waters. Carrie Underwood did Heart. David Cook did Billie Jean. Chris Daughtry did Walk the Line. Oh yeah! I forgot, Chris Daughtry didn’t win, the show now just acts like he did. Anyway, Grand Ole’ Opry night with Randy Travis presented several of this year’s finalists with just such an opportunity.

For Anoop Desai, aka the Desi Next Door, country night presented a problem. India’s the second most populous country in the world, but you don’t see a lot of Indian athletes in the Olympics and despite the sheer number of Bollywood musicals that come out each year you don’t see many Indian country western singers. I know India had a strange fascination with Jim Reeves (the guy was even bigger in Sri Lanka), but I don’t know that necessarily meant that he spawned a lot of imitators there.

Of course, Anoop is American. He’s Indian by heritage. He’s also one of the first Idol finalists who appears to be getting a graduate degree at UNC Chapel Hill no less (Go Tyler!) , but he grew up in North Carolina just like Kellie Pickler and Bucky Covington. Maybe if he goes deep into the season, we can have rumors about Anoop dating Kellie. “Ah nevah heard of no aloo gobi. Is it something you put on a hamburger?”

In the meantime, Anoop is sort of an antidote to Sanjaya mania. This time they have a Desi contestant who works hard, dresses conservatively (even a bit on the preppy side), and who plays within the lines of the show. Like Sanjaya, he also appears to have a huge reserve of fans as in I get hits for Anoop Desai and I barely mentioned him last week. This week the judges anointed him an actual serious contestant for his version of Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind.”

Anoop was genuinely good as in listenable. Good enough to keep this guy around for a couple weeks, quite likely. He faces two significant issues. His voice is very nice, but no one claims that it’s “Oh wow, that guy has an instrument!” Second, there’s nothing that unique about Anoop’s approach to the music. Actually, one can say that about two thirds of the singers who make the final. Remember Phil Stacy, Vonzell Solomon, Anthony Federov? All three of them went very deep into the competition. There’s a lot to be said for being, fun, likeable, respectful, and sharing an ethnicity with like a billion people who do the tech support for all the cell phone companies :}

Anyway, if Jim Reeves was big in India, why can’t Anoop Desai be big doing country music on Fox TV? He just took a country ballad straight on and I think that’s what made the performance work so well. Anoop finally let go of “gotta perform” (to me Beat It was sort of Sanjaya like in that sense) and he just sang. That he did it in a more or less unexpected genre (assuming you think he’s Indian first not a Carolina guy first) made it all the more effective. In the meantime, have the judges ever said Sanjaya’s name in Anoop’s presence?



Three seasons ago, Chris Daughtry made himself a serious contender by going alt.rock with Johnny Cash’s Walk the Line. He’s a very different performer, but Adam Lambert tried to follow with his attempt to cut into Anoop Desai’s demographic with a South Asian take on Ring of Fire. Once I got over the Chris Daughtry playbook thing, I actually enjoyed it for being affected, pretentious, and pure camp (It also verged on the Sanjaya playbook as well). When he hit the falsetto section, I wasn’t sure if Adam Lambert was laughing at or attempting to laugh with the show. I don’t know how it’ll affect the voting, but the show’s supposed to be fun and this was fun, something to actually talk about. Who knew that Man in Black had alternate interpretations?

Still, the highlight with Adam Lambert was Randy Travis. It was fascinating to watch two gay men on completely different sides of the flamboyance divide. To Randy, you deal with being gay by suddenly marrying your female manager whose 19 years older than you after you get arrested for “loitering”. To Adam, you just let America know that you don’t give a “S*#$” about what they think. I know, the whole gay thing with Randy is controversial and that he strongly denies the speculation about his sexuality, but if you ever asked me about proof his obvious discomfort with Adam might have been as good as any. It was like, I don’t want America to think that I find being around this Edward Scissorhands guy comfortable in any way. Not sure, I’ve ever seen a mentor on the show work so hard to distance himself from a contestant. Maybe they’ll get Elton John or Barry Manilow to mentor again and if Adam’s still around we can see how they respond to him.

Lil Rounds decided to do straight up country and the judges hated her for it. I’m not sure why so many of the guys crossed genders for country night. It seemed like one did Martina Mcbride and two did Carrie Underwood. Maybe it was to “honor” Randy Travis in some way? btw One of the measures of really winning American Idol is that the contestants start covering your songs. They do Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daughtry, and Clay Aiken. No one covers Taylor Hicks or Jordin Sparks. That said, I guess I’m officially in the I don’t get Danny Gokey camp. It might just be me, but if you’re a church music director and your wife just died, shouldn’t you be able to get a little more feeling into a song like Jesus Take the Wheel? Personally, I find the song absurd even when Carrie Underwood sings it, but I find that Danny Gokey sings with passion without bringing out the passion in the song/music itself. The really good singers do the latter. The "passion" bit shouldn't sound the same in every song. Sorry, Paula!

I haven’t watched the show obsessively this year, but I feel like I’ve known Megan Joy so long that I remember her back when she was Megan Corkery. Some say the key to success in pop music is the business of walking the tightrope between the familiar and the novel. Megan Joy appears to understand that. She has a very mainstream look interrupted by a sleeve of tattoos, something that works for her but didn’t work for Carly Smithson (though she may not last as long as Carly did). She mentions that she was influenced by Bjork. I also hear some of the things that Michelle Shocked would do with her vocals sometimes. Even though she had the flu, I thought she did the tightrope thing very well on Patsy Cline’s Walkin After Midnight. I keep waiting for her thing to wear thin and thought that had happened last week. Now, I’m not so sure.

On the other end, I’m not sure what kind of mind games the judges are playing with Alexis Grace with the whole “this is the kind of singer we think you should be” bit, but it seems to be messing with her head. Somehow, this seemed worse than Paula’s bit of “We loved the piano” now “I hate the piano” thing with Scott Mcintyre. Btw, I’m pretty sure that the arguments between Paula, Kara, and Simon this season are more or less scripted. Maybe, it’s because Alexis Grace has the whole waif look thing down, but it made me want to cry. I’m not saying that her Jolene was compelling in any way. It’s just that she felt almost written off. She maybe should have changed the name of the song to Allison and instead of it being about stealing men, it could have been about having a better voice and more grit and stealing judges.

I did do some Googling after last Wednesday and I was a little surprised to learn that Allison Iraheta already won a recording contract and fifty thousand dollars through Quinceanera on the Telemundo network. So is it you can’t have a current recording contract in English? She’s still really good. The fascinating thing to me is that she appeared to take Blame It On Your Heart straight on, yet at the risk of sounding like Randy, she stayed very distinctive. It’s not like I think Allison Iraheta should sing country music, but she seems to commit to her material in way that the older performers on the show can’t. It helps that she has a really strong voice, but it is interesting to see a young performer who’s not trying to sound like other people. As good as David Archuleta was musically, I wouldn’t say I could ever pin down a long term musical identity with his performances. There’s something much more personal about Allison Iraheta’s vocals that goes beyond just being loud and intense. Anyway, if anyone won the benefit from a theme that doesn’t suit you prize last night, it was Allison.

I did think that Matt Giraud sounded much better this week. I did notice that the judges worked very hard to justify giving wild cards to Anoop and Matt. I suspect they’d rather not have all four of their choices go down in the first three shows. In the meantime, Kara got to let America know that she’s a size queen by commenting on So Small.

Kris Allen did fine with Garth Brooks, it’s just that eight seasons in I’ve seen the tactic a few times before. Iirc Ace Young did the same sensitive country guy schtick with Tonight I Wanna Cry a few seasons ago and Chris Richardson did something similar with um Tonight I Wanna Cry. That, however, was far preferable to Michael Sarver’s good ole boy act at the beginning of the show. First his mouthful of Garth Brooks was forgettable enough, but that whole, “I’m big, I’m tough, I work on an oil rig, and I don’t pay attention to criticism” thing didn’t play well with me. How do I put this? Michael was pandering. If Michael Sarver got in a real fight say with Adam Lambert, I could tell you in advance which of the two is going to go running and which would stay in the Ring of Fire fingernail polish and all. You want to talk about just having fun? That would be fun.
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A Number One Hit in Norway (American Idol 8 round of 13)

I came home from the gym (my wife got tired of seeing me watch America’s Biggest Loser and telling her “See Dear, I’m not that bad….yet. so she got me a gym membership for Christmas0 just in time for Scott Mcintyre to sing in some piano bar that seats four thousand people and multiple tv cameras. About a month ago, we made the switch to HDTV after I convinced my wife that it would be patriotic to stimulate the economy by buying a Japanese television. Scott made his way through Keep the Faith ably enough and part way through I’m almost convinced that he’s Brooke White’s visually-impaired cousin. Where Brooke was the blonde leading the bland, Scott is more or less the blind leading the bland. We’re just not talking Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Stevie Ray Vaughn here. The guy’s really earnest, professional enough, and if he’s ever had a memorable performance during his Idol run, I guess I missed it. He’s in the finals mostly because he has a good back story. The show’s had any number of heaing-impaired contestants in the past (not to mention one of the judges), but he’s Idol’s first visually-impaired finalist.

He does his thing, even had to dance a little bit, and Ryan and the judges get to talk about how inspiring it all is. If you haven’t noticed, while last season was the year of the ringer, this season it’s all about the back story. In addition to Scott we’ve got young mothers, a guy whose wife died just before Idol Auditions (in a couple years, I’m sure someone will be accused of killing his or her mate just to get through to Hollywood), a guy who works on an oil rig, a guy who was photographed kissing another guy, a hair-color challenged Hispanic teenager who got her start singing in a Spanish-speaking shopping mall, and well you get the idea. They’ve got all these great stories to tell maybe for some American Idol themed movie (I forgot, they tried that one already), but I’ve got to tell you the soundtrack’s going to be pretty thin.

Maybe I’ve just been through too many seasons of the show, but it’s gotten to the point where every contestant has some analogue from some other season. Michael Sarver appears to be some clone of Matt Rogers. Lil Rounds seems to be George Huff’s sister. Megan Corkery was grafted from Carly Smithson and Carmen Rasmussen. Matt Giraud’s never been spotted in the same place with Chris Richardson. Say what you want about Scott Savol, but he was distinctive and memorable. Yes, I hated Constantine, Kevin Covais, Amanda Overmyer, and Jasmine Trias, but they were at least individual enough as performers that they didn’t just feel like this endless blur of ninety second performances. I’ve even missed a few installments of the semi-finals this year, but when I tuned into the final 13 (right now it looks like a stupid idea since they have maybe 4 singers who anyone might remember) I felt no sense of having missed anything.

To me, the formula for reviving Idol has always been simple. It has nothing to do with how they pick semi-finalists or judge’s rescuing favorites mid-finals or adding some benefit show called Idol Cares in the middle of the season. The music itself needs to be exciting. Last year, they tried to address that by bringing in performers with more professional experience. I thought the general level of the final 12 was better, but they also managed to suck all the personality out of the show by not letting the performers freelance in their dismounts with Ryan or to a certain extent in the actual performances. There was nothing like Nadia Turner showing up in a Mohawk, Kellie Pickler trying to sing Bohemian Rhapsody, or Katharine Mcphee nearly coming out of her dress then more or less babbling during her chat with Ryan. I did have several people comment about David Archuleta having a magical voice, but while the level of the music was higher there just weren’t many performances that felt all that magical. Some people talk about David Cook’s Billie Jean and Hello, but I have to confess I barely think of those when I try to remember really good musical moments on the show.

Does Idol 8 have anyone would really could be a star? I simply just don’t know. To be honest, it sort of reminds me of Season 6 (Jordin Sparks) where none of the finalists generated much excitement despite the presence of one of the better singers the show has ever had in Melinda Doolittle.

I would say that the first show of this year’s finals had probably five memorable moments and oddly enough two of them involved Scott Mcintyre. First, Simon probably coined his own showbiz epitaph, “It’s fine being artistic, just not on this show.” Second, there was this wonderfully whacky moment where they tried to let Scott know that Siedah Garrett, the composer of perhaps the most obscure song in the entire Michael Jackson catalogue was in the audience. The judges point in the direction of Siedah Garrett. Apparently they momentarily forgot that Scott had no way of seeing her anyway (just a bit awkward). Making matters worse, the camera man couldn’t find her either. It was “Hey look everyone, here’s the composer of that song none of you have ever heard of!”

Simon later introduced tv chef, Gordon Ramsay, and it was an almost comparable moment. I first went, “Is that the prime minister of England (Gordon Brown)?” Maybe Jason Mesnick can be a guest judge this season to counter the Melissa Rycroft on Dancing with the Stars thing? If you remember, he picked Molly Malaney in that show’s singing contest which proved to be America’s first hint that something wasn’t on the level with that season.

For me the one actually memorable musical moment of the Round of 13 came from Adam Lambert. For one, he appeared to know how to command the stage and the song rather than just battling to get through the thing. Kara made a good point during the show about (I think it was Kara, I try so hard to blot anything she says or does out of consciousness) establishing a level with a performance and maintaining it. My main criticism of Danny Gokey was he established it with the first few bars of Pretty Young Thing then I simply didn’t remember any of the rest. I would say that sexual ambiguity is a big part of pulling off a song like Black or White,it’s one of the reasons that Michael Jackson’s so hard for singers to cover. Adam Lambert may have succeeded at least partly because he was comfortable going there as a performer and it’s very much a part of his charm.
I do think the judges got a tad carried away about Adam Lambert. In fact, I don’t know what to say about Paula sending him to the finals along with Danny Gokey. Nonetheless, his was the one performance that I paid attention to throughout. I think the fascinating thing about the guy as a performer is that he tightropes between Butch and Queen really effectively (whatever his actual preferences) and that really is sort of unique and new. I know that Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Michael Jackson have all played with projecting gender ambiguity, but Adam Lambert’s way of brining it off is unquestionably his own. The big question is how the Idol voting demographic will react over the long term. I’m sure he’ll have rabid fans early, but as you get into the later rounds you have to get votes from the great middle middle and this was a show that couldn’t quite buy into a rocker until it got David Cook who had the demeanor of the rock guy next door.

I do have to congratulate the show. They got through two hours of Michael Jackson covers without one slip up about either plastic surgeries or little boys.

I don’t know what her shelf life on the show will be, but I really did like Allison Iraheta, Give It To Me. In fact, I think she may be the best female rocker the show’s had yet. She has a huge voice, projects a sort of androgynous un-tamed quality (one of my issues with the likes of Gina Glocksen and Amanda Overmyer was the whole “out there” quality never felt all that genuine with either of them), and unlike other teen contestants she seemed to have a strong identity as a performer. Okay, I loved the footage of her singing in that furniture mall.

Finally, the judges’ wild card thing appears to have backfired in a big way. Jorgay (copyright Beckeye) and Jasmine were the first two voted off the island, or in Jorgay Nunez’s case back to the island where he can go help Tatianna learn a second song. It was the judges who “saved” Anoop Desai. Now they’re telling him to “beat it”. I’d have to say that Matt Giraud sounded like he was playing in the same level piano bar as Scott Mcintyre. Maybe he’ll last a while depending on how he splits votes with Kris Allen, but I don’t see him as a serious contender for America’s dwindling entertainment dollars.

A final self-indulgent personal note. Several of my friends have asked me about my plans to cover Idol this year. I had said that I would decide once they started the finals. Now that the finals have started, I have to say I’m still not sure. It’s going to need some sort of Reality Show Viagra and unless whatever they did takes a while to kick in, this season’s on the limp side so far. As Randy Jackson put it, “I always say the same shit every day, so I’m just going to say it.”

This is my measure. They did 13 Michael Jackson covers last night and I don’t know that any of them, with the possible exception of Adam Lambert, approached David Cook’s Billie Jean much less the one time King of Pop himself. At least they could have had Alexis Grace dress up as Bubbles or something.
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