koganbot | American Idol decides not to have a winner this year

Amercian Idol seems to have this agreement with YouTube to promote the watching of full episodes, so, when you're going for single shots on YouTube, you get a choice where you can see and hear performances but not get all the judging, you can hear but not see the performance and judging all through, or you can see and hear performance and judging all through but with really shitty sound. Using patience and multiple clips you can therefore hear and/or see what you need to, but it's a hassle, and so far I'm forgoing the judging. This means I've still not reached the stage of "Time To Come To Grips With What Kara May Really Be Like." Also, YouTube seems to be removing AI clips that are more than two weeks old, causing me not to know anyone's full story arc.

The two I remotely care about:

Megan Corkrey: Her voice is stone hard without being cold; she's the only one with a solid vocal character, but also, given her voice, you don't know how she's going to use it or what to expect. Or, rather, you'd expect her to go boringly for jazz chops and singer-songwriter respectability, which she can do, but I actually felt more than that when she sang the KT Tunstall horse song.

Allison Iraheta: Rocker chick in nonrock contexts, emits a river of passion, "Give In To Me" a great choice on Michael Jackson night, but the voice actually is not powerful enough to bowl everything over with feeling, and she ends up straining for her payoffs.

All right, I'm feeling Adam too, but a lot of what I'm feeling is annoyance. As a ham he'd be fine as Liberace or Vincent Price or Tim Curry or Alice Cooper, but as a straightup '90s rocker he's just more bawling noise. I enjoyed hearing him squeezing every ounce of who-knows-what out of "Satisfaction," if you don't mind it having nothing to do with the song; "Black Or White" I turned off half way through.

Lil Rounds'll be the Melinda Doolittle Designated Bore of the show, which I expect to be so bad this year that she'll actually be a relief, since you know that you'll always get competence from her; though Melinda not so boringly had a sense of technical risk and experiment, which I'm not yet hearing in Lil.

And I can't remember the rest of them, other than getting the vague sense that they're all trying to approximate styles that aren't particularly worth approximating - however, I did come away thinking that Kris Allen had promise as an MOR singer with a good light touch. But I didn't remember what he sang. Alexis Grace seems like a human being even if she's too thin-voiced.

So... if I'm bothering to root for anyone, so far it's Allison; Megan is probably too noningratiating to get to the final four; my best scenario (assuming I keep watching) is for Allison's passion and Lil's poise to carry them ahead of Adam's windpiping into the final two, with Allison somehow developing versatility and nuance over the next couple of months and flowering in front of our eyes like Jordin. I don't really expect it to happen, and I hope there's someone I've seriously overlooked.

h/t to