American Idol - New Orleans Auditions

This show is different, and one of us likes it a lot. It’s so nice to see judges who don’t embarrass people for ratings. Plus, American Idol is showcasing mostly good auditions. The bad people come in montages and aren’t ridiculed with circus music and cameras following them out of the audition room. What is American Idol without someone walking away, cursing, crying, and flipping the camera a bird? American Idol is also showing appreciation for beauty over belting, which is great.

We love how Randy is calling himself “The Dawg,” which makes no sense, because he calls OTHER people “dawg.” Because Simon isn’t there to be mean, Randy took it on himself to say what needed to be said in this episode. He is the mean one now. He’s not super mean, but he is there to throw out a “that was terrible” or two. JLo is still sweet. Steven Tyler is still crazy.

The first person we saw was Blake Patterson, singing Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” at the piano, crying because he didn’t make it. Did any other TV lover notice that he kind of looked like Lee Pace? That’s something to SMILE about, har har har. Jordan Dawson came soon after that. He was the music teacher. (Wasn’t his student ADORABLE?) One of us thought that Jordan’s voice was a little too breathy and had a rasp of damage to it. He had a little of the Broadway style, a good version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", and good pitch. But the voice wasn’t clear enough for us. We can’t see him making it too far. Shortly after that, we saw the girl with the big lips who sang the Bob Dylan song. Randy joked that she could be related to Steven Tyler, with those lips. Tyler said, “You never know,” and we know he meant it, because of how he met his daughter, Liv. http://www.lovelylivtyler.com/info/life_story/

Another notable contestant who made it through was Brett. You know, the guy with the ginger fro who was picked on. They could do a Glee episode on that guy…. He had a good voice and he is unique, but he sang with our pet peeve: the tight neck - when you don’t have control of your voice and you have the tightest neck ever to squeeeeeze the sound out. It’s not good for the vocal cords and it’s not attractive either. One of us loved him - she was crying, no joke. Gabriel, the guy who sang Lady Gaga, could have saved it if he were really good. He made a smart choice singing a silly song that sounded bad, because it got him in the room. Where he dropped the ball? When he didn’t immediately say, “Wait, let me sing another song, I was just joking.” Even one of the judges wondered if he would have done better with a different song. That was Gabriel’s cue to quickly interject. He had a tight neck too, though.

We felt bad for the guy who talked about how he went to “Idol Camp,” because the camp must have just taken his money and laughed. He was EDUCATED too. He was a nursing student. That just shows that even really smart people can have delusions. We liked the tubby, cute 15-year-old Justin Bieber sound-alike's voice, but what will happen when it drops? Some guys aren’t good after their voices change. The last girl, with the special needs child, had a lot of beauty to her voice and we suspect that the flaws (and the tight neck) came from nerves. Has she already had work done on her face though? At 23? It looked like it, but we hoped not. Her child was precious, but JLo looked like such a moron when she whispered to the little girl. Did she not notice the hearing aids?

They are letting unique people in. They are letting marginally attractive people in. We may actually get some variety this season, after last season's parade of young people who mostly couldn't sing. We're lovin' it, dawg.