Ahhh i can't stand the latest American Idol results!!! Why didn't Lilly Scott stay on? She's got such a wonderful voice! Noo...
On the other hand, there were singers who got into the top 12 and really didn't deserve to be there. Like Katie Stevens. She doesn't have much range and probably doesn't even know that a head voice exists. For the past month she's been prancing around the stage singing at her lowest key, and i'm really getting sick of hearing that low-pitch voice, which she obviously uses so often simply because she wouldn't be able to hit the highest notes in the song otherwise. She might be young, but even if she could improve her vocal range in a week, her voice is so contemporary that it's ordinary and indistinct. Well, maybe Glee or Disney wouldn't mind her. But anyway, we already have Kelly Clarkson and Jordin Sparks...do we really need another power-pop singer? Not to mention that Clarkson's can call on a little bit of rock edge when needed and Sparks has that little bit of R&B edge, while Katie Stevens has
nothing except for that high school appeal.
Then there's Tim Urban, who also suffers roughly the same problem as Katie Stevens. And don't get me started on Paige Miles. She's the worst of the lot in my opinion...what was she even doing in the top 16??? I can only think that it's either because of some unfairly large voting fanbase, or because she can sing in head voice - although she goes off pitch (and does random "oohs") so often that it's more like screaming.
Anyway, i've also observed three things after watching the show so far...
First, songs above a certain beat-count (i don't know the proper term, but i'm referring to faster songs {Coco has informed me via tagboard that it's called "tempo" :)}) will hardly ever be well-received on American Idol. Katelyn Epperly found that out this week. Put simply, unless you have the theatrics or crazy vocals to pull off a fast song, most fast songs just lack that dramatic effect which makes a performance memorable. It's very hard to add emotion to a fast song, and if the song was originally fast, it's hard to adapt the song to another genre without slowly it down first.
Secondly, male R&B is dead. Well, unless you're Usher. Or maybe if you're white. This was apparent after Jermaine Sellers left the competition last week and Todrick Hall left this week.
It's like the genre, and the voice associated with it, is not popular anymore, unless you add in a dance element or you have that white (or any non-contemporary R&B) voice. For some reason, great vocal range or not, if you convert a song into an R&B song and sing it with a contemporary R&B voice, it just won't sound right (except for Jermaine Sellers' "What if God Was One of Us"...then again i'm not sure if this was his invention and, more importantly, this R&B version might not have sounded good as a longer version and with an instrumental backing). But of course singing a song that is originally R&B also won't get you anywhere on American Idol these days. So male contemporary R&B singers are screwed in this competition.
Not to say that that's the only reason that Jermaine Sellers, who was so awesome during the audition rounds, was booted last week. Jermaine's songs all had this black-church-music element, which really isn't for everyone, and his songs (as feared) weren't as original and memorable as his audition song. He had a good head voice, but the way he used it was really messy and he had pitch problems too. Totally different from the audition where he showed a lot of vocal control.
Thirdly, American Idol judges (and the general public) are overly impressed with the head voice (the high pitched voice that is richer in tone compared to the falsetto). The judges repeatedly comment on how Paige Miles has a really powerful voice, and Kara was so impressed with Adam Lambert's high notes last season and with that one note by Siobhan Magnus last week. My family are quite impressed with the head voice too. But the truth is that HEAD VOICE IS NO BIG DEAL. It's just a simple technique. In fact, your vocal chords get much more tired from belting in chest voice than from singing loudly and comfortably from the higher pitched head voice. While it is true that many American Idol finalists can't seem to sing in head voice, to me that's more of a crime, rather than giving those with head voices something to be proud of.
Most (if not all) opera and Broadway singers can sing in head voice. I could teach it to you if you wanted to learn how. To me, the real skill is in eliminating the nasal twang from your head voice, and in using your mixed voice to blend the chest and head voices such that there is no break in between the two. In other words, really skilled singers would be able to fool the uneducated into thinking that the singer wasn't singing in two distinct voices, but that he/she just had a really huge vocal range obtained solely from extraordinary inborn talent.
Ohwell, speaking of singing, i've got a performance in less that 11 hours time and i haven't even had my day's sleep. I'm planning to wake up at 2pm. Hopefully my own voice would have recovered by then and the performance goes well!
