TV: American Idol 2019

Back in the day I blogged a lot about “American Idol.” In fact, one of my all-time visited posts at Cootiehog is a post I made about David Cook asking out Kimberly Caldwell at the end of the season.  Second top American Idol post was from 2002 wherein I had to tell the trolls that Nikki McKibben was not a stripper.  I can only think that my blog became a hotspot for photo seekers because I had also recently blogged and stripping wallpaper in our house, so somehow the search algorithms thought I said she was a stripper.

Towards the end of the last run of the show, I stopped blogging about it because the judges became less helpful (although Harry Connick Jr was an EXCELLENT judge), the contestants seemed to all run together, and the show just didn’t have that excitement it originally had.

But the recent reboot with Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and Luke Bryan has been delightful.  In particular, Katy Perry truly is America’s Sweetheart.  She makes me laugh and while I do think she does her fair share of camera-seeking while judging, I also think she genuinely loves these kids and finding new talent.  But more than anything?  I love how REAL she is.  She is not afraid to be goofy and weird and to completely own who she is in all her splendor.

Case in point, this bit from last night:

Y’all, I was in tears laughing at this and watched it multiple times.

But it’s the contestants who have been really interesting in the reboot. Last I fell in love with Maddie Poppe when she auditioned with The Rainbow Connection from “The Muppet Movie,” and she succeeded in giving the best performance every single week of the season once the live shows began. She never was in the bottom two and sailed away with the win. I’ve not been that happy about the winner since David Cook won in 2008 (I was so happy he won I actually bought a ticket for the AI tour after the season ended and put up with teeny-bopper nonsense from the crowd in order to see him perform). And I can’t wait for Maddie Poppe to come through Charlotte because I will absolutely go see her live show as well. I think she’s incredibly talented and I adore her.

Knowing how much I appreciated the new judges (a breath of fresh air compared to the Mariah/Nikki season and a few others before that), I knew I’d watch again this season. And even though we are only a couple of seasons in, I’ve made my pick. This season, I’m really hoping that this guy makes it past Hollywood week and onto the live shows:

Alejandro Aranda’s audition was SO good and that clip isn’t even everything he did. His guitar playing was masterful and magical (the clip doesn’t show the amazingly complicated long riff he played in the middle of that song), and during the audition he did a second song at the piano that was just as good. He’s fantastic and so naturally gifts. Trust me – Luke Bryan’s reaction was basically the same as mine. Sitting on my sofa last night, I was floored by this guy’s musicality. And another thing that stood out? His humility. He clearly didn’t think he was as talented as the other auditioners he had met since he had only been doing music for a few years. But y’all – he is infinitely better than most of those auditioners.

If you haven’t tuned in, please do. The audition episodes focus much more on the good singers than the bad, which is nice. And Lionel, Katy and Luke are great judges even if they do occasionally let a few headscratchers go to Hollywood. My plan is to blog this entire season.