American Idol Results Show: Listen to the Beatles again
American Idol Results Show: Hear the Beatles again
In week 2 of Lennon-McCartney-Harrison karaoke, American Idol steals the title of “Worst Beatles Impersonation Ever” away from longtime champions the Bee Gees.
An Advocate.com exclusive posted March 21, 2008
I’m learning a lot of important spiritual lessons from my continued reading of Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul. Like how even being related to a semifamous person is its own reward. For example, Chris Richardson’s grandmother likes to tell people who her grandson is everywhere she goes:
“She was in the hospital last week and said to the nurse who was taking care of her, ‘Do you know whose leg your washing?’
And the nurse said, ‘No, I do not.’
Then Big Momma started in with ‘Do you watch American Idol?’” [p.76]
The story gets super-heartwarming after that. Trust me. And it’s not even just the healing, spirit-enriching stories of familial love that have got me fixated on this book. It’s the behind-the-scenes magic too. Like how the show’s stage manager — I forget her name — finally realized after Season One how big the show had become when the tour went to Las Vegas and there were fans there “dressed up like Kelly Clarkson.” [p.159]
Now, how does one dress like Kelly Clarkson? I have some ideas:
1. No makeup.
2. Floor-skimming fuck-you-I’m-having-a-full-order-of-Chili’s-baby-back-ribs dresses.
3. Resort wear made of neckties.
Now, the show. It seemed like everyone was really trying last week. Someone sat them all down and said, “There was this band called the Beatles and they were really, really famous once. People will despise you for even trying to sing their songs in public, so you have to try really hard not to suck the donkey dick too much out there.”
Not like there’s been very strict supervision over the years over who gets to sing this stuff. All you have to do is go to YouTube to check out Stars on 45 — or the clip of Dusty Springfield, Juliet Prowse, and Mireille Mathieu doing a medley with Burt Bacharach — to hear how ruined these songs can get. And that’s not even the worst of it. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Across the Universe are readily available on DVD. And at SuckMybBatles.com you can brutalize your ears with renditions of “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” and “With a Little Help From My Friends” by Tony Randall, joined by Bernadette Peters, Anthony Newley, Diahann Carroll, Mel Tillis, and Paul Williams.
But anyway, this week there was no supervision. At all. The dead rose from their graves and blood rained down from the sky. Anguished howls of curdled agony from Heather Mills’s throat roared over the Atlantic Ocean, hitting their intended target, the power grid that heats the pool, cools the mansion, and spins the ferris wheel at Neverland Ranch. The explosion threw sparks half a mile into the air. Catalog royalties patched the damage. But a new revenue stream would have to be undammed to meet the need. Enter Amanda Overmyer.
Before Amanda, though, there are introductions to make, Paula Abdul-Randy Jackson collaborations to plug, creepy winks for Simon to deliver in Seacrest’s direction, a montage of Beatles-related clips to explain who the Beatles were — Ed Sullivan, Shea Stadium, etc. Then a return to the studio where the band “delved deeper into their own souls,” says Seacrest. Then he uses the word “odyssey.”
This, of course, all equals drugs. Lots and lots and lots of drugs. Me, I’m kind of fixated on the various LSD beards flashing across my TV. John’s was the biggest, Ringo’s the dorkiest, Paul’s the cutest, George’s the most Manson-y.
OK, now Amanda.
She’s going to sing “Back in the U.S.S.R.” And I have a feeling that it’s because she has no choice. I read somewhere that the whole “Lennon-McCartney songbook” thing really amounted to about two dozen songs they all got to choose from. So when the judges tell the singers that they screwed up their song choice, you have to wonder just how much control these kids have in the first place. Not that that makes up for them blowing it when they finally get out on stage. But still.
Amanda’s a mess tonight. Overpowered by the band. Shouting, shouting, shouting. But that’s why I’m into her. So she can do that all night. My husband/partner/whatever, sitting next to me on the couch, yells out, for no apparent reason, “I FUCK IN A BARN!”
“Who does?” I ask.
“Uh… I dunno… she just made me want to say that.”
And the weird thing is that I get where he’s coming from.
After she sings the judges tell her that she was fine but is in danger of becoming a little boring. Maybe she should sing a ballad, offers Paula. Amanda’s response: “Ballads are boring!”
Then she says she’s got 90 seconds to make you put down that can of PBR and say, “Fuck singing! I wanna hear what this bitch does instead!”
Actually, she says something about hoping people think she sounds like fun and being inspired to buy a ticket to her show. Simon retorts with the fact that she does not yet have tickets on sale to any such show. Ouch, man. She responds that it’s OK if all she does is sell out a bar in Indiana (implied opening act: Nikki McKibben, maybe Constantine. NOT Robbie Carrico).
Kristy Lee Cook is up next. I just figured out that the Personality Reels this week are all “What’s been your most significant memory of being on the show so far?” Kristy’s is about how she’s been in the bottom three consistently since, well, forever. So stressful. Good thing she’s insanely foxy and those other people were total fags. Because she’s still here. Not that she’s honest enough to say those things. And in her possible defense, for all I know, she’s oblivious to that reality. And I don’t really care anyway. I’m just enjoying all the instant nostalgia. Remember rehearsal this afternoon? Wasn’t lunch amazing? Boy, those were the days.
She’s singing “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” She chose it from the title. Sounded like a good title. Kinda queerbait, but still all right. Everyone loves songs about love, I guess, so I’ll do it. Some guy named John Lennon wrote it. Oh, he’s dead? How did that happen? When was that? Oh, 1980. Yeah, I wasn’t born yet. I don’t have to know about things that happened before I was born. Everything was in black-and-white then, I heard.
When they eventually get around to Sex Pistols week she’ll pick “Holidays in the Sun” because she likes taking vacations. Simon tells her she needs hypnosis and that she’s a bad performer. She responds with a sassy country-girl double entendre; “I can blow your socks off!” This is unlikely on any level, obviously, but it’s nice to believe in yourself, isn’t it? God bless the public schools and children’s television programming for instilling so much self-esteem in the next generation.
Time for David Archuleta to sing “The Long and Winding Road.” He forgot the words last week. Remember that? Here’s a replay of that humiliating moment just in case you forgot. So many lifetimes ago, so much pain then. And even with the memory of that wound still fresh, the fact is that this boy has never been on a long or winding road. He’s not cried many tears that weren’t a result of his father sitting right next to him during rehearsal, totally breathing down his neck. The kid was born in a trunk. Nothing’s ever happened to him that didn’t involve callbacks. And that’s why tonight he’s hitting all the notes, twisting just the right ones in just the right ways for maximum emotional wallop. The judges love him. The boy looks he’s about to collapse and have one of those stressy crying jags, in that “phew, no beating from Dad tonight” way.
Michael Johns gets stuck with “A Day in the Life,” a six-minute, multipart song he’ll have to compress into 90 seconds. And it’s…I think in Australia they call this a “cock-up.” Or maybe it’s England where they say that. In any case, it’s insane. And then he dedicates it to his dead friend as a last-ditch save. Much like Kristy Lee Cook, he’ll get through thanks to all that handsome. Paula consoles him. She knows how hard it is to get up onstage and have to sing. Well, not sing “live” or anything. But she’s very aware of the difficulties involved in lip-synching. Especially to someone else’s vocals.
American Idol Results Show: Hear the Beatles again (Editing by Alice Lee)
[...] Angels Tears - Movie Actor Edward Chen the Legend - iflove.com wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAmerican Idol Results Show: Listen to the Beatles again American Idol Results Show: Hear the Beatles again In week 2 of Lennon-McCartney-Harrison karaoke, American Idol steals the title of “Worst Beatles Impersonation Ever” away from longtime champions the Bee Gees. An Advocate.com exclusive posted March 21, 2008