The power and the glory; the pride before the Fall

So tonight was my favourite Idol episode of the season so far, mostly because of the sense of vindication over last week’s fiasco.

People who know I’ve been following this season (purely because of Adam) probably also know my immense distaste for Gokey as a television figure. I don’t know the guy and he may very well be a nice guy out of this show but man, he comes off as incredibly cocky to me on screen.

Tonight was the bomb, primarily because Adam killed Whole Lotta Love. And this is coming from a Zep fanatic who’s collected tons of Led Zeppelin bootleg concerts as my other website will attest. It’s a perfect showcase ofhis incredible (controlled) range, his X-factor, his ability to take advice (I ❤ Adam’s low register), and his humility on stage despite having blown everyone’s minds away. I’m quite surprised that American Idol managed get the rights for Led Zep on the show because LZ is notorious for being extremely protective over their songs (although they’ve softened up quite a bit the last couple of years). Maybe Jimmy Page has been watching this season and has caught onto the Adam factor?!

On the other end of the spectrum, you have copycat Gokey, who tries to channel Adam’s rock mannerisms, and fails spectacularly. When I twittered just 2 hours ago, I wrote “ZOMG, so I’m watching Idol and that last note by Gokey, I stopped and burst out laughing. I thought someone’s cat went into labour.” I literally laughed for 10 mins. And when my sister wanted to watch Idol, I rewatched it with her and laughed again. I think if Aerosmith is watching this, they’ll never let anyone from AI massacre their songs again. SACRILAGE!!! Well you lose one (Aerosmith) you gain another (Led Zep).

The other thing that really irked the hell out of me about Go(off)key Gokey (sorry can’t help it), is that he actually thought he didn’t sound that bad! He even clapped for himself after his performance. What was even more unbelievable is how the judges except for Simon toned down their criticism considering how bad the performance was. In the duet segment, Gokey was obviously trying to outsing poor Kris and Kris clearly looked upset about it. Compare that chemistry with Adam and (yay) Allison’s Slow Ride perfomance. As Kara rightly put it, a duet is about “pushing each other to be better”. Gokey should take lessons from his juniors.

Gokey really needs to GO (ok, another bad pun). But the thing that scares me is if he somehow miraculously loses his fan base (hard to fathom), we’ll have to endure another session of that horrible catawauling, which I’m sure will go down through the annals of AI history as one of the worst performances by any Idol finalist ever.

If from now on, anyone likens Adam’s controlled and pitch perfect rock wailing to a “screech”, I’ll point them to Gokey, and say you wanna know what screeching means, hear this!

EDIT: I just wanted to add how amused I was when Gokey had finished his song, and there was a pan shot to Gokey’s family, but the camera man got it wrong and zoomed in onto Adam’s family instead, who looked like they had post-traumatic stress from the nightmare that was Gokey.

Subjects: Film, Television & Anime 映像, Music 音楽

Mood: Gratifications, Raves and Rants

Tags: Adam Lambert, American Idol