American Idol, Season 11: Season Premier

Our season began last night in Savannah and Fox didn’t even tell us anything about the city. I have a U.S. Cities research paper due on Friday and I had really hoped to copy down the :30-seconds of Savannah facts and turn in my paper. Now what? Idol is back with all its cheesy, sappy goodness, it’s audition rounds, and it’s whacky immigrants who come to America and see this American Idol journey on TV and they think, “hey …it’s the American Dream, and I want it.” Or we see struggling Americans with and without jobs, come to the American Idol auditions and give us singing that would be considered “really good singing” if, oh, there weren’t 10,000 other people in 12 more cities all with the same idea.

I liked how Idol just jumped right into it, so let’s do the same.

Our night o’ auditions began with David Leathers, Jr. who beat Scottie McCreery a couple years ago in a singing contest (that I assume did not award him a recording contract and instant fame) and his voice was pure and high and he sounded like a young Michael Jackson. Though I worried he had too much personality in his pre-audition video and that he would suck, he was quite charming. Nice start to the show.

Ya know, there’s no shortage of singing competitions on TV, these days. NBC has The Voice, and FOX launched what they thought would be an Idol-killer. But nobody does it like Idol. As I was sitting down to watch last night, I actually worried for a moment that, since I wasn’t entertained by X-Factor or The Voice, maybe I was going to be like many Americans and that I was fatigued by the singing-type shows, but it didn’t even take 10 minutes and I was all they way back in Idol mode. You?

Next up? Superfan of Idol, Gabi Carrubba, hugged Nigil Lythgoe, who’s never appeared on camera in 11 seasons, and proceeded to show us her very pretty face and her B+ singing voice, but the judges didn’t care that she was (a) young, (b) somewhat soft-voiced and weak (is “soft voiced” a term people use), and (c) too nice to handle the evil of Hollywood. Lucky for her, this was the first stop on the audition tour and Randy Jackson, J Lo, and Steven have much looser standards on the first night. They’ve had a few months off, and except for a few waiters and waitresses who likely burst into song while waiting on them at some fancy restaurant hoping his or her singing would be irresistible and then would be immediately signed to a recording contract, our judges haven’t heard much singing recently. So it all sounds pretty good. I still feel that everyone hears that line in Boyz II Men’s “Motown Philly” about how they cornered Michael Bivens of Bel Biv Devoe (formerly of New Edition) and sang for him and they were so good, he signed them right there on the spot. That’s a great story condensed into 4-lines of song lyrics, but it’s not true. And it just doesn’t work like that.

Lucky for us, crazy people think it does work like that and they have no shame or self awareness and we get to laugh at them, safely from a distance, so they don’t be crazy all up in our faces.

Ryan said they gave out 7 golden tickets in the first few hours and they’ve never had that. Well, doesn’t that have everything to do with the producers and associate producers and who they allow to go stand in front of the judges?

Jessica Whitely says she’s been singing the National Anthem for years at sporting events, and they actually had footage. So, like you, I was thinking, oh, she should be good. Instead, I guess some sporting events are just hard up to find a National Anthem singer.

Shaun Kraisman was a Seacrest look-alike. Well, not really to anyone with eyeballs, but I guess his hair was similar and he had the Ryan mannerisms and voice tonality down, and he couldn’t sing, which I assume Ryan can’t do either. Awwwww, we’re havin’ fun, now.

Tall-Girl 15-year-old, Shannon Magrane, got the first awkward Steve Tyler-hits-on -a-minor moment of the year. Her Dad, a former major league pitcher, was actually in the room. Awwwkward. Remember Shannon – she was stunning and had a HUGE voice.

And then there’s the girl who lived in a tent. Amy Brumfield said she’s struggling to make ends meet so the best she and her boyfriend can do is pitch and tent and hope for their fortunes to change, but then she says, “I’d rather live in a tent and feel free over living inside a cell.” Which, to me, means she’s living in a tent due to mental problems. She says her and her boyfriend both work. But I have feeling she’s (a) lying, because you don’t watch American Idol if you live in a tent or (b) she and her boyfriend have trouble following rules and playing nice with other kids in the sandbox, so they escaped to the woods.

Were those IKEA cabinets mounted to those trees? Her kitchenn cabinets in her tent home are nicer than mine.

Then we met Stephanie Renae who had pictures of herself standing next to a TV with a shirt that said, “I’m the Next American Idol,” back from when she was 8-year-old, which reminded me that the idea of “being the next American Idol” is a bigger pipe-dream than the “I’m going to play professional baseball” or “I’m going to be in the NBA” dreams. Every 7-year-old who can hit and throw a ball, even if  it’s just because their DNA and maturity is slightly ahead of the rest of the kids their age, start to believe they are destined for Derek Jeter-sized mega stardom. And their parents feed their ego. So now I guess parents also feed the egos of kids who like to sing and can occasionally hit a few good notes. Don’t you love America?

Anyway, enough about delusions of grandeur …Stephanie Renae ended up being sorta OK and got put through to Hollywood despite her nasally voice and the strange way she juts out her lower jaw while singing.

Schyler Dixon was back again and the judges remembered her (and her brother) from last year. So her brother, Colton Dixon, was forced to take a shot and they both got tickets to Hollywood. Sister Schyler did not look happy – obviously she knows her brother is a better singer, and obviously brother Colton is in a band and doesn’t think he wants to travel the path to a record contract via Idol, but maybe he was convinced this would be good for his band and his other path. He can always bill himself as “former American Idol contestant” and that plays well on a marquee.

Lauren Mink and her job working with special needs men and women was impossible to resist, as was her audition. So what if, at 25, when singing on the same stage as 16, 17, and 18 year olds she’s going to look 40 . . . a girl like Lauren deserves a golden ticket. And, no Randy, she was not “Sugarland-esque.” But it was a nice moment.

Ashlee Altise invented a dance called the “Joy Hop” which was like the Pee Wee Herman dance, but she walked around while doing it. She could sing a little, so she got a golden ticket. She will crash and burn when forced to sing in a group. I see much drama in her (and our) future. She’ll refuse to rehearse and sleep in her room, and her group will be knocking on her door. Book it.

W.T. Thompson quit his job at a prison for the opportunity to leave his pregnant wife (which will be a newborn baby by the time Hollywood Week rolls around) to “follow a dream.” I want to know if there’s more to this story? Does he sing in a band? Does he play guitar and sing on every stage he can find in his spare time? Because if “auditioning for American Idol” is the dream, he should modify that dream. Heck, even if “make the top-10” is a dream, and you want to tour all summer long, there’s a good chance you’ll be crawling back to your regular life.

Erica Nowak (‘w’ sounds like a ‘v’) was our first stalker of this young season and the best part about adding a major rock-star like Steven Tyler to the judges panel is that you get a different brand of crazy coming out to audition. Would it be as charming if some dude went all gaga over J Lo and grabbed her butt? Why does society frown on that? She wasn’t a good singer, and she knew it. She just wanted to grope Tyler, and Fox wanted an awkward moment.

Brittany Kerr, an NBA dancer, can win this thing on looks alone, but she’s going to need to work to impress Jennifer Lopez in Hollywood (J Lo said “no”). But, wow …she was a looker. I won’t soon forget her, mostly because I quickly Friended her on Facebook and ‘followed’ her on Twitter.

Phillip Phillips, who works at his Dad’s pawn shop, was the guy American Idol had been teasing all night. From what they showed us, I was thinking he’s going to be like a semi-good-looking Taylor Hicks. Ya know? Phillip Phillips was smokey voice guy they’ll compare to Joe Cocker (and they will compare him because of his crazy hand gyrations), but he was actually better  than the comparison type singer. He was quirky, and interesting, and there’s no mystery why they put him through. Once there, all bets are off. Sometimes those super-cool audition guys can’t hack the big spotlight and working within the contrived, coached, and formulaic Idol machine, so they wilt when a theme like “movie ballads” pops up, or they are forced to sing Paul Simon songs, but there isn’t a contemporary artist who covered anything by Paul Simon in a cool, unique way that will impress the massive audience that watches American Idol.

It was the first night, so I’m not going to go crazy over anyone in particular, but I’m ecstatic Idol is back and it smells, looks, and tastes the same. As the temperatures dipped into the single digits last night here in the midwest, Idol made it fee like winter and made me want to curl up in my Snuggie, or my Forever Lazy, and just turn my brain off for a bit.

Did you have any favorites from last night? What do you think about eleven seasons and have you been watching from the beginning? Where were you when you first knew you were falling in love with American Idol? Did you watch last night and say to yourself, whoa, no way . . . I can’t do this again? Or did you fall in love all over? American Idol is a part of us, now. It’s what we do from January through the first of May. It’s what we talk about. We love TV and, hey, this is on TV.

Welcome back to another exciting season and my nonsensical recaps. Talk to you tomorrow.