I am culling different opinions that I AGREE WITH on various idol boards and posting them here I couldn;t have said them better myself.....These opinions are essentially mine ( as a Taylor Hicks fan ).
I’ve been thinking about Simon’s response to Taylor. (And I hope this isn’t redundant to something discussed earlier — in which case by all means ignore it!)
For starters, I don’t believe at all that Simon is stupid or lacks musical taste.
I do believe, though, that his musical taste is fairly narrow, because it is constrained by his business taste. I believe further that he often subordinates intelligence to cleverness, which aren’t at all the same thing. And as far as AI — and specifically Taylor — is concerned, I believe that he has become lazy.
Simon’s response to Taylor last night was, I thought, quite revealing. “That was just *ridiculous*” (or however he phrased it): it’s about as useful to a performer as something Paula would say in Backwards World. What I read into the response (unfairly maybe, because no one knows what’s in Simon’s heart/head for real) is that Simon has given up this season. He might just as well have waved a hand vaguely and said, “Whatever!” QUE SERA SERA.
Think about it. When he and his partner(s) came up with the UK version of Idol, they came up with a gold mine. Certainly Simon himself knows — or knew — the pop music business. And he knew how to milk the machinery that drives the business (witness the acts he produced and promoted in the early ’90s). The whole Idol franchise works on the idea that you can take that machinery and feed into it undiscovered talent, nominally “voted on” by the TV audience but in actuality packaged and delivered in a way to help ensure the “votes” would deliver the ideal form of talent. (That’s “ideal” in terms of what the machine can process.)
On top of the (future) income to be derived from the top “winners” of the “competition,” there was all the (present) income to be derived from a wildly successful commercial television venture.
I can easily see Simon and his partner(s) clapping their hands in delight at their own ingenuity — their own intelligence, yes, but primarily their own cleverness. What a wonderful wonderful idea they’d come up with! It would be self-sustaining! It would roll on forever! It would feed not just the machine, it would feed THEM!
Really, there was only one thing that could go wrong with the whole scheme. They had to have confidence in their ability to channel the voting in the desired direction, of course. But in order to maintain whatever credibility the quote-unquote “voting” might have for the audience, they had to report the voting results in an at least superficially impartial way.
(They made one other mistake, too, although there was no easy technological way around it: they allowed a theoretically infinite number of votes to be cast by every voter. If you’ve got five voters and can convince 3 that your contestant deserves their votes, your desired outcome is assured — unless the two other voters are able and motivated to vote as much as they want. Whoops.)
I can easily see, regarding Taylor Hick's style(s), the rightness of all the comparisons which people have made, from Elvis to really obscure (to me!) musicians at the other end of the scale.
I don’t, though, believe Taylor represents a musical revolution — something the world has never seen, something destined to alter the course of cultural history, and so on.
Rather, what I see in Taylor — and in all our responses to him — is the focus of a REVOLT: a revolt of an audience sick of being spoon-fed by an industry which appears to lack all sense of taste or discrimination. (Actually, make that two industries: music and TV.)
The Idol machine can’t deal with a revolt. It assumes the ongoing compliance (masquerading as “participation”) of the audience. In the face of a revolt, the best it can do is sigh, sputter, and with Simon exclaim, “Ridiculous !" ( ADD the DRUNK metaphor to it, whichhe used more than once in so many weeks already ).
You could almost see in Taylor’s face this week and with his quick response, after Simon finally shut his pie hole, of dial 07 that HE is getting sick of the judges and their inane inconsistencies.
I also LOVE the role that Ryan has taken; it seems to me he and Taylor have a connection. From the 1st song Levon when they did that wonderfully quirky little dance, to the Takin' It to The Streets signature move, to defending his fashion style after Simon mauled him after singing Trouble, Ryan has been Taylors defender and I suspect friend.
My impression from Simon last night was that he was saying “No matter what you do, and no matter what I say, America loves you, so what’s the point?! I praise you, and people vote for you in droves; I slam you, and they vote for you even more.” ( NOTE FOLKS --- Taylor has ALWAYS BEEN NUMBER 1 EVERY WEEK IN ANY PHONE CALL STATISTICS YOU TAKE -- DialIdol, Land Line from AT&T ).
I think this also carried over into his comments to Paris. I think that is why he was so terse with her. I think that he was still flustered by the audience’s response to Taylor. You’re right - he’s given up.
IMO, another thing that plays into that is that his chosen challenger for Taylor - Chris - is appealing to a narrower and narrower group, rather than a wider and wider one. He keeps wanting these others to have a “moment”…he wanted Chris to have one but he clearly didn’t. He tried to “almost” manufacture one for McPhee but it didn’t fly. To me, he was in effect saying, aren’t ANY of you going to sack up and try to take Taylor on? And they aren’t doing it.
So, it is Soul Patrol vs The AI Powers That Be. It remains to be seen who will win --- The Elite, or the masses.
Makes for very interesting reality show if you ask me.
I did get a huge laugh out of this line, "it’s about as useful to a performer as something Paula would say in Backwards World."
ROTFL!
To Simon:
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been.
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time,
Provided with toys and 'Scouting for Boys'.
You brought a guitar to punish your ma,
And you didn't like school, and you
know you're nobody's fool,
So welcome to the machine.
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star,
He played a mean guitar,
He always ate in the Steak Bar.
He loved to drive in his Jaguar.
So welcome to the Machine.
Excellent thoughts there. Simon may understand what the UK likes but he doesn't get the US. I still remember his dumbfounded look on his face when Bo sang Sweet Home Alabama last year. Simon doesn't get us, especially us southerners. lol
Go Soul Patrol!
I think Simon feels that Kellie is the only one that can challenge Taylor and I think she is going to fall short. He connects with the audience and THAT is what sells. Sells not only records but concert tickets.
People ask if you would go hear him perform this 'stuff'? Well, gosh, HE WRITES HIS OWN STUFF!!!! That is what people will pay to hear.
I just love The Fall and would love to get the full version.