Wednesday, May 21, 2008

American Idol

Yes another season of American Idol will finally end tonight. I think the show is really showing its age, of course I've thought the same thing for a couple of years now. Last night's "showdown" demonstrated the evil of the show. It is a show powered by the music industry, you know the same guys who like to sue kids for downloading music, etc. Thus there is evil in its core, and it really came out last night.

Before the show, my wife asked me who I thought would win. I told her that I thought David Cook had the edge. He was more original and a better performer. I thought that David Archuleta was probably a better singer, but was so immature and annoying. He is unable to sing anything but slow songs, and I thought that people had started to catch on to this, including the judges. Ah, but I should have realized that evil that lies in the heart of men and known that these were the reasons that David A. was assured of victory.

Amazingly David A. performed three ballads. I thought this was his best tactic, but that surely he would catch a lot of criticism for it. Nope. Instead he was praised for song choice! In other words, he was praised for embracing his limitation. Even worse, when given the choice of any song to perform he recycled a song from earlier in the season.

David A. played things as safe as he possibly could. He took no chances at all. That is fine, but how many times have we heard the judges blast contestants for this? Not this time. Instead he was praised. To make it even worse, his opponent was criticized for not doing the same thing: Simon Cowell told David C. that he screwed up by not recycling a song.

It was all complete hypocrisy that reeked of an agenda. The evil empire is clearly at work here. The actual performances did not matter. The judges completely contradicted everything they've ever said in the past in an effort to promote one contestant over the other. It will surely work as well.

Don't be too upset, though. The evil empire is falling apart. The internet put a stake in their heart a long time ago. Go listen to some NIN or Radiohead on your iPod and laugh at the music industry. One day MBA students will study them as a perfect example of how to ruin a business by being too conservative and afraid of (technological) change. It's the same short sighted, greedy principles that worked against David C. last night that ruined a huge, billion dollar industry.

No comments: