Rate & Predict American Idol

Here are a couple exit interviews given by Scott Macintyre:

• MTV
• MSNBC

Scott said a couple things in these interviews that bothered me:

“You never know what the judges are going to say, but I think if people watch the performance back, especially in the context of everything else that went on that night, it was a good, solid performance.”

I did re-watch the performance, and my opinion stands: it wasn’t very good.  In fact, it was awful.

I watch American Idol to see undiscovered talent blossom into superstars.  I DON’T watch American Idol to listen to amateur-sounding songs.  Listening to Scott’s performance, it sounded off-key, formulaic, and disjointed.  Using another word, amateur.

I hated the guitar playing, because a) the arrangement was so basic that a 15-year old could have played it and b) his voice did not match the emotional tone of the song.  If you’re going to “shock” people with a guitar power ballad, then you better sing it with more power, too.  Unfortunately, he basically sang it like Billy Joel would behind a piano with no accompanyment (i.e., like last week), and it ended up sounding really weird.

In the end, this is the main reason why Scott is not the American Idol.  It’s not because he can’t sing (though he is off-key a lot).  It’s not because he’s not talented.  It’s not because he’s visually impaired.

It’s because he didn’t connect emotionally with the songs.

I believe he’s so involved in the musical technicalities of the song that he can’t quite convey the feelings of the song.  If it’s a harder-edged song, sing it that way.  He seemed to sing everything the same way, all within the same adult contemporary realm.  He’s only 23… perhaps he hasn’t discovered that part of his musical repertoire yet.  And again, this has NOTHING to do with his visual challenges.  I remember watching the similarly visually-impaired Raul Midon in concert a couple years ago, and feeling every ounce of emotion in every one of his songs.

I think Scott is a talented musician who happens to be visually impaired, and who happens to be relatively young.  To become a superstar, perhaps all he needs is a little more time.