Generic Pop Stars and American Idol

Sadly, I can't follow up on Migs's American Idol post by saying "I've never seen the show". I saw a lot of whichever season it was that had John Stevens, which I think might've been the Ruben-Clay season, but don't hold me to that.


Look, it's Pink!

Stevens is an interesting data point on this idea that Idol is a great way to create boring pop stars, because he was absolutely the least boring contestant his year, while also having absolutely no chance of winning. Stevens, as some of you will recall (but Migs will not), was a Sinatra/Dino/Bobby Darin kind of singer. This was, of course, fascinating in a pop landscape where memories tend to stretch back only about as far as Madonna and Michael Jackson. You can see, though, how Stevens wasn't going to do so well with, say, "Latin Week" (which was, according to Wikipedia, the week he was voted off).

If American Idol were actually intended to create genuine pop stars (rather than simply being a money machine for Fox, which it is), the producers would recognize that even the broadest of pop music is targeted, niched in a certain way. Name some platinum-selling artist and I'll tell you some other platinum-selling artist's catalog that they'd be completely unable to handle. Getting back to Madonna and Michael -- they couldn't have done each other's songs (even accounting for gender differences). Pink and Britney Spears and Lady Gaga and Christina Aguilera are/were not interchangeable.

The format of Idol, though, requires the winner to finish not-last in each week. If you're middle-of-the-pack at every possible song style there is, you'll do very well on Idol, and you may get lucky enough to win. If you're excellent at some things and terrible at others (as most genuine pop stars probably are), you're probably going home early because you'll have a disastrous performance during, say, Country Week.

This isn't groundbreaking stuff, but it's basically by way of explanation of my lack of interest in the program. It's not the only reason, of course (overly bombastic singing, the judges saying the same things over and over ("a little pitchy, dawg"), too many theme weeks I just don't care about, too much puff in between performances), but if I genuinely thought the next Ke$ha or Pink or Gaga was coming out of this show, I'd watch it, even with Randy Jackson at the end of the table.