Pleasantly Shocked

I have to admit I was shocked that Rocker David won. But a happy shocked. Diandra said she had trouble getting her votes in for him so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.

Like Simon, I could have lived with Weird Dad David winning. But it appears that highlight weeks (Hello and Billie Jean among others) beat Weird Dad David's (boring) consistency. When Rocker David was good, he was very good. Now, let's hope he gets to make an album worthy of his best weeks.

OK, a few highlights on the epoch that was the results show.
George Michael. Need I say more? [Well, of course I do - Careless Whisper, Father Figure and Praying for Time are songs of pure genius]
Carrie Underwood - that, boys and girls, is what we like to call the whole package
Syesha - again, if I turn up missing for any length of time, I'm probably stalking her
The Carly-Michael duet reminded me that she had the best voice and if Michael had chosen better songs (more soulful, R&B-ish) , he would have gone farther.
The Weird Dad David-One Republic combo showed that he can sing something other than 40 year old songs
I liked the Brooke-Graham Nash duet and how cool would it be to be Rocker David singing lead for Z.Z. Top?

I'm glad it's over but can't wait for it to begin again. I'm sure I'll have things to say during the wait - Idolist record reviews and such. Thanks for indulging my addiction each week!

Give the Crown to David A.

This will probably take a fairly random course as things come to mind in my convoluted order of importance rather than chronologically.

I was very pleasantly surprised at how good the show was. This is only my third year but this was far and away the best final night. I did like the cheesy boxing theme at the beginning. They could have ended it after that and I would have been fine but I rather liked it all the way through. But most importantly, the performances were fabulous.

How many bad clichés did Paula use tonight? And Randy needs to get some new lines next year. He has worn out “You’re in the zone”, “You’re molten hot”, “You can sing anything”, and “You’re in it to win it”.

David A. wins. Rocker David was strong, so strong but Weird Dad David was better in the classic sense of what Idol is looking for – a star POP singer.

However, I’ll rush out to buy Rocker David’s CD if it’s anything like what he sang tonight. I LOVED the U2 song – and I LOVE U2 so I’m going to be pretty picky. I especially like the fact that he did the Collective Soul song as his last song and that he didn’t do a repeat of an earlier performance. But strategically, it was a mistake. It was not the song you sing if you want to win American Idol. Weird Dad David was smart (from a competitive standpoint) by doing Imagine, again, and he was great.

Weird Dad David will do really well with producers (the Clive machine) who will control his Weird Dad and give him songs like he sang tonight.

I loved the video montage of the show’s early weeks playing behind Reuben at the end. It makes me want to see the show start again. I can’t wait for next year already.

Hmmm . . . . Diandra said it was hard getting her vote in to Rocker David’s phone lines. Interesting. I guess we’ll see but I’ll be shocked if it’s not a Weird Dad David coronation.

Pre-Final Rant

Rant #1 I’m listening to Rihanna’s “please Don’t Stop the Music” (I’ll admit it, I like/can easily tolerate Rihanna) and I’m thinking that of all the Rihanna songs the producers could have picked for Syesha last week – songs that would have been great for her and showed, in Simon’s words “what kind of commercial artist [she] could be” – they picked an absolutely dreadful song about penguins that nobody could sound good doing. (clearly a run-on sentence but I’m ranting) Anytime I hear a Rihanna song, I’m fuming.

Rant #2 (related to above) – the first negative words ever uttered by Paula about Syesha not doing well enough to make the finals; that’s so totally out of the realm of anything she’s ever said. Conspiracy to make it a David-David final? C’mon, Paula’s usual kiss of death statement is, “Well, you look fabulous tonight.” And that’s it.

Rant #3 (related to 1&2 above) – let’s be clear that this is not about my crush on Syesha (which continues unabated); she shouldn’t have finished this high anyway, which leads to . . .

Rant #4 – I’m just not into this final. While I like Rocker David a lot more than Weird Dad David, I don’t care who wins. I am just ready for it all to be over – and start again next year LOL. While I had fun with some of them (Chikeze, Brooke, Jason), I’m STILL mad the A’siah wasn’t in the Top Twelve. She may have been better than Syesha. And the final should have been between Carly and one of the Davids.

I Don't Get Simon

So, putting aside my crush on Syesha and my bold prediction, I think she was the winner of the night mostly because of the train wrecks by each of the Davids:

- David A. was so so so bad on the Chris Brown song. What was he thinking?

- David C. butchered the Switchfoot song which was another bad choice. It’s one of those songs that needs all of it’s time to fully develop; Diandra is a huge Switchfoot fan and I was imploring everybody to remove any sharp objects from nearby. Oh, and I didn’t think that “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was any good, either, especially the screamy note at the end. It is a very tender song, right?

In order, I think it was Syehsa, David A. and David C. David A. had the best performance of the night with the Billy Joel song. Yeah, it’s probably been fated to be the two Davids in the final but I still think my bold prediction has potential.

Bold Syesha Prediction

Maybe this is a longshot but if my hunch turns out right, I want to look like a genius. So here’s how/why Syesha makes the final:

First, she must have a great night tonight. Now . . . .

. . . go back two weeks when her and Brooke were waiting to see who got the boot. Ryan used an interesting choice of words. He said, “One of these two is going home”. He didn’t say that that was the bottom two as he usually did. That to me meant that Syesha was not in the bottom two on votes (it was probably Jason). I had heard that according to DialIdol.com (which tracks phone calls), Syesha was the TOP vote-getter than week.

Last week Ryan said that the top 3 vote-getters were within a million votes of each other. With 50m plus votes cast, this means Jason’s old voting block will pretty much determine the winner. Syesha is the only girl left and I’m thinking she stands to be the biggest winner of those votes. The Daughtry Syndrome says that David Cook stands to be the biggest loser of those votes.

Therefore, David Cook could go and be the big shocker for this season.

Heck, with all the negative publicity about David A.’s weird dad, Syesha could even win.

Just remember you heard it here first.