Tween girls are stupid. Randy Jackson almost said as much last night on American Idol. He didn’t though. Instead, he pleaded with Idol voters to “please vote for the best” — as opposed to who is the cutest boy or the prettiest teenage girl.
Many have speculated that white tween girls are the biggest voting block when it comes to American Idol. Now it wasn’t always that way. There used to be a time — back before Idol allowed text votes — when the average voter was in their mid-30s, but nobody seems to know what the age is now. But even somebody whose brain is as scrambled as Steven Tyler’s can see that Idol Nation has gone white-boy crazy.
Since 2008, a cracker-ass cutie has taken the American Idol crown every year. Equally notable, no minority contestant has won since Jordin Sparks in 2007. That was also the last time the final two featured a minority performer.
And this year won’t be any different. Once again, the American Idol winner will be a largely unthreatening, Tiger Beat white boy with a bland demeanor and a love of milquetoast music making. That is, if last night’s vote was an indicator of things to come.
Once again, Charleston’s own Elise Testone found herself in the bottom three — a place that she has landed again and again, despite possessing the chops and a stage presence that trumps nearly all of the other contestants. And at the age of 28, she’s oldest performer left in the competition — the nearest contestant in age, Phillip Phillips, is 21, a relative pup in Idol years. The remaining contestants are 20, 20, 18, and 16.
Joining Testone were Joshua Ledet, 20, and Jessica Sanchez, 16, two of the contest’s strongest singers. In fact, Sanchez has long been the odds-on favorite to win the competition. Unfortunately, they have one thing against them: neither are cuddly white boy pillow pets. (Ledet is African American, and Sanchez is Filipino American.) As such, none of them — no matter how talented they are, and trust me, these three are the competition’s strongest singers and best performers — will win. They will simply never be able to generate a suitable number of texts to overcome the feverish, hormonally driven white tween-girl horde.
Randy Jackson knows this, and so do the Idol producers.
Which is why the voting for American Idol must change. While it made sense when the show began to have viewers vote for the candidate they liked best, the time has come to let America vote for who must go. That is the only way that older fans — or people who actually know what good singing is and vote for somebody for some other reason than they’re kissable — to cast votes that matter. It’s the only way to stop this endless onslaught of Teen Beaters and Justin Biebers.
But that won’t happen this year. Nope.
So say hello to your next American Idol, ladies and gentlemen. I present to you, Colton Dixon. Long live the bland.
Update: We’ll who would’ve thunk it, but Colton Dixon was voted off of American Idol last night, Thurs. April 19. Even Jimmy Iovine thought that Dixon was safe since he had the girl vote all locked up. Funny that. Anyhow Elise Testone delivered the goods again and yet still managed to wind up in the bottom three.
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