Why You Should Get Off Your Ass and Vote for Adam Lambert

[zhai]

Still in the process of catching up here, but as the event for this is imminent, I wanted to post quickly about the rather odd mental moment I had last week.

jsridler and I have been watching "American Idol". We watched last year, too, and this was largely his initiative since I have trouble keeping track of TV programs. (The TV is still an enigmatic box

Comments

[genmaicha]

Lord, and I just posted, mentioning that he's the reason I've gotten at all interested in American Idol. Mind if I edit and link this?

I am completely rooting for him, have been from the start. :)

[zhai]

Link away, of course. :)

[brennye]

That's cool. :) Now that's two bonafied talents that's come out of your class. Better find out who's up there with you and Adam before you go back for any reunions.

Linkied too.

[zhai]

Hah. Well, 1) he was in the class after me, not mine, and 2) I am nowhere near in his league nor am likely to ever be, but it's nice of you to think so. ;) What I'm mildly curious about are how many from my year will/have wound up in video games, considering the primitive tech we had at the school.

[maggiedr]

I just want to squee over you going to school with Adam Lambert. He's my favorite AI contestant ever. As talented as he is, I fear the Gokey vote will go to Kris, giving him a huge bloc. But yeah, his career is definitely going to skyrocket one way or another.

[zhai]

Do you usually vote? Yeah, the Gokey thing is interesting -- but I have to admit I've disliked Kris since the beginning, and was incensed already that he beat out Allison, to say nothing of Gokey or Adam. After Adam, Gokey was my favorite, so I'm curious whether anyone else has the same reaction, and would flip the other way, Gokey->Adam. It should be an interesting show, for sure.

[jsciv]

Gokey suffered from a limited musical background: he grew up not listening to much music, which really hurt him in knowing songs to select, so he leveled off early rather than growing throughout the competition. It also hurt him that the producers chose to focus a bit too much on his wife's death: people began to think he was milking his tragedy for votes (which was almost certainly not true). But he never had one of those late-season "defining" moments that could propel him to the finals.

[zhai]

You are turning into my go-to person for all things Idol, and I had no idea. :) Thanks very much for commenting here and offering these insights. It is unfortunate, the focus on the tragedy -- I sometimes felt that way about earlier contestants and their kids. In this case it does seem like it wasn't his doing -- but what's interesting is the "wisdom of crowds" effect that eliminated Gokey correlating with his musical experience, or lack thereof. As with everyone else, to some extent the real test will be what he does after Idol. The doors are open for all of them, it seems like.

[zhai]

His performance genres are all over the charts, yeah, which is unusual it seems for Idol period, not just this season.

Woe to the house divided. :)

[jsciv]

One thing that's really nice about this F2 is that the guys are very obviously good friends (you can see it in their interactions onstage and all the stories from backstage agree). They roomed together in the mansion and bonded: if you noticed last week in the hometown footage when Kris was getting his song from the judges he had one nail painted, that was chipped. When they got back from the visits Adam fixed up the chip and took the polish off of his own nail on that hand in a sort of solidarity move.

The story that's really amazing is that the families are close, too. One of the moments almost every reporter seems to comment on from last Wednesday's show was after the cameras stopped rolling: their mothers gave each other the biggest "proud mom" hug ever. They're really that close.

So don't keep the house too divided: these guys are both happy for the other. :)

[jsciv]

There are legitimate reasons to vote for Kris. His vocal talent is less than Adam, but Kris is far more obviously a singer/songwriter, while Adam is a singer/performer.

I'm a huge AI fan and participate a bit too enthusiastically on a fan board... :) and the debate rages unchecked about these guys, and about what the contest is really about: is it Kris' brand of performing, or is it Adam's?

Either way both of these young men have fantastic futures in front of them at this point. I haven't decided yet who will get my votes (if I'm even able to vote: I usually get the busy signal), but I'm definitely looking forward to tonight's show to help me decide!! :)

[zhai]

That's an interesting point, and thanks for offering it, since, like I said, I have zero exposure to the fan community.

I'm sure this is already covered as a question, but I'm curious how anyone can even make a case for the contest being about a singer/songwriter, since they're never asked to perform their own songs? Don't we really have no idea how good either of them are at composition and/or original work?

Now that I've been watching for two seasons, even if it was off and on, as a social phenomenon I do find it quite interesting. There's a noticeable mutation going on in what the audience is preferring even independent of what individuals they have to choose from. There's much more rock in the contest this year than there was last year, and my understanding is there was much more last year than the year before that.

I agree about the fantastic futures, though, and hope the same is true for Gokey and Allison as well.

[jsciv]

We do know that Kris has done his own arrangements of almost every song and the word around is that he helped most of the other contestants at one time or another to do the same. The "unusual" versions of songs that both Adam (and David Cook last year) has done are repeats of covers from other artists, whereas the versions of the songs Kris did were his own. We don't have any original compositions from Kris, but if nothing else, what he did with Heartless impressed a lot of people

[devilwrites]

A defense of David Cook, whom I adore: he did do his own arrangement of "Always Be My Baby" and "Little Sparrow." That was my understanding. :)

Erin, I think one of the reasons the whole songwriter thing is taking off may be in part because after Idol is over, it's about album sales. Great performances are one thing, but if the album tanks, its tough cookies. Season five winner Taylor Hicks was supposedly a great performer (not to my taste) but his album sales have been HORRIBLE, even though he won by a landslide.

With songwriters, voters feel they know what they're going to get with an album, which is really where it counts the most once Idol is over.