A Love Letter to American Idol

Back in the Spring of 2005, I experienced my first major disappointment. It happened during the season four finale of American Idol. I was nine years old. Being in the fourth grade during the early 2000’s meant a number of things: you watched Spongebob when you came home from school, you thought Spider-Man 2 was the greatest movie ever made, you listened to Britney Spears music because your friends liked it, and you obsessed over American Idol. Everyone in my elementary school talked about who they were voting for and who they thought was going to win. I was no different. Season four was the first year that I watched. My aunt was the one who introduced me to the show. Little did she know what kind of severe addiction she was instilling in her nephew.

Early on in the season, I hitched my wagon to Southern rock singer Bo Bice. I would tune in every week just to see what derivative Lynyrd Skynyrd/Black Crowes/Gavin DeGraw song he would cover. In hindsight it was pretty repetitive, probably a bit mediocre. But I didn’t care. (Full disclosure: As disparaging as this description may sound, Bice’s performance of “In a Dream” remains one of the greatest to ever come out of Idol.) I would faithfully dial his voting number until my parents told me to go to bed. If Bo fell into the dreaded bottom three during a results show, my heart would race as though I had just avoided a car accident. As a nerdy kid that resented the very idea of sports, I finally understood what it was like to be a super-fan, to root for a participant in a competition that I had no vested interest in. No one was a bigger Bo Bice fan than me in the year 2005. This made it all the more devastating when he lost to Carrie Underwood in the season four finale. Today, Carrie Underwood is multi-platinum, Grammy-winning country superstar. Bo Bice has sold three CD’s: one of them is sitting on my bookshelf, the other two in a broken jukebox at some shady dive bar in Alabama.

I tell this story because Fox just announced that American Idol will conclude it’s run after the 2016 season. The cancellation is hardly a surprise. Idol has been struggling in the ratings for the last several years, routinely being outperformed by time-slot rival Survivor and actual rival The Voice. Every year the show shakes up its format and judging panel, yet every year viewership continues to decline. Just this year, Idol was downsized to one show per week, making room for the network’s new mega hits Empire and Backstrom (OK, maybe not Backstrom). And simply on a cultural level, the show fails to maintain the relevancy that it once possessed. Idol is no longer the topic of water cooler talk and, although it’s still a large platform, contestants no longer go on to be superstars in the recording industry. Since the departure of Simon Cowell in 2010, the producers have been unable to find a judging panel that connects with the audiences in the way the original three did. I would argue that the shows current iteration, fronted by Harry Connick Jr, is as creativity strong as ever. I also understand that it’s an argument I would lose. Who’s kidding who? American Idol is past it’s prime. Not every show can go out on top like Seinfeld. It’s time to take the old horse behind the barn and put it out of its misery.

Love it or hate it, Idol will be remembered in the annals of television history. At it’s peak, the show achieved an unprecedented level of popularity. Survivor may have created the reality competition show, but American Idol is what started the reality TV craze. The series spawned a ridiculous amount of rip-off’s, from the incredibly entertaining The Voice to the disastrous train wreck known as The X Factor to the show your grandparents love to talk to you about, America’s Got Talent. I’m hard pressed to think of a show since that’s sent shockwaves through the industry in such a way. I mean, the ratings during seasons four, five and six make Game of Thrones and Walking Dead look like low-budget cult classics. In a television landscape that’s only becoming more fragmented, perhaps that will be Idol’s legacy: the last giant hit to truly be a part of the national dialogue.

In many ways, the format of American Idol also served as a predecessor for the current online culture. It captured the now status quo idea of the audience as content producers, giving viewers complete control of the competition and therefore the artistic direction of the show. It’s almost impossible to scroll through your Twitter feed without seeing the correlation. In the early days of Idol, every housewife with a telephone could play executive by deciding which singer got a record deal. Now every teenager with an iPhone thinks they’re channeling Roger Ebert with their 140 character review of Grey’s Anatomy.

This democratization of art is among the many criticisms thrown in Idol’s direction over the last thirteen years. And it’s important to point out that, although I’m a die hard fan, I don’t believe these criticisms are invalid. Yes, the competitive aspects of the show turned musical expression into two minute gymnastic routines. Yes, the auditions thrust sixteen-year-old chorus members into superstardom while ignoring the struggle of professional musicians. And yes, at it’s core American Idol is nothing more than a karaoke contest. None of the critics are wrong. Yet, when I saw the Internet’s reaction to the cancellation (and by Internet, I mean a couple of trolls on Twitter), it rubbed me the wrong way. Rather than reacting with fond nostalgia, remembering the show’s heyday and recognizing this news as the end of an era, most opinions seemed to be some variation of “it’s about time,” “good riddance,” or “the show sucked ever since Simon left.” So I reflected on my fandom, as I often do, trying to figure out why I fell in love with American Idol and why I’ve chosen to stick with it for so long. I discovered that, despite it’s laundry list of evils, it’s also been a force for an enormous amount of good. Ultimately, it’s too soon to tell whether or not Idol’s cultural impact was a positive one. But at the very least, the hate is unfair.

The show’s detractors will often point to it’s impact on the music industry, focusing on the stardom of Kelley Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Jennifer Hudson. They argue that Idol stimulated an era of factory-made music, wherein record labels take talented young pop stars and pair them up with a barrage of lazily written, catchy tunes. It’s effective, it’s economical, and it ignores the artistry of other singer-songwriter types. Would Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift be as popular as they are if American Idol didn’t exist? To say that they would is probably a little naive. So yes, the show most likely shaped the current music landscape in a negative way. However, this criticism completely overlooks a main element of the show: the contestants mostly cover old music. Say what you will about Idol’s impact on the music of the 2000’s. The fact of the matter is, it’s impact on the music of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s is just as profound. American Idol’s greatest virtue is that it introduces the younger generation to music they would never otherwise be exposed to.

In fact, most of the music I’m into was first heard on Idol. Clay Aiken’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” made me a life-long Simon and Garfunkel fan. James Durbin’s cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” introduced me to my favorite Beatles song. Chris Daughtry’s version of “Higher Ground” exposed me to the brilliance of Stevie Wonder. Casey Abram’s cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” got me listening to alternative rock. And Jason Castro’s performance of “Hallelujah” stunned me with a level of beauty I didn’t know a song was capable of having. American Idol made Billy Joel sexy, made Zepplin young and made Aretha Franklin as fresh and relevant as ever. So condemn the show all you want and say that it killed music. The truth is, Idol is keeping music alive.

Simon Cowell and the Art of Brutal Honesty

When I was ten, I dressed up as Simon Cowell for Halloween (see photo above for the lavish visual). I wore jeans and a black Under Armor shirt fit as tightly as possible, accentuating every curve on my chubby ten-year-old body. My hair was dyed black and carefully gelled into a square. No one asked “Who are you supposed to be?” They all knew. It’s all these years later when I realize that Simon Cowell is one of my heroes. I never considered his impact on my life to be so profound. After all, boys my age grew up worshiping Tom Brady and Tony Hawk, not some judge on a reality show. But the more I think about, the harder it is to think of public figure who influenced me like Simon did. It sounds lame but it’s true.

I think it’s safe to say that American Idol would not have become the phenomenon that it was if it weren’t for Simon Cowell. As great a host as Ryan Seacrest is and as much as Paula and Randy added to the panel’s chemistry, Simon was the glue holding that show together. His critiques were what many people tuned in for. What made him so compelling for a young Nico, and I’m sure it’s the same for the majority of Idol fans, can be summarized in one word: honesty. Notice I didn’t use the word “rude” or “mean” or “nasty,” I said “honest.” There’s a difference. People that described Simon as the “mean judge” obviously had a limited understanding of American Idol. To simply call him “mean” is an oversimplification, a way of turning an interesting personality into a caricature. Unfortunately, many of these oversimplifiers were network executives. So when it was time to churn out another Idol knock-off, producers were required to cast a mean British guy for the judging panel (i.e. Piers Morgan, Len Goodman, etc). The problem with this way of thinking is that Simon was not Donald Trump or Gordon Ramsey. We didn’t tune in to see him berate contestants, we tuned in to watch him be the voice of the audience. He judged performances by saying exactly what everyone was thinking. He would give the harsh truth because the other two judges were not honest enough to do so. His comments were never mean for the sake of being mean, they were necessary for the fairness of the competition and for the sanity of those watching.

Therefore, when Simon paid a contestant a compliment, you knew it meant something. Those were the moments I would wait for: when he found a performance worthy of praise rather than condemnation. As I’ve grown older, I find myself applying this philosophy to my personal life. I believe that when you’re around people that you love and care about, it’s important to not hide from the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. The same applies internally, because often times the person we lie to the most is ourselves. Coming to terms with reality is one of the hardest and most important parts of being human, often resulting in terrible lows. But like on American Idol, that makes the highs mean so much more. It’s a cliche, but honesty is truly the best policy. Yeah, I learned all of this from a reality TV judge.

So as I continue to produce opinion-based content for a minuscule portion of the Internet, I’ll attempt to be as honest as humanly possible. I’ll make sure I believe every word I say on a podcast or write in a blog post, because there’s no point in saying anything different. Maybe someday I can cause a fraction of American Idol’s impact, leave a mark on popular culture and on the lives of my audience that memory can’t erase. It’s a long shot. As the show heads into its final season, no one really knows how good it will be. We don’t know if season fifteen will be a proper send-off or if it will produce a winner on par with the Clarkson’s and the Underwood’s of the world. I do know that American Idol left an impact on me several years ago that will never be erased. This nineteen-year-old college male will defend it for as long the haters hate it. So thank you, American Idol. Thank for being so important to me, for teaching me that old music is alive and well, and for introducing me to a British guy that became my spiritual mentor. You made the most of the last thirteen years. But I’ll still never forgive you for letting Bo Bice come in second place.

Nico D.

Smartest guy in the room, dumbest guy outside of it.