After following American Idol quite closely last year, I've gone back to not paying as much attention to it this season. I did get to watch some episodes but there were things that kept me disinterested. First, I think there was so much focus on the friction between Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj. In a lot of cases, it seemed there was a lot more focus on these two judges (or Nicki in particular) than on the contestants. Also, the contestants didn't seem to wow me enough overall. It seemed to me that there was such emphasis on finding a female winner that the top 10 (or even top 20) was stacked with talented women and men who weren't up to to par. As such, I felt that the talent in the top 10 was a bit watered down.
That said, there were some highlights. While I didn't see all the episodes, I do think that Fantasia's return to the Idol stage and Angie Miller's audition singing her original song are two of my favorite performances of the season. Candice's "Somewhere" during the top 3 week was madly raved about but I thought it wasn't as great as it was made out to be. I actually prefer Latoya London's "Somewhere" back in Season 3 (and she didn't even get a standing ovation from the judges then; I really think that in recent years, the judges have been needlessly and inaccurately frivolous with their standing Os). In my opinion, Candice's real moment came when she performed The Cure's "Love Song" with a jazzy arrangement. Now this was truly amazing! Check it out here:
video uploaded in youtube by americanidol
With the Idol ratings this season dropping to all time lows, you wonder what kind of changes they will put in to stay relevant next season. We know that Randy Jackson won't be there and it seems neither will Nicki. I do hope Keith Urban stays because he always seemed to have the most useful advice to give the contestants. I do have to say though that I'm more interested and impressed overall with the performances on "The Voice". Maybe I should start writing about this show instead.
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