Tampa Calling

I did not watch the American Idol season eight premiere. Just like I didn’t watch any of the previous premieres. When it comes to that wretched spectacle, I’m a conscientious objector. I find the show, the very idea of the show, abhorrent.

I’ve watched it, or portions of it, a handful of times over the years — and can’t escape the ubiquitous news updates that treat the program’s progress as a matter of important international concern.

My beef with Idol is not the circus atmosphere, the wacky (Abdul) or cruel (Cowell) judges, or the gimmicky device early in the season of showing the tone-deaf hacks, which I’ve always suspected are plants (I understand Idol has backed off showing those clowns some).

It’s not so much that even the good singers come from a cookie-cutter mold of safe, vaguely soul-oriented music (I read that one girl performed “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” during the first show).

It’s that American Idol is a creativity killer. The program has become the quickest avenue to pop stardom, and as such it has a disproportionate influence in defining American mainstream music. As they say, we reap what we sow. In this case, bland, bland, bland, same, same, same. If there were a program where singer/songwriters performed their own music in a contest format, and the judges used creativity as a criterion, I’d give it a look-see. (Who knows; there may have already been one that failed.)

Certainly some of Idol’s late-round contestants have singing chops, but I’ve never seen an ounce of originality from them. They know the drill; they follow the blueprint.

I can’t really blame Cowell and the rest for cashing in on such a lasting phenomenon. It’s really the public’s fault. The masses are allowing themselves to be manipulated and dumbed down. The rest of us, those of us with some taste, reject the show as glitzy karaoke (or watch it as camp).

Some of you may now be thinking: Oh jeez, the rantings of an elitist music critic — lighten up, dude. Fair enough, but let me add that I’ve always liked a lot of mainstream stuff, and it pains me that a big, bloated karaoke show has become the prime mover in shaping it. In the end, I firmly maintain that American Idol is a destructive, or at the very least stagnating, force in American (make that global) pop music.

Those of us with a conscience should refuse to watch. It just may help the show go away quicker.

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