Idol Review – Blogging American Idol 2011

Those predictions I promised…

March 10th, 2009

Yeah, yeah. I have been ordering and re-ordering all weekend, procrastinating on my decision. See, I am usually fairly confident in my predictive skills. This year, however, is my first season to make official predictions with the wildcard system. At this point, in previous seasons four through seven, we had already seen each of the performers strut their stuff three times. This year, we have seen nine of them only once, and four of them twice. This makes things significantly more difficult. But I’ll give it a shot anyway, and you can all laugh at me on Wednesday when my pick to win goes home the first week. So here it goes:

13. Michael Sarver
12. Megan Corkrey
11. Kris Allen
10. Jasmine Murray
09. Jorge Nunez
08. Scott Macintyre
07. Anoop Desai
06. Adam Lambert
05. Allison Iraheta
04. Lil Rounds
03. Danny Gokey
02. Alexis Grace
01. Matt Giraud

While picking a front-runner is much tougher than the last four seasons, picking out the weak links isn’t quite as difficult, so let’s start at the end.

Michael Sarver and Megan Corkrey are going to get eaten alive by the big stage. Their voices aren’t that strong, and I have a feeling that Megan especially will struggle with Michael Jackson songs.

Kris Allen and Jasmine Murray will also struggle early on, because their voices are not as strong as some of the others. Kris may be able to redeem himself with a guitar, but I thing he will be an early goner.

Then things become a bit more difficult. I can’t see Jorge singing country, so he might struggle with Opry night. And I’m not sure that he has the fan base that the others have established.

Scott will be next, and while his charm with the piano will last several weeks, his weaker voice will start to become a liability. About this time, I think Anoop’s voice will catch up with him, too. I have a feeling that several weeks worth of negative judges feedback coupled with apparent bad vocals will give him the boot around #7.

I put Adam in the #6 spot, only because sixth place always seems to annoy me (Constantine, Pickler, and although she sort of grew on me, Carly Smithson). While Adam doesn’t completely annoy me yet, the warning signs are there.  Everything about him is over the top, and he will begin to grate on the nerves really fast. So call it a hunch, but he won’t last as long as some are predicting.

I put Allison in the #5 spot because I think she will stay because of her amazing voice, but I see her making a few song choice flubs, if only because of inexperience and difficult theme weeks.

Lil Rounds will go 4th, and again, call it a hunch, but like her predecessors of Latoya London and Lakisha Jones, this “L” diva will also go home in the #4 spot.

The remaining three are risky to have in the front, I know. I put Gokey in the #3 spot. While he was an early front-runner, all the backstory-backlash has gotten a bit out of hand, making him quite the polarizing contestant. While I don’t know that his voice is necessarily more stellar than Allison’s or Lil’s, I think he will make smart song choices and creative arrangements (he is a music teacher, after all) that will pull him through.

Alexis and Matt will battle out the finale, but in a season full of strong male voices, I feel like the guys have to prevail, and Matt will take the crown. I think they will both hang around until the end because they will fly under the radar for a few weeks, and hit their groove about top 9.

My strategy for picking the early front-runner as the eventual winner has failed the last three seasons, so I figure, why not go with an unexpected choice?

OK…leave your lashings in the comments.  But before you lash, recall that against everyone else’s opinions I correctly predicted Syesha to be #3 last season, so don’t be too hard on me!

Entry Filed under: idol commentary