So here we are again, American Idol viewers. I like this part of the season—everything is fresh-ish and kind of new and the tedium of the audition episodes has yet to become unbearable.
Season 7 saw a decline in ratings, so in order to spice things up, a fourth judge, songwriter Kara DioGuardi, was brought on board. More on her later, but she seems promising: she arguably adds a new dimension to the panel with her experience (she's written for Jewel, Pink, the Pussycat Dolls, Celine Dion, and past Idol winners—albeit songs I've never heard of, despite Ryan Seacrest calling her a "superstar hitmaker") and education (she graduated from Duke so we can assume she won't say "What?!?" whenever Simon Cowell uses some turn of phrase she hasn't heard before, unlike Randy Jackson or Paula Abdul).
Other than the addition of DioGuardi, thus far season eight doesn't appear to be that different (some tweaks are promised for later in the season, but don't hold your breath) from those past. Any mild excitement I felt for the new season was immediately tempered by the intro, a montage set to "What a Wonderful World" featuring William Hung and Sanjaya Malakar's crying fan alongside the triumphs of Chris Daughtry and Kathryn McPhee. It seemed to say "If you want freaks, you'll get them!"
Auditions span eight cities, and tonight we spent two hours in Phoenix (I would make a joke about how that's two hours too many but it's currently 2 degrees in Chicago, where I am writing this, so I'm in no spot to make fun of Arizona).
We started off inauspiciously, with the kind of guy we've all seen before who we know would have no chance of making it to Hollywood, namely Tuan Nguyen, the Vietnamese kid with an Afro who wore Kanye West-style shuttered shades and wanted to tap-dance while singing Michael Jackson and then of course cried with shock and disappointment when he didn't make it. So this is how it begins.
Things seemed to improve with Emily Hughes, a very cute girl with horribly unattractive ear spacers and a bunch of tattoos she got so that she'd "never be forced to sit in an office" (what about the office of a tattoo parlor, Emily? Or maybe a bakery, since you like cupcakes so much that you got one tattooed on your neck?) She sang "Barracuda" well, and Simon proclaimed her "different," which I guess meant "You do not look like Carly from last season, who also had tattoos and sang Heart."
Then there was Randy Madden, the guy who thought that dressing like a "rocker" (not a mocker) meant that he deserved for someone to tell him that he's great, which is all he wants in life, goddammit. He stunk, he cried. Paula was strangely lucid and advised him to gain some chops by being in a band, and then she gave Simon the finger. I did laugh when the producers added a little bling-star to Randy clicking his heels as he left the show.
Like Emily Hughes, all the "good" performers reminded me of singers from last season. J.B. Ahfua, who also cried, but because that his golden ticket was going to save his family, was clearly David Archuleta 2.0. Another singer who made it through, Arianna Asfar, was similarly boring in that you could see her making it to Hollywood from a mile away: she's pretty and has a charity that involves being nice to old people so of course she was a good singer.
Michael Sarver (Southern gentile Seth Rogan) was another type who the judges claimed was so "different" despite being a character we've seen on the show a million times—the big lug with the sensitive, smooth voice. I could see him being painfully cheesy onstage during the semifinals. He did earn Simon's first wink of the season though. Ding!