American Idol, Season 10

Really, America???  Why is it that the best is never the winner?  This year they’ve made it fairly easy to vote by adding the online voting option.  In the past, it was so difficult to get through on the phone and only AT&T customers can text a vote (that sucks!).  If you have a Facebook account, you can vote up to 50 times.  Not everyone has a Facebook account, but a lot of people do.  I guess it doesn’t make that much of a difference because it still takes time and people who have good musical taste (i.e., they like the same singer as I do) don’t have as much time on their hands as people who vote continuously for two hours for the cute one.

I don’t know why it bothers me so much.  I guess it’s because I don’t want the great ones, like Haley, Casey, and James, to think they aren’t better than Lauren Alaina.  I’m not taking anything away from Scotty McCreery.  I think he deserves to be where he is.  Although I don’t, America does love country music and he’s very good at it.  Lauren, on the other hand, needs to grow as a singer.  She’s just not good enough… yet.  She may win because young people identify with her.  She won’t win because she’s the best.  She stays in tune, but takes no risks.  Her performances are boring.  She doesn’t even know how to breathe properly when she’s singing and you can hear it.  She needs more training.  She’ll no doubt get more training, especially if she wins, but shouldn’t she already be great at this point?  I loved the show this season, especially because of the judges Jennifer Lopez and  Steven Tyler, but if they gave just a little more criticism where it was deserved (not like Simon), maybe things would be different… probably not.

There were actually at least five other contestants this season who should have stayed a lot longer than Lauren:  Pia Toscano, Naima Adedapo, James Durbin, Casey Abrams, and Haley Reinhart.  Hopefully, they will have good careers like other non-winners, Chris Daughtry, Clay Aiken, Jennifer Hudson, Adam Lambert, and Kelly Pickler, to name a few.  I’m always wrong when I pick the winner (except for Kelly Clarkson and Fantasia I’ve been wrong every season), but between Scotty and Lauren, Lauren should not win.  She probably will just because I don’t think she should.  That’s right… all my fault.