American Idol Top 24- Group A
No matter whom is President or what is going on in the world, American Idol continues to return to the airwaves with another season. While the ABC rendition of the series is different in many ways, that the once much ballyhooed run the franchise had on Fox, it has been on the Disney owned network long enough to have established it's own rhythm,
After weeks of audition episodes, complete with numerous emotional backstories on the contestants, and three entertaining "Hollywood Week" episodes, the show always brings the semifinalists and their families to a tropical resort for the first voting round of competition. Welcome to American Idol: White Lotus.
Nah, on this Sunday evening broadcast, they are not at a resort in Thailand, but instead, once again, at the Disney owned property in Hawai'i. Ryan Seacrest has returned, as he has for every season of Idol ever,and judges Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan are back as well. This season, Katy Perry has thankfully been replaced, and in her former seat is Carrie Underwood, who won the show an entire generation ago, and two seasons before I first started blogging about Idol. Carrie is the first former contestant period to become an actual Idol "judge", although some others have served as "coaches" on "The Voice."
The ubiquitous Jelly Roll has been all over Idol the past couple of years.This season, he is around for the long haul as the "artist in residence." Somehow, I think Jelly Roll might one day become a Presidential candidate. Crazier things are happening. Tonight, he was joined by Ashanti and tomorrow night it will be Josh Groban. I doubt either one of those singers had ever met him before.
As is always the case, it is tricky this time of year to find the time to both watch the show and to blog about the performances. This is more of a sprint than a marathon at this point. Within a month and a half, it will all be over. Tonight, I watched the episode "live" and am writing about it later on Sunday evening. Tomorrow, I may or may not be able to watch the next group of 12 singers, but I almost certainly will not be able to write an entry that evening. That will come later in the week.
All of this is strictly for fun. With the exception of mjsbigblog, I truly do not know if anybody else on the internet has been covering American Idol for as long as I have (going back to 2007) or as in depth. Even before I started this blog, I have watched each and every season of Idol and believe I know a ridiculous amount of useless trivia about the show's history. I have always enjoyed the combination of music, a sports-like competition vibe, and all sorts of political intrigue and strategy that the show brings to the table.
What I do every season is I offer some (hopefully brief) commentary about each performance, with my thoughts established before the Idol judges weigh in. It has to be said that the judges are a heck of a lot more kind than their predecessors were in the earlier years of Idol. So, our actual politics has gotten far more course and unforgiving, and American Idol has gone in the opposite direction. Perhaps, there is a connection. At the end of each round, I rank the performances, trying to only focus on the vocal aspect of the performance alone. Then, I make predictions as to who might be eliminated, to try to pre-determine if America will agree with me.
Let us get to it. If I am not mistaken the Top 24 consist of 14 males and 10 females. To the surprise of many, a lady won the entire show last season, but I think it will perhaps be an upset if that happens two seasons in a row. It also seems to me like there are a heck of a lot of extremely good African-American singers in the semi-finals this year but a black singer has not won a non-Covid Idol season in many years now and recent years has seen a disturbing trend of a heavily white Idol viewing demographic sending some black singers home way too soon. An Asian-Pacific singer did win a couple of years ago. We will see what happens this season.
1.Che- "Master Blastin' (Jammin')"
Imagine that there is an accent mark over the last letter of his name. I will not be taking the steps to figure out how to include it.
Idol has gone international for several seasons now. Che, a father of three, has come all the way from the UK for the sole purpose of trying to win this singing competition. It will be up to American viewers though to keep or deport him and I have a feeling that might be happening fairly soon.
Thus far, I thought Che was pretty impressive singing soulful ballads. I think his attempt to do an old reggae style Stevie Wonder song was maybe a mistake. By no means did he sound horrible, but it just did not seem to be totally his vibe and I think going first on a two hour show will leave him fairly forgettable.
2. Penny Samar- "Good Luck, Babe!"
Penny was shown utilizing all sorts of weird faces when auditioning and while she had a good voice, I was a bit surprised she made it to the Top 24. She seems to be Idol fodder. However, the singer Chappell Roan is really big these days with the kids, and Penny is trying to ride that horse/pony as far as she can. Chappell has a song and apparently a fanbase called "Pink Pony Club" and Penny has her "Pink Penny Club" as she shows up with pink hair and an pinkish outfit.
On the first verse, I thought Penny sounded pretty decent and relevant in a modern way. Then, I felt the vocals sort of went off the rails a bit and she got kind of shrill. With tough competition ahead this evening, she will need a whole lot of young girls to power vote for her. So, Good Luck, Penny!
3. Kolbi Jordan- "New Attitude"
Kolbi does sort of resemble one of the main characters of "The White Lotus", but I do not know if there is much of a crossover audience between the two shows.
Regardless, Kolbi is a very strong singer, in the Idol tradition of the plus size black diva. She was one of the winners of the coveted "Platinum ticket." With Patti LaBelle as her hero, it might not be a surprise that Kolbi wanted to sing one of her songs. However, I am pretty sure this number has not been done on Idol since way back in Season One, when frontrunner Tamyra Gray shockingly at the time had an off performance and perhaps opened the door for the rise of Kelly Clarkson.
I think Kolbi sang "New Attitude" better than Tamyra once did and showed she has powerful pipes. However, it felt a bit cheesy and perhaps a bit off timing wise. Still though, easily the best so far tonight.
4. Baylee Littrell- "Happy"
Idol has put forth some nepo babies before, but none have been quite as obvious as Baylee, the only child of Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell. In the Hollywood Week duet round, I thought his female counterpart was much stronger than he was, yet she was cut and Baylee got through. That did not seem right.
I actually think Baylee is more talented than what he did tonight. He has sort of a quiet folk-country aspect to his music that can be nice, and apparently has been out there trying to make it in the industry for years, but this was totally the wrong song. He did say though that he used to do this when he was nine years old and was brought out to sing at BSB concerts. I felt this was just totally the wrong sort of song for Baylee to sing and it seemed very amateurish. He really does not deserve to go forward, but you can be sure that between his own social media followers and the now middle-aged stans of his fans, there are going to be a lot of people voting to keep him around.
5. Victor Solomon- "That's My Kind Of Night"
I suppose sometimes you just need to play the Idol game at these early rounds. I really do not remember too much about Victor, the one remaining Illinois contestant. He had not been presented as a country singer though.
Tonight though, perhaps in an attempt to differentiate himself from the other black contestants, Victor put on a cowboy hat, and some suspenders, which may or may not have been intentionally unfastened He then did an uptempo song by Luke Bryan, knowing full well that Luke himself would praise it to the heavens, and that all sorts of die-hard Luke Bryan fans would be watching of course, in order to see their favorite judge on their tv.
This was sort of a weird performance. There were parts that were impressive and parts that were more cringy, as Victor threw in all sort of bro-country dance moves. He has a nice voice, but I do not think this is actually the kind of music he is into. After the performance, Seacrest invited Luke on to the stage, and the three dudes busted out some more dance moves. It will probably be enough to get Victor through to the next round.
6. Gabby Samone- "It's All Coming Back To Me Now"
Many are just learning the names of these contestants. Earlier in the evening we had a Ms. Samar and now hear comes Ms. Samone. Gabby is an incredibly good singer though. That really came through with what they showed of her from Hollywood.
Taking on this Celine Dion ballad though is something that would have fit in very well back in the first five years or so of the Idol franchise and we would almost never hear a female singer, especially a black one, try this again. Gabby just happened to sing the heck out of it though in her introduction to the American voting public. It may not be "current" but she thoroughly played to her strength.
7. MKY- "Adorn"
Why not just go as Mikey? I know that Seacrest now hosts "Wheel of Fortune"also, but he does not need to buy a vowel.
Born in East LA, MKY has seemingly been performing for a very long time and there are probably few contestants in Idol history who seem so completely comfortable being on stage or in front of a camera. He also comes from a Mexican-American performing family but while this may be a sore subject for the family, I really wonder what would happen if retired boxer Oscar De La Hoya,who comes from the same part of the country, were to take a DNA test. We already know that De La Hoya has a whole lot of children out there, and based on appearance, I really wonder if MKY could be one of the group.
There is definitely a niche for MKY with the sort of Latin R&B stylings he seems to enjoy. This was a pretty good performance all around, although I do not think he has anywhere near the most powerful or resonant voice this season.
8. Zaylie Winsdsor- "Heart Of Glass"
Aesthetically, teenage Zaylie will remind many of a younger and shorter Taylor Swift. That could be very much to her advantage this season.
I was a bit surprised when I heard she was taking on a Blondie song from the '80s. Other Idol contestants have gone astray by attempting to do one of their songs. I thought that was the case for Zaylie as well as she got started. However, I think she got stronger as it went on and showed that she may have somewhat of a unique lane among the females this season. A lot of people will probably like it even more than I did.
9. Breanna Nix- "Still Rolling Stones"
We have seen a lot of Breanna thus far this season, especially in the role of mother to her perpetually calm and sometimes asleep young son. She definitely seemed to be somewhat of a country singer, but might really find success in the Christian Contemporary genre. I think a lot of fans of that sort of music watch Idol these days.
I do not know this Lauren Daigle song, but know that Daigle, who has gone on to great success, was once cut very early on a season of American Idol. Breanna stated that she relates to the message of this song because she drank a lot as a teenager but has since found redemption in her faith.
Vocally, I thought she did really great. She had a great connection to the audience and while this is not the kind of music that appeals to hipster types, it did seem very current in its own way.
10. Isaiah Misailegalu- "You Can Have It All"
Isaiah will be around a while, so i better learn how to spell his name. It would be easier if he just went by his nickname of "Samoan Silkk."
He is one of several 17 year old dudes this season, (a couple of which are already gone) who look closer to 27. Isaiah has a great voice though and sounds advanced beyond his years. He did a very strong performance of an Asian-Pacific artist's reggae like song that his very large and vocally supportive family loved. Then, they brought out the original artist to "surprise" Isaiah. All in all, it was a good showing. This contestant will get a lot of comparisons to Ian Tongi, who won Idol two years ago.
11. Slater Nally- "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"
First of all, is Slater really someone's actual first name? I am still on the fence as to whether or not I find Slater to be likable or unlikable and cannot quite put my finger on why, but will do my best to give him the benefit of the doubt. There is no doubt that this 18 year old is a very good singer and could be a contender to win it all.
At first, I sort of rolled my eyes at this song choice. It was clear he was going to the Brother Iz version while in Hawai'i and while that was the arrangement used, Slater's voice definitely brought a different rough country, almost southern rock component. I thought it was very good indeed. It was basically a different version of a well known different version of an even better known song.
12. Jamal Roberts- "Liar"
Of everyone shown thus far in the Idol audition/Hollywood episodes, Jamal has definitely been in at least the top three of those who have impressed me the most. The father of two girls and a gym teacher from Meridian, Mississippi, he seems like someone who would be easy to root for. It is interesting that there is another teacher of sorts, also a black guy named Roberts, who sang with Jamal in Hollywood and who I also have liked. We will see him tomorrow.
Tonight, Jamal sang a Jelly Roll song, which of course was smart because all the Jelly Rollers (I assume they call themselves that) would have been watching. Jamal has a killer voice and puts so much passion into his performance. This was top notch, although maybe perhaps just a tad bit too screamy at small portions. I am hoping Jamal will be around for a long time.
Rankings worst to best:
posted by Corey @ Sunday, April 13, 2025
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