S O U N D S  | review

Empty Emblems
Why the national fascination with American Idol won’t translate from the small screen to the stereo

by Sacha Zimmerman

When I first saw the promos for American Idol, I really thought America was in for a treat.

I thought the show would spend a significant amount of time weeding out all the people who auditioned. I imagined a summer of ridiculing the girl with the pale baby fat hanging over her too-tight jeans; the one who, when she lifted her hands over her head to imitate some sort of early-Egyptian dance and sing “Genie in a Bottle,” made dogs head for the hills. See, I liked that girl. I wanted more of her.

I liked the story of the mother-daughter team who rode Greyhound buses for weeks from audition to audition only for Daughter to end up tanking once she got her chance; I hoped they blew her college money on that trip.

I liked the skinny white kid with acne, who looked like he was about two crystal-meth lines away from even daring to dream about fame any longer; the one who tried to rap but sounded like he was underwater.

I liked the crazies who weren’t daunted by Simon Cowell. (”You are the worst singer on the planet,” the ornery, British judge and creator of American Idol sneered at a cherubic choirgirl with alarmingly inflated sense of self-esteem. “I don’t care what he thinks, I know I can sing,” spat the girl with the heavy eyelids, thick braces and draconian purple fingernails that snapped in Z-formation after a performance of “I will always love you,” which just may have affected the hearing of my unborn children.)

And boy did I really like that Simon — “Get a lawyer and sue your music teacher.” I was primed to sit on my couch with a finger pointing at the TV, a hand over my mouth, and a look of both horror and euphoria on my face. Point and laugh. Point and laugh all summer: That was the plan.

Which is why I was deeply disappointed when the show decided to focus only on the top-10 contestants. Somehow American Idol turned into Star Search, and I felt misled. American Idol is a karaoke contest that insists on taking itself seriously, and I think the best singers at a karaoke joint are those who are brazen, drunk, funny and totally unaware of how insane they appear.

Take my best friend, Erica, who will sing “Time After Time” complete with a thick Queens accent — ‘toime after toime” — and mime: “If you’re LOST” (I am shrugging my shoulders, where am I?), “You can LOOK” (my hand is over my eyes, I am peering into the distance), “And you will FIND me” (here I am, phew, hand to brow). Erica will also jump off of abandoned barstools, the tip of her cigarette hovering over the crowd’s drinks, as if walking on air when singing “Greatest American Hero.” Now that’s karaoke.

But the freshly exfoliated top 10 (Kelly! Justin! Nikki! Tamyra! RJ! Christina! Ryan! A.J.! Ejay! and Jim!) brimmed with too much hope and respect for ‘the music” than I care for. And, alas, the newly minted idols have an album out and poor Erica just has a bruise from falling off the barstool.

The American Idol: Greatest Moments CD is a tour de force of bland remakes that had no earthly business being remade to begin with — either because they weren’t good the first time (”My Cherie Amour”) or were so good the first time it takes a large dollop of nerve and na’vet” to reproduce (”Ain’t No Sunshine”).

The album itself looks like it uses the same clever photo-imaging used in my sixth-grade school photo: It’s a normal picture of me with another picture of me — a side shot where I stare wistfully into the distance — superimposed into the upper-right-hand corner. The top 10 all have this fade-to-black, my-head-is-floating-free-of-my-body quality to their pictures on the CD, which also has little stars all over it like some kind of sick teeny-bopper planetarium.

Jim, the angst-ridden son of deaf parents (”They’ve never even heard me sing!”) who insisted on signing all of his songs on the first few episodes (when Jim made the top 10 Simon fabulously sneered that ’some people got a sympathy vote”), looks serious on the cover; all of the other kids are smiling. He must still be sad that his parents are deaf.

Kelly, the perky, virginal, 20-year-old Texan cocktail waitress who won American Idol, has a full four songs on the CD. She starts off with “Natural Woman” — a great song — and, though I am loath to admit it, manages to sing her ass off. In “Natural Woman,” she sounds older than she is: It’s nice that the voice is pretty, but it’s like her voice also has a sense of itself. She’s not just flailing pretty notes into the air, she’s wrapping her body around the music and toying with each syllable; she’s not afraid to sink into the really low notes, and she’s not afraid to hold them.

She’s strong and sensual and every other clich” in the book; my only fear is that sticking to the pop-idol format, she’ll waste her voice becoming just that: clich”. But by the end of the song I am convinced that I do indeed make her feel like a natural woman and that Kelly might just have a smidge of heart to her voice.

In fact, after the big finale I watched Access Hollywood interview celebrities about the American Idol phenomenon. Jane Kaczmarek from Malcolm in the Middle said she was glad the ’system” actually worked the way it was supposed to (as though if someone else had won the contest it would have been a breach of justice tantamount to the Florida recount debacle). Yet, listening to Kelly’s “Natural Woman,” I’m inclined to agree. I think she may be the best singer of the 10.

Unfortunately she then shifts into “Respect,” which really just should not be sung by anyone except Aretha Franklin, period. This means no more cute movies with girls on roadtrips singing “Respect.” No more frisky roommates singing it in their bra and panties with back-up singer hand motions; and no more collapsing into a pile of giggles and margaritas when they’re done. (Oh, and by the way, this goes for “I Will Survive” too.)

Next up is Justin, the babe fave with the modest smile and the Side-Show-Bob from “The Simpsons’ hairdo. Justin may be easy on the eyes, but his two songs on the album are utterly forgettable. Not bad, not good, not worth it. He sings “For Once In My Life,” and I am way too big a Stevie Wonder fan to listen to it objectively.

Another problem is that all the songs have this Muzak-type background noise that destroys every pause in the lyrics and reminds the listener what poor-quality production standards were used. In Justin’s next song, “Get Here,” he adopts this sickly sweet tone that I am certain the good folks at American Idol encouraged, but which really just sounds forced. “You can windsurf into my life” is an actual lyric from the song, and really, I think that says it all. What is this song? And who really cares if it’s sung well or not?

Punk-rock Nikki with the scratchy voice blasts onto the CD next. This girl doesn’t just sound like she’s been around the block a time or two, she sounds like she’s been thrown over the rack and hung out to dry. I think she’ll do all right if she combines her singing with stripping. Here, however, she covers “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin, and the first half of the song actually sounds good. She is clever enough not to impersonate Joplin but to use her own idea of rock “n” roll, pausing at moments Joplin never did and summoning enough anger to sound, well, tough. She even manages to distract you from the orchestral background Muzak that Joplin would have never stood for.

The problem is that somewhere in the later part of the song she “whoos.” No more guttural yearnings, no more effective struggles between scratchy and on key; just whoos — kind of like when my friend Douglas leans out of his apartment window in an Easter bonnet and yells, “Whooo girl! Come on up, we’re having cosmos!” So much for seeming tough.

I was really looking forward to Tamyra’s song but was left disappointed. Tamyra was an early crowd — and judges’ — favorite with her easy-going bounce and ability to pluck notes off the top shelf and give the audience a wink. Tamyra can sing, for sure. Unfortunately, the song “A House is not a Home” sounds like it belongs the musical theater version of The Bridges of Madison County. It’s drippy, and I was too embarrassed to play it. I started to get those weird Celine Dion heebie-jeebies.

R.J., the short kid with the little-boy face and about as much raw sexuality as a Muppet, sings “Lately.” It’s boring. So boring in fact that I nearly didn’t continue listening, and that would have been a mistake. 

Next, Bette Midler fan Christina sings “Ain’t No Sunshine,” which is one of my all-time favorite songs, and in doing so is the only one of the kids who, on this CD at least, comes close to Kelly. She may even be better, but we only get one song from her compared with Kelly’s four. Now I hate that this song is even being covered, but, man, she rises to the occasion. Christina invokes Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keyes; given the right music I see no reason why she couldn’t become a new R&B star. She is sultry and soulful.

Which is funny because Ryan — the dark-haired girl with no personality who robbed Britney Spears’s closet — has about as much soul as Bryant Gumbel. She also sounds androgynous (it’s not just her name!), and not good androgynous like “My Funny Valentine” but bad androgynous like Leona Helmsly.

A.J. sings “My Cherie Amour.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: What is this song? And why is he singing it? Does he have no integrity?

Ejay sings “I’ll be.” He’s a very good singer. Unfortunately he is also very awkward looking. I think the two traits may cancel each other out.

Thankfully, American Idol saves the worst for last. It’s Jim, and he’s “Easy”– easy like Sunday morning. Except that he’s not. He’s hard — like Monday morning. That Monday when you have the spins because you drank too much on Sunday night. When you swear off drinking forever. When you just lie on the bathroom floor because the tiles are cold. When you have to go to work or you’ll get fired. Not for the first time I am relieved to know his parents are deaf.

Kelly rounds out the CD with two extraordinarily stupid songs, “A Moment Like This’ and “Before Your Love.” Both are ballads that somehow remind me of a Disney movie. I can see a pair of scrappy twins girls who over their summer break go on a cruise around the world with their well-meaning parents and get into to all sorts of shenanigans. Luckily in the end they foil the hapless villains and save the captain of ship’s life. And — surprise! — the captain has twin sons who fall in love with the Mary Kate and Ashley ” I mean the twin girls. Everyone has their first kiss, and though they’ll miss life at sea, a lot of vague but important lessons were learned this summer, a lot of moments of epiphany crossed their ever-more-mature faces, and right now they’re having one of those moments: A moment like this “

I, too, had a number of epiphanies this summer. When I heard that more people voted for American Idol than in the presidential election, I realized that all the Democrats need is one good candidate with a real knack for singing pop songs who looks really good in a belly shirt. 

It also dawned on me that no one seems to sing new songs anymore — not just their own new songs, any songs. We are remaking our movies and re-singing our songs. Some of these kids are talented but none are their own person. They are simply shellacked emblems to other people’s good work: the unfortunately quintessential American Idol.