Well, it looks like Jordin Sparks will indeed become the first true longshot winner of American Idol. If she was just about even with Blake Lewis as the night began, as most believed she was, there seems little doubt she pulled away down the stretch.
And yet, it's hard not to feel a bit dissatisfied. Jordin is highly likable and has shown a real knack for big ballads with emotional content. But such ballads are in short supply on the pop charts these days (there's a reason Celine Dion decamped to Vegas), and whether she can go toe-to-toe with the Rihannas and Fergies of the world (even though she's obviously a better pure singer than both) is an open question. Jordin mostly won last night by not losing--it was a night without a standout performance--and Blake assisted in his own demise by his inexplicable decision to let Jordin take the coveted last performing spot.
The boy from Bothell kicked off the night with a reprise of "You Give Love a Bad Name," which, it is now clear, will go down in Idol history alongside performances like Constantine's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a classic whose charms nonetheless go totally over (under?) my head. In fairness to Blake, it sounded like he was in slightly better voice last night (though it will never be a true rock voice); and it appears he's continued to think about the original performance and how it could be tweaked, because there were a few notable differences between the version of 3 weeks ago and last night's. With some studio help to give it punch, I can actually see this becoming the first song to go from a regular Idol broadcast to the pop charts.
Jordin led off with Christina Aguilera's "Fighter," which at first looked like a real high-risk, high-reward song for her but ended up not really impacting things much. Jordin has struggled with most uptempo songs, and the lyrical pace here figured to be a big stumbling block for her, even though this song doesn't have the gigantic range of a lot of Aguilera's songs--it's an attitude number. Jordin had a noticeable problem staying on the beat, and she seemed nervous to me. But as far as the attitude went, I bought it pretty much, despite the lack of angst in Jordin's life that has been a focus of her detractors.
I thought Blake's biggest mistake came with his second song, Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved." It was the second straight week he went to the Adam Levine well, but picking the slowest and draggiest of their big hits was a puzzling choice, given that he had to know the finale would be another ballad. And it's an upper register song that veers into falsetto on the chorus. As we saw on Bee Gees Week, Blake may have a tenor but it's not one translatable to falsetto in any way. What also bugged here was Blake's body language. He affects a cool Dean Martin-like nonchalance that tends to make me doubt his emotional connection to the material, and has a tendency to leave his mouth open in an unattractive way. Simon had it right: you need to pick more carefully on the bigger stage, and this wasn't a good choice for him.
Jordin's reprise performance was "A Broken Wing," which she performed when Martina McBride dropped in and has apparently been part of her repertoire for years. The country audience didn't have much to root for on the show this year, so this was a canny pick for Jordin for that reason too. As she did the first time, her lower register on the verse is only fair, but she always delivers on the chorus money notes (though Simon thought it was "shrieky"). A good choice because it provided the sort of dramatic release this night demands, even if it's not really my kind of music.
And then it was time for "This Is My Now" (the title says it all, doesn't it?), the product of the Idol song contest that was supposed to put the collective power of the viewing audience to work choosing the best possible coronation song and ended up giving us...the same kind of crap we get every year at this time. Needless to say, Blake was at a disadvantage, but to his credit I thought he made a game run at it for the first minute or so. He sang the opening verse nicely in a lower voice than we're used to from him, doing a good job of not smirking through the silly lyrics. Unfortunately, he wasn't up to overpowering the chorus, which is what this song was designed to feature (there's never going to be one of these winner's songs that doesn't feature a real or implied choir of angels). His decision to start dancing halfway through it was unable to breathe life into the patient. The judges were kind enough to essentially tell the viewers not to hold it against Blake, but there are obviously a lot of people who like these kind of songs from the winner.
And Jordin, hardly a finished product at this point, tore into this dopey number as if it was specially written for her, which for all I know it was. She still sounded a bit nervous to me, and 30 seconds in I would say she wasn't even as good as Blake. But she gained confidence by the time she got to the chorus, and almost made it sound like a legitimately moving song--not bad for being--wait for it--only 17. She found meaning in there somewhere, and if you didn't buy her breaking down when she got to the last line, well, you're just a bad American.
Now, all she has to do is build a career. Good luck with that--I'll look forward to her CD, but I suspect Melinda's will be better.
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