The last of the original American Idol judges is gone. Randy Jackson has gone on to do something else, leaving the show with a panel of new faces, as the other two original judges - Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul - have long since departed the program. It was Jackson alone who stuck around, and provided the only continuity with the original.
Now that it has essentially become the George Washington's Ax of television, I wonder if people will finally tire of the old show. Sure, it has had some good moments, the show discovered Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, who are respectable pop stars. It's even connected to Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson, even though she didn't actually wind up winning, or even progressing very far in the program. Sure, there were duds, like the grey-haired guy whose name has been lost to the mists of time, but not everyone's going to be a winner, even if they're technically the winner.
That's actually the problem. In spite of the show managing to find talent, in the long run it's actually a pretty awful show for finding pop stars. I know this is going to be a controversial statement, and perhaps things have changed since I watched it last, but the problem with Idol is that it is not focused on what can maintain a career.
The whole thing is decided on who has the best voice. That is, surprisingly, quite irrelevant for pop stardom. In reality, the biggest success is not the best singer, but the singer who has the best songs. A prodigiously talented songwriter can get into the public consciousness even if they sound very much like an grumpy table saw, like Bob Dylan for example. Other pop stars might not be talented writers, but they are able to get talented people to write songs for them, and that's what keeps people interested in their music and their career. American Idol does not have original music, it's all covers. Sometimes they're good covers, but there's still nothing new. There's no indication that the contestants can write music, or attract talented collaborators to write music for them, and they need to do at least one of those things if they want people to still care after the season finale. So it's all a big spectacle, with bright lights and a screaming crowd, but it's ultimately meaningless. They might be able to perform covers well, but so can any competent bar band. The thing that separates a band in a bar from a band in a stadium is the ability to get people hooked on their original music.
Which is not to slight competent bar bands - they work hard, they're often filled with talented musicians, and the best ones can give everyone at the bar a great time. But covers can only get you so far, and when you play only covers it does limit the degree of success you can have. We've heard those songs already, we need new songs, even if the new songs sound pretty similar to the old songs. Lots of artists have great original songs that nobody has heard, they need a platform, not the people who can sing a good cover but are unable to do very much else.
Idol, unfortunately, caters to those who can do a good cover, not those who can do a good original. The ones who succeed after the show can do more than a cover, and they should be the focus of a talent show from the outset.
