It’s Alright, We Told You What to Dream

When I first wrote about Taylor Hicks, I said this:  “I can promise you he ain’t gonna be no ‘American Idol.’”  Lord, the power of an accidentally prescient double-negative.  (Meanwhile, Spoonbender just came out and said it.)

But two wrongs don’t make a right.

Let’s don’t not unmisunderstand me:  I liked Taylor Hicks.  I still enjoy his act.  He’s good television.  A few weeks back, I was all ready to churn out a big tirade – “John Henry,” I was going to call it – about how the American Idol machine had gone the distance, how it had pressed and starched and otherwise packaged the life out of the man.

This was around the time Hicks was singing relatively staid versions of stiff stuff like “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Just Once,” and “You Send Me.”  The balloon hadn’t burst, but:  As he said all the right things about Tommy Mottola, as he jived and shucked for Ford SUVs, I heard the slow hiss of integrity escaping.  The more conservative his performances got, the more it seemed the cookie cutter’d come down and taken off the ugly corners that made Hicks seem so genuine.

Taylor Hicks - Georgia On My Mind (live) (mp3) (a pre-Idol recording, via)

I was all ready, and then he did something wonderfully, fabulously stoopid:  He performed Wild Cherry’s “Play that Funky Music (White Boy).”  No self-respecting white person would sing that, nevermind a white person who’d spent most his life trying to be black.  But Hicks was joyously oblivious.  He wore paisley.  He ended by tumbling on to his back.

This is why Taylor was a favorite:  He loved music too much to care about anything else, too much to not show it.  He seemed to have a personality – musically, at least -- too big to be co-opted.  He didn’t seem to know better, and couldn’t be bothered to learn.  Taylor Hicks and American Idol were destined to be either/or propositions.  The more an outing embarrassed Simon, the better it must have been.

That same episode, the first where contestants got two songs, he got shrewd:  He somehow squeezed George Harrison’s “Something” out of the current Billboard charts and did a lovely, quiet job with it.  Having more than one song per show meant Hicks could have his cake and flail about in it, too.  He was courting both sides, he was in it to win it.  He became a politician, albeit a colorful one.

It’s awfully hard to love a politician.  You vote for them (or not), but you don’t love ‘em.  Their job is to compromise.  I feel a bit played, to tell you the truth.  I’d put up with his Tourette’sish mannerisms because when you enjoy compulsive behavior – and I assumed I was watching compulsive behavior – you take the good with the bad.  But when he was barking “Soul Patrol-Soul Patrol-Soul Patrol” he was simply sloganeering.  Tonight, during a brief interview on Fox-5 news (where Ernie Anastos came off as a little too excited by the AI finale) Hicks was asked what went through his mind when Simon opined he’d won the competition; Taylor replied, without pause, “I just hope voters don’t get too complacent.”

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I didn’t vote, and if I had I might have gone the other way.

While Taylor Hicks was, through the episodes I saw, the most consistently entertaining and talented of the AI contestants, Katherine McPhee was entertainingly inconsistent.  It was easy to get distracted, with Kat.  She missed notes, she chose bad songs.  She has a great body, and didn’t mind sharing it.  But she was having fun, too, and that’s why she was clearly the Number Two over One-Note Daughtry and Mogwai Yamin.  She was just as into it was Taylor was, and just as awkward; but she’s younger, and still finding herself, and hasn’t yet learned how to enjoy her awkwardness.  Shuffling around on her knees to K.T. Tunstall?  Hot.  And goofy.  Which doubles the hotness.  It was fun watching Kat have fun, and fun watching her fail.

The best moments of the season – because this is American Idol, and it’s not about the music – came anytime McPheever wrapped up a song and walked over to the judges.  They dressed her down – usually starting with a few compliments about her appearance – and she slowly learned to fight back.  She grew some spine, and it’s more interesting to watch someone grow.

Taylor, knowing he was odd, couldn’t afford to be seen as surly; he faced criticism with nods and hoots and SoulPatrolPositivitySoulPatrol.

He also delivered the goods:  Down the stretch, he did The Courtney Cox with Paula Abdul during “Dancing in the Dark;” when he finally got a Joe Cocker tune, he rather movingly underplayed it.  Tonight, when he went at his do-over of “Living in the City,” he did it in a perfectly heinous purple velvet jacket.

This is the first finals show I’ve seen, and they’re weird beasts.  Each performer regurgitates two of their previous performances – a chance to do a greatest hits, I suppose – then sings a composition presumably written for them, their “new single.”  It’s a format that makes zero sense to me.  Half the show feels like a rerun (Is there some reason that, with only two people left, they can’t sing the whole songs instead of the expurgated versions?  Shouldn’t we know if these people can carry more than 90 seconds of a tune?), and the other half is unavoidably Idol at its worst.

That’s where Taylor finally lost me.  Surrounded by a blue-robed, mostly African-American choir, he did his best with some Daddy-issue ditty called “Do I Make You Proud?”  Bland and earnest, it had lines like “my heart is filled with endless gratitude.”  Hicks, bless his blue-eyed soul, livened the thing up by shaking his head away from and towards the mic, by singing “I’m standing here!” in his patented IBS-postured kick-it-up-a-notch crouch.  It was a good performance, but not a winning one.  Because this is the type of song they’ll have him singing on his album – the two finalists are automatically under contract – he’s lost already.

The point is:  If Hicks really loved music, he would’ve tanked American Idol before he got to the finale.  Embraced the martyrdom.  By playing to win, he put the game first, cashed in his trade for treacle and pabulum.  Going for the ring was an admission that, at 29-years-old, he’s got nothing interesting to say as an artist.

Which isn’t a crime.  Barring a total shocker – Hicks has accrued a huge, rabid fan base – Taylor’s going to be the new American Idol.  For better or worse, he’s earned it.  And he does have a good voice, and he is entertaining.  I hope he uses his new superpowers for good.  I sort-of hope he re-ups with the FOX game show circuit and competes on So You Think You Can Dance.  And I hope he wins that, too.

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I won’t be watching the finale because it’s two hours long.  That’s an awful lot of Seacrest-spun faux-tension.  The producers could only make the show interesting by throwing in an extreme, sudden twist.  Like, say, the winner has to go head-to-head against Finnish Eurovision champs Lordi.

Lordi – Hard Rock Hallelujah(mp3)

Man, I’d kill to see McPhee beltin’ that.

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There is so much Internet-based support for Hicks it can be tough getting into sites like Gray Charles on nights the show airs.  But they’ve got a surprisingly large MP3 Gallery there, if you’re interested.

(pics via)

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Canny Marketing Dept.:  The new Pixar film has an AUTO INSURANCE TIE-IN.  Incredible.

Certainly more insidious than Mr. T’s spot for “Karaoke-on-Demand.”

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Enough with the twaddle.  Real, good music tomorrow.

tags: soul patrol  pixar  american idol  lordi  taylor hicks  katherine mcphee  

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