For 9 years I was an American Idol fan

So for the first 9 seasons Bride and watched American Idol without fail. We were there when little Kelly Clarkson won year one. She has turned into a truly incredible singer that is very talented, but if we were to put her in the group from season 5 or beyond she would not have made it. She would have been outclassed by all of the top 12 and she would not have made it through. She was GREEN in that season, as they all were. There was NO comparison to the talent and stage presence of the performers found in later seasons. American Idol has come a long way, there is no doubt. We have traveled the road with many of them, even season four’s Carrie Underwood – the biggest of the post idol superstars.

I was always engaged with Sister about the show as well, calling each other during every break of almost every show. The talent just got better every year, the top 12 were just fantastic. My Sister and would laugh and cry and vote together, only when one of the contestants gave us goosebumps I like the music and I like the show, we started recording it because there were so many commercials. Over 20 minutes per hour were commercials and on a 2 hour show that is 40 minutes of wasted time looking at ads.

Maybe one of the appeals was the fact that there were really 3 different shows. The early ones, that were taped ahead of time, were mostly just about making fun of the people who could not sing. It was sad to watch sometimes, folks who thought they could sing failing miserably. If I had a friend who said they were going to audition and they could not sing, I would not lie to them and tell them they could. This is obviously what happens a lot, hell even parents are lying to their own kids. Once that embarrassment was over they moved onto the next phase, the start of a talent contest. Mostly it was about pairing up unlikely groups in Hollywood to create and record drama. I mean who could forget Tatiana del Toro from season eight, talk about high drama.

Then there was the top 12, the truly gifted of the bunch, there have been a bunch from that group and below that have gone on to recording careers. This was where I thought the show really got interesting, it was no longer under the control of the producers and judges. We the people got to get involved and get involved we did. By the millions we would call and text our votes for the kids we thought should continue on. I mean really voted, in the case of David Cook and David Archuleta together garnered 97.5 million votes from ‘Idol’ viewers. 97.5 million votes. I mean to tell ya, President Obama received between 65 and 70 million of the popular vote, George before him only received a bit of 60 million. Is that not crazy? We cast more votes for an entertainer than for the leader of our country – CRAZY. Although I wish folks as talented as the idol hopefuls were running for office, maybe our country would be better off.

I am not sure what happened though, this year we have not watched one single show. I do not think it has anything to do with new judges, and from what I hear Jennifer and Steven are doing a fine job but……. I suspect that I just did not want to make that big of an investment of time to watch. If you watch, you must watch all of it, you can’t hunt and peck on which shows to watch. It is a large investment of time to watch, a couple of shows a week, some 2 hours long for a few months. In a time where we are watching less of the mind sucking crap on the tube I was just not sure I was up to the investment in the drama. Like all shows this one is built around drama, the drama between the contestants, the drama between the judges, the drama between Ryan and the judges – drama, drama drama. I think it was just getting old for me.