Idol 7

This year, I'm kinda sorta following American Idol a little more than usual. Last year, the complaint was that the males, as a group, were much weaker than the women, and that with Melinda staying near the end, that the group was on the older side (and she seemed much older than the 29 she said she was).

To rectify matters, Idol went a lot younger with its group with quite a few teens. Tony Kornheiser has already said that, on the men's side, Michael Johns is the best of the lot. At 28, he's also one of the oldest of the lot.

These are two videos that are apparently quite a few years old, and show Michael Johns in a band back when he lived in Atlanta, and he shows that he could be the guy that might actually have a bit of a career after Idol, only because he sings songs that could do well.

You see, Idol has always been about singing, and not so much about songwriting. Indeed, the singers are asked to sing covers. Johns has sung songs that are originally written (whether he wrote them is another story, but that's fine).

To be successful as an Idol singer, it helps if you've got crazy inflection. In a sense, the more black you sound, the better off you are. A guy like, say, Woody Guthrie, with a plain style of singing probably wouldn't work, and certainly, Bob Dylan wouldn't work. But those guys succeeded because they were songwriters, and their songs meant something, and so people were willing to excuse that they weren't such great singers.

And for folk singing, keeping it nice and simple and unadorned is part of the point. Idol singers need to be fancier with how they sing.

Although many of these singers are not well-known, many have been singing an awful long time, otherwise, they wouldn't be so good. However, they aren't trained, in the usual way. By all accounts, an opera singer would be better, because they've really mastered how to sing.

Idol, however, is a pop singing competition, and as skilled as an opera singer is, few Americans care for that style of singing. In a way, Idol has popularized a kind of singing style that has lead to few successful careers, which, I imagine, is much to their embarassment. They would love to launch a real career, based on someone who can sing, but someone who can also do original songs that people will care about.

For the men, two men stand out. Michael Johns is, I imagine, still a reasonably clear favorite, and these two clips from his earlier career only cement that. The other guy is likable David Archuleta, who has also been singing successfully since he was young, and he's already desperately young, having just turned 17.

Here's David Archuleta's performance from this past week's top 12.



He sings in a way that's more typical of Idol singers, though he seems a bit better, more polished than most, even at a tender young age. His voice is a touch high, to be honest, but probably due to his young age, but he's relatively smart with how he uses his voice.

The women tend to sing even more in the African American style (which goes to show you the profound influence of African Americans have had on song and singing in the US). I haven't looked through the women as much to find who I like or dislike, but will probably comment on it in the future weeks.

For now, it seems Michael Johns and David Archuleta are the class of the men's field.