Anyone else watch it tonight? Comments?
I watched. Not terribly surprising. Jasmine hangs on strictly because she has an entire state voting for her, and a state that feels a bit on the margins, so to speak. LaToya is a fine performer and technically the best singer of the bunch. But, she can be surprisingly bland in her perfection. She’ll do fine in her career anyway.
Although forced to recognize her talents, the Diana girl has been my least favorite for awhile.
I’m rooting for Fantasia and have been for most of the season. She’s immensely talented, different, …and dangerous.
Dale
The show completely lost it’s creditability last week knocking out their best singer (Jennifer) and confirmed it again this Wednesday night. Latoya gave a stellar performance that none of the other performers could come close to… and she received the least amount of votes?
There must be hundreds of pre-teens with speed dialers out there in idol land…
Dale just provided a perfect summation. LaToya is phenomenal, but not compelling. Still, she completely vindicated herself, and put the voters to shame, in her farewell solo at the end last night.
Diana, though quite talented, has, imho, a voice which grates a bit compared with the other singers.
I have been pulling for Fantasia all along. She is so rich in personality, soulful…and unlike Latoya, compelling.
Jasmine knows she was stayed her execution at the sacrifice of a better singer.
For lack of a better term, it is the “Brittney” factor. Jasmine is the cutest of the bunch and wore a pretty dress. Anyone familiar with popular music sales knows that this is a driving force for music sales. I laugh when someone says so-and-so is “better,” it is all subjective. The people that tend to vote the most are also the people that tend to buy the most music.
I liked Jasmine best when the 12 finalists were announced. While she does not have the technical proficiency of Jennifer or LaToya, she can definitely sing.
This reminds me of season one when Tamyra Grey got voted off, leaving the less talented and big-haired Justin and the middle-America girl, Kelly. Again, there is nothing wrong or insidious going on. Popular music sales are often driven by other factors than singing talent, and so is American Idol.
- Bill
OK, the results show was just screened here in Singapore.
Why La Toya was kicked out despite having a fantastic voice and being a great performer:
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she’s not American Idol material because she appeals only to the more mature audience.
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she’s too unruffled and philosophical, and seems too blase about the possibility of losing. The voters can pick up on the fact that maybe she doesn’t want it as much as the rest, or need it as much.
I mean, of the four, she strikes me as having the most down-to-earth and practical outlook on life in general, nothing seems to faze her, not even all the hoopla and hype surrounding AmI, but do you really want your American Idol to be so nonchalant abt her victory, as if it didn’t mean that much?
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SHe killed herself with her speech on Disco Night when she said every one was a winner already and all 4 were assured of having a good career no matter what happened that night. When I heard her say that, I wondered if it would come back to haunt her. I think it did. Again, voters’ perceptions were adversely affected because it makes her look yet again as if she doesn’t care all that much.
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as Dale said, she’s great and yet can at times be so bland in her perfection.
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the voters know she’s going to have a respectable career anyway, even if she doesn’t win. It won’t really hurt her. She seems very versatile. She could go into jazz, go Broadway, go the Whitney/Celine route, sing big sappy love ballads or slow R&B stuff, have live concerts and performances, etc.
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the judges said she had a great flair for Broadway/show tunes on Big Band Night. So again, her leanings are not towards pop, which is what AmI is focused on.
I greatly respect her talents and I think AmI did, too. They really gave her face, in her farewell number. What other eliminated person sang a song not from the night before? I suspect they specifically allowed* her to perform “Nobody’s Gonna Rain on my Parade” because they knew how appropriate it was, and it was a piece on which she could really knock everyone’s socks off (and boy, did she).
Let’s just hope that Jasmine doesn’t win the top spot.
Right. Now everyone knows I watch the show. 
*[oops, just had a thought - maybe the competitors choose their own farewell song?]
Quote from the Honolulu Advertiser this morning:
“There were 5 million attempts and 1.32 million completions from Hawai’i Tuesday night, up 21 percent from the previous week’s level, according to Verizon Hawai’i.”
1.32 million out of some 18-20 million votes cast may have tipped the balance in a close race, but there was no indication the vote last night was close (if it is, they usually play that fact up). Jasmine came in first or second in the vote, so HI’s influence couldn’t have been decisive. She had ample support from elsewhere.
OK, since I apparently don’t watch it in a C&F vacuum, I feel safe in offering my comments.
I think, in addition to points already made, two other factors may have led to LaToya’s exit:
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Without alleging any racist intent at all, I’m sure some voters may vote along demographic lines. LaToya and Fantasia shared a demograpic group and split those votes between them.
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LaToya was the oldest finalist, and I suspect much older than virtually all of those who not only watch the show but actually call in to vote.
As for Jasmine, I can’t help but think she’s getting some sympathy votes from Simon’s merciless badgering. Sure he’s acerbic and deliberately overplays the role, but his comments the last two weeks have seemed, to me, anyway, to be mean-spirited and cruel. She may be getting some help from an anti-Simon backlash.
As Matt and Jennifer leaving while the two white schoolboys hung on proved, it’s not a pure talent contest. Popularity plays a major role. And Jasmine is super-cute and at least to my eye exhibits a sort of star-quality, even if in a somewhat nascent form. And how many examples of cute but not awfully talented superstar singers can YOU name?
At this point, I think it will go to Diana. Fantasia is a great singer, but not, IMHO, versatile. Instead of adjusting to each genre, she took songs from each genre and adjusted them to HER style. Nevertheless, its been a very entertaining season and we’ve seen many fine young talents bith among those remaining and those departed.
And there’s always William Hung
I’m with you, Chuck. I also wonder how many sympathy votes Jasmine got as a result of breaking down in tears.
I’m also with you on Diana and Fantasia. Fantasia is really good at one thing; I initially thought she was the absolute best of the bunch, but I’ve been disappointed, especially with how she tends to pick songs that aren’t really within the nights’ genres. Diana has had some rough weeks, but has been absolutely stellar some weeks and quite solid most of the time.
It’s interesting, Chuck, that you mention race. I’m not American, and my impression [just an observation; not a criticism] has been that in the US, there’s a lot of defensiveness about admitting race is a factor or a consideration that people consider in various situations. People are overly cautious when talking abt race because they don’t want others to think they are racist. Even Chuck seemed pretty careful in his post. Yet the hypersensitivity itself makes it hard for anyone to pretend the race factor doesn’t exist.
No one can pretend they didn’t notice the colour of the respective contestants’ skin, or note what ethnic group they came from, and yet I think it’s tempting to skirt around the issue, at least when discussing AmI in public.
Honestly, I wondered how much the race factor would affect Jasmine’s chances in the eyes of the American viewers, since she’s of Asian (Filipino) stock, looks pretty Chinese-y, etc, ===> minority group.
In my Asian eyes, she would fit my definition of “cute”. If chortle is right and she had lots of support outside of Hawaii, that basically means that a lot of the people that bothered to vote thought she was cute or they liked her (certainly they didn’t vote her because they thought her the best singer). That seems to indicate many people voting across - rather than along - racial/ethnic lines, at least for Jasmine.
As for LaTOya and Fantasia, I’m not sure if their vote was really split along racial lines:
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The voters so far have been pretty honest, and more or less voted according to merit, at least until the final 5 or 6 (only John Stevens was truly inexplicable, and even then, it might not have been purely abt his race, but abt his appeal extending to various age-groups: the younger set as well as to the mummies, daddies, and grandparents). The top 5 consisted of a Caucasian girl, 3 African-Americans, 1 girl of Asian stock. From that point, I think it was just personal preference for which one the voters liked.
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Latoya and Fantasia seem so different, and they appeal to diff age-groups and people with diff musical tastes - demographics other than race.
So, I don’t think race has really affected the voting that much. That’s good. People just vote who they think is the best singer, or the cutest, coolest or most likeable person (that’s pop).
That is a huge number of votes! Hawaii has less than 0.5% of the U. S. population, and more than 6% of the votes cast! Simon’s blast “you had better hope everyone in Hawaii has five phones,” probably helped boost the voting by 21%. Local backing is a big factor. Fantasia has the backing of North Carolina and that region. LaToya is from Hawthorne, a Los Angeles suburb. Angelinos are too jaded to do something like support a home town American Idol candidate. Diana is from a small town in Georgia. Again, I’m sure there were a ton of votes from her county and state.
There are few famous Americans from Hawaii, so Jasmine is huge news there. LaToya from Los Angeles, did not have the home town, home state backing that the other three received and that may have been enough.
I remember the week John Stevens got voted off, he received over four million votes, out of 28 million cast for six people. Another million votes from a home state like Jasmine probably received would have easily kept him in.
- Bill
Whie it might surprise some non-Americans, it might help her. Asians in this country are often seen as smarter, harder workers, and in a generally favorable light. High school boys I know think Asian girls are generally ‘hot’. Prior to WWII, there were comments in some quarters in the US that Filipinas were the most beautiful women on the planet.
Since my mother is one, I tend to agree .
If anything, I’m hearing far more criticism of Diana - ranging from ‘chubby’ to outright fat, claims that she’s bulked up DURING the show, whatever, We live in this odd culture that makes emaciation the soul of beauty. On that scale, Diana and Fantasia are both in trouble.
LaToya’s loss last night should have clinched Fantasia’s win on this show. If the show was based soley on talent/ability/performance.
Those two are the only ones that have been consistantly good. (I say this in spite of the fact that Fantasia’s voice is not pleasing to me-good for some generes not for others)
Fantasia brings that extra “something” to her performances that were usually lacking in LaToya’s faultless renditions of every style.
Diana is very good sometimes/ terrible sometimes. Her presentation is usually very amaturish.
Jasmine…should not be there at this point in the game. I feel sorry for her since I’m sure she knows this very well. She is now in the unenviable position of having outlasted a superior contestant by a fluke, not by being a better singer/perfomer. That would be a hollow victory.
The loss of LaToya really points out one of the problems with this show. The voters. 
If Jasmine wins, the show will have to revamp the voting system in order to have a shot at regaining credibility. (By the way, IMHO, Jasmine’s main problem is consistency. When she’s bad, she’s bad. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s been a performance I was more moved by than Jasmine singing “Inseparable.”)
They need a voting system that doesn’t allow hometown support to win the day.
I don’t watch the show, but man, people in Oakland are pissed about laToya not making it. They had a big city-wide celebration planned. Front page news this morning.
I agree with much of what’s been said, especially that while Latoya is the best and most consistent and poised singer as well as probably the most “attractive,” she may have come off a bit smug the other night by showing that she really didn’t appear to want or need it as much as the others. On talent alone, both Latoya and Fantasia are knockouts and Diana has been surprisingly close. Jasmine is like a really fine karaoke singer and is very limited in vocal power and range and appears very unsure of herself which consistently comes through in her performances - thoroughly mediocre and not within herself.
All that said, let’s remember the driving force here - money - advertising, text messaging and the contract awarded to the winner. I think the disturbed looks on Randy and Simon’s faces may have had something to do with the realization that a really mediocre talent, i.e., Jasmine, could actually win this thing. Even if Randy wondered for a moment why the two best performers , Latoya and Fantasia, have been voted the bottom two twice, he must have remembered that last year’s winner was an obese black male - someone really talented with a great smile and apparently attitude as well.
I don’t think that race per se explains this in any simplistic way. I also think there are a lot of intangibles involved and last year Ruben had both the talent and the intangibles; Jasmine simply has neither.
Although I think Simon is a lot of “fun” his “you’d better hope that every household in Hawaii votes and has five tv sets” remark helped to bring out the vote.
If you want a less fun less money-making show, then the three judges could just vote in the best talents; if you leave it up to the “American public” you’ll inevitably get some degree of popularity and perceived self interest contest like any other election.
Are we defensive about race? I don’t know; it’s become complicated with different races playing the “race card” like a game within a game, sometimes justified and sometimes misapplied to a given situation. But in our democracy I guess we unavoidably get the bad along with the good.
Oh, for the record: I hope Fantasia wins and I could live with Diana. If Jasmine wins, I think the judges should throw out the verdict. But, alas, we don’t get involved to the point of actually voting.
PhilO
I agree completely with Bill about HI’s disproportionate influence–the percentage of the population voting in HI far exceeded any other state by a landslide. But the winner isn’t determined by how disproportionate one state’s vote is compared to the population. It’s the total number of votes that count. My point is only that 1.3 million votes was probably not enough to make the critical difference unless there was a close vote. We don’t know how close it was, but we do know that, for the sake of increased TV drama, the producers had every incentive to let us know if it was close. Since they didn’t say it was, I’m guessing that it wasn’t. Remember, too, that Jasmine came in second place, not third, so she beat out two candidates. It would have had to be a close 3-way (or 4-way) race for HI’s votes to make a difference, in that case.
In the end, though, it’s all just speculation without the numbers. Now, if this were Florida voting instead of HI, things would be so much easier…