skyking162

My birthday’s on Saturday. Happy Birthday, Sky! Thank you, but I only mention it because I received a great present yesterday. Frank, king of mixing baseball and pop culture, sent me Oh Say Can You Sing?, an album of eleven songs performed by major league baseball players. The names are big and small — Ozzie Smith and Kelly Wunsch — old and young — Omar Vizquel and Coco Crisp — and the styles range from oldies to country to alternative to rap. My friends would laugh if I claimed I could rate the quality of the album, but I really enjoyed every song. Ben Broussard made With or Without You seem un-U2, and Scott Linebrink’s Wave on Wave is an all-time favorite. I bet Frank’s especially thrilled to see Ozzie Smith singing a Sam Cooke song. You know, Sam Cooke would have been bigger than Elvis if he was white.

I don’t think I’ll find a better segue into writing about American Idol than Ozzie Smith singing Cupid. Remember, Ozzie Smith’s son, Nikko, made the Final 12 during season four of American Idol. Not that he should have, but he was there.

On the current season, two of my favorite three from the first rounds of auditions are still alive: Kat McPhee and Taylor Hicks. While I throughly enjoyed Kellie Pickler, I won’t argue that she’s not Top Five material. The all-time coolest Idol moment was Taylor taking a slow stroll towards the chair-of-fate playing his harmonica. I’d like to see Idol do a season where contestants could play guitar, piano, or harmonica while they performed.

So who among the final four will win? I have a prediction, but it’s going to boil down to the single most important idol quality - personality. There are two ways personality plays a role.

First, the personality of song choice and delivery. What really catches the audience’s attention is an absolutely stunning performance — there are about ten of them each season, mostly concentrated in the final episodes. Now, I realize that an amazing voice is a pre-requisite, but the real trick is picking a song that shows off your personality by adding your own twist. I’m talking a Pretty Woman type twist — Julia Roberts plays a hooker, but she’s a hooker that flosses. We know Taylor is the gray-haired funky dancing white boy. We know Elliot is the sweet-sounding deaf-in-one-ear nice guy. We know Chris is a bad-ass rocker who refuses to side-hug Ryan Seacrest. And we know Katherine is hot, goofy, sultry, and hot. But what about twists? Chris added a nice twist to country night with his Live version of Walk The Line. Last season, Bo Bice shockingly dominated Elton John’s Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me and Carrie Underwood femmed up Roy Orbison’s Crying. Those performances were great because they were new, not just very good karaoke performances. We know the song, love the song, but we’ve got to hear something we’ve never heard before.

The other trick to winning personality is being able to sync up your own unique personality with the expectations of the personality of American Idol. I actually have a lot of respect for contestants who can’t do this because it involves a little bit of selling out. When Idol begins in the fall, every contestant is just happy to make it. But a contestant has to actually act like the Idol before they can become the Idol. It takes a quiet arrogance, consistently confident interviews, and an attitude of not really giving a crap what the judges say but pretending you sort of do. Touching up a picture in Photoshop is a good metaphor. Even good pictures can look better, but if you apply the wrong filters or add too much contrast, the picture looks too fake. The final four Idols contestants have to pump up their personalities, but without looking too fake. It doesn’t seem like any of the contestants have changed much since the first week, but if you re-watch those tapes, you’d be stunned.

Ok, so who’s winning in the personality department? First of all, Elliot has really surprised me the past two weeks. I though he should have gone home early on, but the loosened tie and songs performed sitting on the stool really pumped up his cred. However, I don’t think he can turn things up another notch, which he’d have to do to win. He’s next out.

Then there’s Chris, who had a rockstar personality from day one. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to add anything to his headstart, and has just about given way to Katherine and Taylor. Chris can turn out quality alternative rock in his sleep and backs it up well with softer ballads, but even two tricks isn’t enough here. He might be the best-selling third-place Idol ever, though.

Taylor’s another guy who had the personality thing going straight from the beginning. Actually, he might have rode the personality train farther than anyone except Jasmine Trios. The middle weeks were his weakest, when he struggled to turn his real personality into an Idol personality, but now he’s got the Idol confidence and has picked great songs the past couple weeks. His voice sounds a lot better when he holds his notes longer (and louder) and doesn’t sing his songs at all like the original. Taylor might have a chance to win this thing if he can nail all three performances the final week, but he’ll probably finish second to…

Katherine McPhee. She’s just coming into her own and still has the ability to turn it up four notches. Katherine started out as a cute goofy girl with a top-notch voice. Throughout the competition she toyed around with showing off her silly side, then her mature side, then her sexy side. None screamed Idol on their own, but last weak’s performance of Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (where she danced around on her knees) brought it all together. She was spunky and fun — you did notice that she was hopping around on her knees, right? She was mature — her fun didn’t include any giggles or awe-shucks insecure moments. And she was hot, as in wet-lips-staring-right-at-me hot. Hell of a twist, kid. I can almost guarantee what she’ll throw at America the last week. She’ll start with a sultry throw-back, something similar to her performance of Ella Fitzgerald’s Come Rain, Come Shine. The middle song will be a spunky upbeat tune, something like Black Horse and the Cherry Tree but not as crazy. And then Kat will end with something in-between, something that shows she’s hot, has a great voice, and loves what she’s doing. And then she’ll want to marry me.

Random note: In a poll conducted at Idol’s website, Simon Cowell received 75% of the vote for judge who is most often right. I agree whole-heartedly, but also think he’s cheating — Simon can both put together coherent sentences and rarely shows up to work drunk.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.