We started watching during the auditions of Season 6 in January 2007, Mom was pregnant with Amy and was searching for TV shows to watch. It's just my opinion, but seasons 6 and 7 were the best of the show, by far. I mean, you had Gina Glocksen the rocker, Haley Scarnato(Simon said she sounded like a Disney-movie soundtrack singer), just flat-out nice Christian lady Melinda Doolittle, Phil Stacey the bald dude with the weird eyes, a really cool dude named Chris Richardson, awesome beat-boxerBlake Lewis, Sanjaya Malakar(known for his HAIR!) and Chris Sligh the hilarious dude with the Afro. Jordin Sparks won that year, which didn't exactly shock anyone, Blake finished second, and Melinda was third(which I still don't quite understand).
And the goodbye song that played during the eliminations on Wednesday nights was Daughtry's "Home", which was just perfect, with Chris Daughtry being the breakout contestant the year before and everything.
Also, the Okmulgee County homeschool group's play that semester was The American Ideal, a parody of Idol. And practices were on Thursdays, so of course those of us who watched the show debated amongst ourselves about who had left the night before, whether it was the right choice, etc. Everybody agreed that Quinton's portrayal of Simon was almost perfect; Cody did a good job playing Randy, and Roy did pretty well with his Ryan Seacrest imitation. Annette and Sarah had crushes on Chris Richardson and Phil Stacey, and Annette and I would argue over whether Phil Stacey was creepy-looking or not.
Among the music featured was a group performance of Steven Curtis Chapman's "The Change", and a mock-phone-service commercial for "PRA-YERS"(skip to 7:31 of some random Michigan church's video, if you're interested). Brenna played the girl in the commercial.
I played a bodybuilder named Neil Downe, whose solo performance was a song entitled "On My Knees"(yes, the script was full of semi-painfully bad puns like that). It felt ridiculous, but it was a really fun role. Billy played the producer, while Alton, Denver and Levi were the band(complete with Guitar Hero guitars). Little Jessica played Anita Ward, Sarah played Southern belle Willa Wynn to hilarious over-the-top perfection, and Annette played Emma Tate, who got all the rest of our characters back on track.
There were a handful of us(Wes, Annette, Julie, Alton, Quinton) who promised ourselves that we'd try out at some point, but that never actually happened, though Alton's girlfriend(now wife) JB did seriously consider trying out for America's Got Talent.
From season 7 in 2008, you had instruments available to use for the first time, which was huge. And this season featured an email discussion group with Damon, Trish, Mike and everybody, with night-by-night recaps, analysis and predictions.
Two of our favorites through auditions and Hollywood were Kady Malloy the impersonator and Alaina Whitaker(from Tulsa), but they were both cut. Michael Johns the Australian guy was awesome, and so was Oregon cowgirl Kristy Lee Cook. Some of our other favorites were Brooke White the nanny(Mom and Damon liked her), this season's Irish rocker chick Carly Smithson(one of Trish's favorites), Jason Castro(known for his dreadlocks, eyebrows and his goofy intense stare), then it came down to David Archuleta vs. David Cook, and everyone in the audience won. The left-handed Tulsa bartender became the season 7 champ, and his first single was "Time of My Life", which is the best winner's song there's been, I think.
We watched the last handful of episodes in Westville at the town house with Nano; that was entertaining, hearing her opinions on the contestants' performances.
The goodbye song was by a guy named Ruben Studdard, who was a contestant from season 2. (Was there anybody memorable from that season? Apparently not.)
The discussion group was kept up during season 8 in 2009, which was Paula's final season. Songwriter Kara DioGaurdi(who's written with Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Hilary Duff and Britney Spears) was added to the judges' panel, which didn't quite work. We all approved of her, and she gave great criticism, but it was weird having two girls on the panel.
Also, the clean-out/demolish stuff phases of remodeling the house after the fire were taking place during this time, so AI was a welcome break from the stresses of all that.
Of the "People We Liked Who Got Cut Before Finals", there were Brent Keith, Bixby welder Matt Breitzke, and Lacey Brown. And then there was the...uh, bizarre personages of Norman Gentle, Katrina "Bikini Girl" Darrell and Tatiana "ANNOYING CACKLER" Del Toro. There were a lot of personalities for the finalists this year. Down-to-earth Arkansawyer Kris Allen won, beating out glam-rocker Adam Lambert(one of Trish's favorites). Megan Joy Corkrey was a source of entertainment weekly with her atrocious dancing skills, and the large arm-tattoo was distracting, too. I'm not sure anybody ever really heard her sing between those two elements. There was also blind pianist Scott MacIntyre, who I liked a lot. Texas country dude Michael Sarver was another of my favorites. Anoop Desai, the Indian guy from North Carolina, kept us all in stitches. (Seriously, think Parks and Rec's Tom Haverford on a singing show.) Another great guy was widower/worship leader Danny Gokey. (Really, the guys were miles ahead of the girls this year. It was a running thread we were marveling at constantly.) Teen rocker chick Allison Iraheta was the best girl by far.
Guest performances on the elimination shows included Michael Johns and Carly Smithson, and the live premieres of Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You", Brad Paisley's "Then", and Daughtry's "No Surprise"; as well as some of the first performances of Carrie Underwood and Randy Travis's duet version of "I Told You So", Miley Cyrus's "The Climb", and David Cook's "Come Back To Me".
And fittingly, Carrie sang the goodbye song for season 8, a Motley Crue cover called "Home Sweet Home". Not one of her best vocally, but it worked well.
The tour concert that summer, at least the stop in Tulsa at the BOK Center, was awesome. It was a really cool experience that doesn't happen very often(for one thing, the roof was twenty feet above our heads).
Season 9 in 2010 was helped by Paula's not being there, though it took some getting used to. Kara was back, and so was Randy, and it was Simon's final year. That took some getting used to, also. And then adding Ellen DeGeneres, who has zero connection with music other than being a fan, was strange. Led to some interesting one-liners, but it was odd.
The top moment of auditions came from Atlanta, with "the Coolest 62-year-old We've Never Actually Met", Larry Platt, with his rap song "Pants On the Ground". Our discussion group HIGHLY APPROVED of him.
Season 9's contestants were a little weird, but most of them seemed like they'd be interesting to know. The winner turned out to be Lee DeWyze, who came from nowhere to shock everybody in America. (We forgot he existed just as quickly.) The runner-up was Crystal Bowersox, All the women in America(including Trish and Sam) had a crush on Casey James, Siobhan Magnus was this season's quirky female rocker chick. Tim Urban was the friendly teenager who needed a haircut. Aaron Kelly was another guy you wanted to be friends with. Lacey Brown was back; she got to the finals this year. Katie Stevens was annoying. Big Mike Lynche was the group's comedian.
Besides being definitely noncommercial, everybody loved playing acoustic guitars almost every night. That probably had something to do with learning to play seriously. And besides the discussion group with the cousins, Samara also was a fan; so we'd argue over contestants, too, occasionally with Amanda, Josh, Jed and/or Jon as well. With the exception of Amanda, all that subset of the Race of Joseph played at least one instrument, and all of us(besides Josh) sang, so it was especially fun to debate with them about the show.
Some of Ellen's quips in commentary often related to the song itself: "There was a brief moment in the seventies when I did believe I could fly." "As a matter of fact, I have loved a woman." "That was a very horny song. Like, there were a lot of horns in it!" Other times it veered off into Paula-strange territory; comparing contestants to bananas or soup.
The finale featured a lot of emotional Simon moments and speeches. It was extremely sad, though, knowing we'd be saying goodbye to a grouch we all kinda loved to watch.
Season 10 in 2011 changed the judging panel again; with Kara, Simon and Ellen leaving, replaced by Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez. Steven kept things....unpredictable; while JayLo quickly wore out her welcome with that annoying giggle. The timeslots switched from Tuesdays and Wednesdays to Wednesdays and Thursdays, which was another change we viewers had to get used to. Jimmy Iovine was brought in to mentor the contestants each week, which was great. He gave a Simon-like straight-up critique of how they were doing, which was sorely needed.
Rocker James Durbin, who had Tourette's, was one of my favorites this season. Casey Abrams was weird(I mean, he plays the cello!) but it worked. Stefano Langone was this year's cool "chill" guy. Damon and I both liked Pia Toscano. Jacob Lusk DROVE ME UP THE WALL, but Trish and Damon liked him. Almost everybody teased me about hating Haley Reinhart and Lauren Alaina so vehemently; I think it was their superficiality that bothered me so much. As much as I disliked those three, I was a huge Scotty McCreery fan from the beginning. I was very glad that he won.
Overall, this season was overrun with lame themes and dumb choices by America.
David Cook covered the the Simple Minds' song "Don't You Forget About Me" as the goodbye song this year, which went really well.
Simon's new show The X-Factor debuted in September 2011, and it was a straight-up cloning of Idol, only changing paint colors, basically. The main color was red, not blue; Mario Lopez played Ryan Seacrest, Pepsi and Verizon took the places of Coke and AT&T, and Paula was even on the judging panel, along with another producer-guy who looked suspiciously like Randy. After watching about half the first episode, I lost interest. Demi Lovato and Britney Spears replaced Paula the next season, and the season after that it sputtered to a halt, a dismal failure.
Over on NBC in April 2011, there was this new competitor to Idol called The Voice; which judged contestants solely by their voice(how simple, yet so strange). Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera and Blake Shelton were the judges, but also the coaches, selecting a team of singers and then the teams would battle it out into a manageable number for audiences to vote for. I haven't been able to keep up super-closely with it, but it's a cool show.
It's split into fall and spring seasons, which is a little confusing and seems like could be a bit of overkill. Coaches Christina and Cee Lo were replaced by Shakira and Usher, then Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams replaced them, and now Christina is back, replacing Stefani.
Once audiences heard about it, and then watched it, it quickly grew into the top singing show on TV.
I started this blog in February 2012, which meant I offered commentary on almost every episode during season 11 once it went live. (Mostly just copy-pasting my comments from the email chain, but I was still learning how this blogging thing worked. And also, that was my senior year of high school. Those keep you busy.) And I was leading worship (along with Josh) for the GBC youth group.
The siblings had pretty much lost interest with Steven Tyler coming onboard, and Mom hated JayLo's laugh.
Phillip Phillips won over Jessica Sanchez(who I consistently detested). I also couldn't stand Joshua Ledet, but Trish and Damon liked him. I'm still mystified that Skylar Laine doesn't have a record deal. She was amazing. And the same thing with Hollie Cavanagh - It should have been a battle between those two for the title. Mohawked Christian piano man Colton Dixon was one of my favorite guys, along with Phillip and goofy Asian Heejun Han.
Scotty McCreery sang the goodbye song this season, a cover of Tim McGraw's "Please Remember Me", which was very good. Not quite as good as the original(none of these covers seem to be), but very emotional and fitting. Though I've always thought what they really needed to play there was Chris Sligh's "Something Beautiful", since he was a former contestant, or even better, Taylor Swift's "Long Live".
For season 12, Steven and Jennifer were gone(thank goodness), replaced by Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban. Randy was still around. Mariah thought she was the Queen of the World, Randy was bland and uninteresting, Keith was awesome, and Nicki was wonderfully zany. I called them a "dysfunctional family" in one of my reviews...Randy as the Clueless Dad, Mariah as the Demanding Overbearing Mother, Keith as the Awesomely Cool "Normal" Big Brother, and Nicki as the Rebellious Teenage Daughter.
Also, I was watching all of these episodes by myself in my ice-cold freezer of an NSU dorm in Ross. The results shows being on Thursdays were why it took a while for me to get to one of the BCM's Impact meetings. But I'm glad I got involved with them. Really, for a lot of reasons, my freshman year was pretty bad. Usually while watching Idol, I'd get so bored with the eternal parade of poorly-sung ballads that I'd flip channels, usually to discover Full House reruns and watch them instead. (It's a great show.)
From the perspective of the discussion group, we all hated nearly everyone. Angie Miller, Kree Harrison and Lazaro Arbos were the only passably decent performers, and the contestants, themes and song choices were so awful that we went on strike halfway through the live performances.
If you put me and Amanda on a TV show as judges then, we would've been Keith and Nicki. They were by miles the greatest part of this season. The winner was Candice Glover; we were all very unimpressed.
Randy left before season 13, and Mariah and Nicki both bailed, too. Keith stayed on, Jennifer returned, and Harry Connick Jr. was added. I tried watching some of the auditions; but they wee so awful I just couldn't. (Nobody else I knew watched, either.) AT&T pulled its sponsorship. Some guy named Caleb Johnson won.
For season 14, all the judges came back, Coke pulled their sponsorship, and some guy named Nick Fradiani won.
So, I'll probably try to watch the final season once it starts in January. I was 13 when I started watching(we were rather late jumping on the bandwagon), and I'll be a couple weeks shy of 23 when they crown the final Idol. So, really, it's kind of like the final stroke of the end of growing up; far less sad than the passing of Mimi, Dado, Sport, Sunny, Copper, or Nano; much less challenging than dealing with the fire, high school, or college; but still sad to witness, like the state of the nation or the falling away of believers who walked beside you in earlier times.
Courtney plays mandolin and ukulele; Bennett, Laura and Wesley DeSpain have picked up leading the music where Josh and I left off, and along with Courtney, Paige and Callie, the leadership roles that Josh, Marie, Sam, Dylan and I once held.
Annette is studying theatre. JB has kind of taken a break with songwriting.
I play and sing when I can, and here and there dabble with songwriting. Jon's new band is getting off to a good start, and his songwriting is going well. Amanda still sings. Jed's studying to become a middle-school music teacher, I think. (We never really put together the band that were always going to; the Triumphant Toothbrushes. It would've been an awesome garage band, with homemade music video covers and everything, of songs by DC Talk, Bon Jovi, Owl City, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and others. Closest we came to it was the Jedites at SGYC 2011.)
Idol emails were what connected us to our Lankford cousins, so we don't hear from them as much. But when we do, it usually means mandolin/guitar playing, singing, and good-natured teasing. Which are all good things that the world needs more of.
Watching the auditions, I was always reminded of some of the lyrics to David Ball's song Riding With Private Malone; "For every dream that's shattered/Another one comes true..." There was always that hope, knowing full well how miniscule it was, that you, an ordinary person, could become famous and land on the radio. As the Rascal Flatts song "Stand" says, "Life's like a novel with the end ripped out/The edge of a canyon/With only one way down..." There'll be other cool things that will happen in my life, I just have to wait and see what they are when they come. And maybe there won't be, and nothing spectacular ever happens. You just got to keep on dreamin', Even If It Breaks Your Heart...
Even if you were one of the rare people who didn't pay attention to the show, you knew people who did; and it was something you could talk about with complete strangers without being weird. That's gone now. And it's sad.
"Good night, America."
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