American Idol This Time Around

Yes, I’m following American Idol again, despite the way some of you have been giving me a hard time about this particular guilty pleasure. Last night the 13 finalists were selected. I would just like to note that I picked every one of the male performers and voted for four of them. The one female contestant that I was pulling for, Naima Adedapo from Milwaukee, did not get enough votes from the public, but the judges put her back in as a “wild card.” My favorite and the one I’m predicting to win is Jacob Lusk. As Steven Tyler said, we need his kind of singing again, a strong, jazzy, standards-kind-of-voice. Naima is much the same way. These are adult voices. It’s time adults made music for adults, as opposed to kids making music for kids, or kids making music for adults.

A feature of “Hollywood Week” was a plump baby-faced 15 year old with an angelic voice getting thrown out of a group by, in effect, some mean cool kids. The mean ones were all voted off, except for country-singer-with-a-deep-voice Scotty, who tearfully repented.

Also, I will say that the new judging team of Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and veteran Randy Jackson has, to my surprise, done a good job. I had assumed the dark lord Simon Cowell would be missed, but the more positive panel has worked well.

This new crop of finalists is very strong, surely one of the best.

With twist, `American Idol’ down to 13 contestants.

So if any of the rest of you are following the show, I would welcome your assessments and your predictions. (If you aren’t and if your comment would just be something on the order of “why would anyone watch this show?” you can keep that to yourself.)