Yuck – I hope this isn’t true. Apparently, before the finale, Antonella Barba, Haley Scarnato and Gina Glocksen put messages up on their MySpace pages urging their friends to vote for Jordin Sparks. That is rough! I’m not sure why they would feel it’s appropriate to do to Blake Lewis with whom they must tour this summer. If they were from a different season, maybe, but I don’t think fellow cast-members should do this kind of thing. It just isn’t classy, in my books. Well, Antonella and Haley had already shown us that but …read more

With all the chatter this morning, I thought it would be appropriate to review some of the confirmed controversies surrounding American Idol:
In an interview prior to the start of the fifth season of American Idol, Executive Producer Nigel Lythgoe revealed for the first time that Clay Aiken had led the fan voting every week from the Wild Card week onward until the finale, when the possibly-random voting result gave Ruben Studdard the win. Of course, the truth will probably never be known and Clay went on to have a great career but that is besides the point.
During season four, …read more

In a recent post, a visitor left me a comment that involved the racial politics of American Idol. It got me thinking about the first major accusation of racism against the show (not that I am implying that racism is present, I’m just asking an open-ended question).

When Jennifer Hudson was voted off, there was such a public uproar that the question of racism was immediately raised. Even Elton John got involved in the debate, despite the fact that, of the six remaining contestants, at the time, three were black (Fantasia Barrino, La Toya London and George Huff). Ruben Studdard, also …read more

Twice as many girls this year as guys.
Jory Steinberg starts off the individual performances again. No judge feedback. We just keep going. Not too bad.
Wow nobody really made much of an impression. Simon Cowell just sent the entire first set of 6 girls home. Let’s just put the pressure on the girls right out of the gate. Can you imagine being in the next set of girls going up to perform? Would it make that big of a difference on you or not? Are they just being hardcore out of the gate because there are so many girls?
— Commercial …read more