Cleaning out the Garbage on American Idol

Well, four completely out-of-their-league singers bit the dust tonight on American Idol: 

In the men's group, the losers were: John Park, a nice young man who should buy a restaurant and sing karaoke to his captive customers; and Jermaine Sellers, who might have a career singing R&B-jazz - if he takes some vocal lessons and learns how to get some diaphramatic suppport and mid-range vocal strength (not all songs are written to be sung in falsetto.)

In the women's group, Michelle Delamor is a beautiful girl with a voice made for sign language; while Haeley Vaughn is SOOO young and could be developed, with some great vocal coaching - say from the likes of a Ron Anderson or Nancy Badger.   While Haeley's butchering of  The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand," was a vocal mess, it did show that the young girl has some interesting Indie instincts, which can be developed, with the right guidance.

AI is really an A&R train wreck.  It's a TV variety show like Star Search that panders to tone-deaf adolscents with a heavy bias toward middle of the road singers - or else Adam Lambert and Daughtry both would have won their competitions, hand's down. Another screwy thing about Idol is that it has aspiring lead singers being asked to sing harmony (like studio veterans) and sing songs completely out of their genre.   And while some of the judges are nice people, (Simon not included) none of them, especially Randy who always makes comments about pitch, but does a poor job of hearing it. 

Here's the Women's scoop from the A&R Room.  Crystal is a ready-to-record star in the making. She looks a bit wan; we hope she doesn't have a serious illness.  Katelyn Epperly has a strong voice and a great pure tone, but is really "square" and needs to get hip fast. Lily looks like an alt-artist, but I'd like to hear more singing from her and see a lot less posing.  Paige has a pretty strong voice, but no sense of artistic direction. Katie's singing career is in Broadway show tunes (if she studies hard) and not in pop music.
Siobahn has an interesting voice and look, but is weird - sometimes interesting and sometimes just OFF.

At this point, the only ones who've shown good instincts for choosing songs that fit them are: Crystal (a 10), Katelyn (a 9 for the Coldplay tune) and Lily (7.5).

Next week, I'll give you the lowdown on the guys. Stay tuned.

And that's our view from "The A&R Room."  We welcome your thoughts.