“American Idol” Returns, And It’s Almost Like It Never Left

noah | January 14, 2009 9:00 am

Season eight of the talent-competition-gone-wild American Idol tried to start off on an inspirational note, with a semi-incoherent quote from supersongwriter David Foster (“In life, the microphone passes your lips but once… you had better be ready to sing”) leading into a Vaseline-slathered package set to “What A Wonderful World” that gave William Hung and the “I Am Your Brother” guy the slo-mo treatment alongside David Cook and Daughtry. Because this season is supposed to be the feel-good one, you know? Well, that much was true, especially if what made you feel really good was the warm embrace of familiar TV-show tropes.

The definitely crazies. “Hey, look, another guy with a freakishly deep voice is going to sing!” There was less of this for 2009 than in previous seasons, and I know that in this time of torment America needs to laugh, and yet.

The overwrought performance of that Corinne Bailey Rae song. Rae may have disappeared from the mass consciousness once “Put Your Records On” finally edged its way out of VH1’s rotation, but that song is going to live on in Idolville forever, with people adding way too many filigrees of “emotion” to the track to mixed results. (Arianna Afsar, a teen who decided that the only way to help the aged of her community was through her singing, made it through, although I suspect if she wasn’t “only 16″—yes, Paula trotted that time-worn phrase back out—the reception would have been a bit cooler.)

The rocker who’s leaving a band in the dust. Emily Wynne-Hughes’ Rock Band-worthy performance of “Barracuda” got her through to the next round, which means that the LA chick-punk outfit Go Betty Go is looking for a lead singer. (Although really, given that one of the band’s blog postings is about Hughes making a cameo at Quentin Tarantino’s birthday party, you’d think that they were counting on Lead Singer Syndrome kicking in at some point.)

The throwbacks to previous contestants. Phoenix was touted as season-six winner Jordin Sparks’ “hometown” (I guess it’s all one big suburb out there), so it made sense that they brought in a slightly older, slightly more excitable version of her, Brianna Quijada—when Simon told her that she was probably put through to the judges’ inner sanctum for her bubbly personality, I thought, “oh, right.” She made it through,

The chick who makes it in solely based on her looks, because guys are gonna be guys. Did you notice how mad Kara DioGuardi was getting over the whole Bikini Girl thing? Not that I blame her—girlfriend seemed like a less classy version of Megan from all those “Bret Michaels is looking to make out on TV a lot” shows—but part of me felt like she saw the part of her career where she was told she couldn’t make it because of her looks flashing before her eyes, and wearing really ugly shoes. Imagine if Bikini Girl had sung “Umbrella”?

The guy who does not look like he sounds, amazingly! This episode had two: Michael Sarver, a roughneck (no, really, that’s his job! it’s on an oil rig and it’s the fifth-most-dangerous gig in the world!) who kind of killed Boyz II Men’s “Thank You” even though he’s a big, burly white dude; and Alex Wagner Thurman, a very geeky 19-year-old whose take on James Ingram’s “Baby Come To Me” was, for some reason, absolutely adored by Randy Jackson. (Maybe the acoustics in the room didn’t quite translate to TV?)

The hard-luck story. Arizona resident Scott McIntyre, who is blind, made it through with a touching performance of Billy Joel’s senior-concert staple “And So It Goes.”

In the end, 27 people made it through to Hollywood from Phoenix, although we only got to see auditions from 11 of them. Which I guess means that the microphone will pass the other 16 folks’ lips more than once? No wait, that quote still doesn’t make any sense.

American Idol [Official site]

[Photo via rickey.org]