{"id":420,"date":"2007-03-25T22:36:21","date_gmt":"2007-03-26T02:36:21","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-03-25T22:36:21","modified_gmt":"2007-03-25T22:36:21","slug":"in-defense-of-american-idol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/in-defense-of-american-idol\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of <em>American Idol<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spend more than a few minutes browsing RTH during springtime, and like as not you&#8217;ll run across somebody either busting on <em>American Idol<\/em> or trying to explain to the naysayers why it&#8217;s worth watching.  I&#8217;m firmly in the latter camp, and, at Mr. Mod&#8217;s prodding, I thought I&#8217;d take a moment to share the reasons why.  Hopefully, I&#8217;ll manage to steer clear of any yawn-worthy defenses of &#8220;pop&#8221; music (how many times do we have to go down <em>that<\/em> road?), as well as the temptation to get all catty about the frankly awful performances that can certainly still be found on <strong>Fox<\/strong> every Tuesday night at 8:00 pm.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MKF6TGQjasE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Because there <em>are<\/em> some awful performances to be found there.  I suspect it&#8217;s these awful performances that cause folks like Mr. Mod to get all <strong>tight-assed<\/strong> about the show &#8212; and the pepole who tune in for the train-wreck cheesefest, then breathlessly blog about how bad <strong>Sanjaya Malakar<\/strong>&#8216;s version of &#8220;You Really Got Me&#8221; was, make it easy for folks like Moddy to &#8220;take the high road&#8221; by simply never watching.  I don&#8217;t exactly understand how it&#8217;s easier to spend an hour pondering sides three and four of &#8220;The Best and the Rest Of Be Bop Deluxe&#8221; than watching 10 kids sing their hearts out for America, but whatever.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OzkNMiKjrGU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The thing is, week in and week out, there are some fine performances to be found on this show.  And if the sight and sound of a bubbly 17-year-old suddenly and unexpectedly finding <strong>the dark, molten core<\/strong> of a song like &#8220;I Who Have Nothing&#8221; (yes, the overblown Tom Jones number) &#8212; and making it believable &#8212; doesn&#8217;t make you sit up and take notice, then I&#8217;m at a loss to explain what&#8217;s good about the show, or about music, and I&#8217;ll let you get back to indexing your <strong>Pere Ubu<\/strong> albums.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s another factor to consider, too:  in this fragmented, niche-marketed, cabbage-shredder-sliced world we live in, <em>American Idol<\/em> is one of the only shows &#8212; hell, maybe the <em>only<\/em> show &#8212; that everybody watches and everybody talks about.  We can only seem to get 46% of the country to vote for the bloody president, fer chrissake, so I&#8217;ll take my conversation starters where I can find them.  And it&#8217;s about <strong>music<\/strong>, people!  People aren&#8217;t getting together at the coliseum to watch Christians getting eaten by lions, or gathering at Nuremburg under bright red banners&#8230; we&#8217;re watching 12 kids singing as hard as they can for the chance to make music for a living!  You can get all <strong>cynical<\/strong> about Simon&#8217;s approval of contestants that keep the ratings up, or Paula&#8217;s insanity, or rumors about the voting process if you want, but the core of the show remains <strong>pure and unsullied<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>So, people, I urge you to watch this show, at least once.  Pull your thumb outta yer ass.  Pretend to be <strong>Clive Davis<\/strong>.  Imagine how you&#8217;d coach the kids to help them sing better.  Give <strong>Randy Jackson<\/strong> a sock in the nose.  Cheer <strong>Simon Cowell<\/strong> on for telling it like it is.  Have fun, fer chrissake!<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to your comments on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spend more than a few minutes browsing RTH during springtime, and like as not you&#8217;ll run across somebody either busting on American Idol or trying to explain to the naysayers why it&#8217;s worth watching. I&#8217;m firmly in the latter camp, and, at Mr. Mod&#8217;s prodding, I thought I&#8217;d take a moment to share the reasons <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/in-defense-of-american-idol\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}