Judges comments aside, I have a bone to pick with Idol's in-house mentor, Jimmy Iovine. Wednesday night during the video package before Colton's performance of "Bad Romance," Jimmy talked about the singer needing "to hit a high when the chorus comes in" and the only advice we hear him solicit is to "get the arrangement right with the band and be careful of the tempo."
Here's the thing, last night during the results show, Jimmy said that he didn't like anything about Colton's performance of "Bad Romance" and in order to get to the finale, he needed to "regroup and find better songs." And therein lies my issue.
Why does the audience always find out how much Jimmy doesn't care for the contestant's song choice after the fact? He's their mentor, and he should be bringing issues he has with their song choices during rehearsals. Not that I want to see him shoving his own song choices for the contestants down their throats, but maybe there needs to be more of a collaboration process with Jimmy and contestants when it comes to picking songs each week. He's not doing them any favors by telling them what he thinks about their song choices after the fact, by then it's too late. And in this case, one of the strongest and vocally consistent contestants of the entire season was sent home prematurely.
With the elimination of a perceived front-runner last night, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the competition pans out. With so much talent this season, the American Idol title is really anyone's for the taking.
Let's hear it, y'all! What did you think about Colton Dixon's elimination this week? And, do you feel Jimmy Iovine needs to express his concern about the contestant's song choices prior to them taking the Idol stage?
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Article comments
1 - Sherry
Jimmy has expressed concern about song choice before the performances in past weeks. Ultimately the contestants pick their own songs, and it's up to them to make the right choice. If they are influenced (which happened during the Whitney Houston week) they can blame the mentor, producers etc for getting in the bottom three or eliminated. The show doesn't want that. Idol isn't rigged. They loved Colton. The thing is his fan base was probably not as big as they thought. He probably wasn't getting a lot of adult votes and that is the show's core audience despite what people may think.
I was surprised he was eliminated this soon, but not overwhelmingly so. There are tons of singers out there like him. His voice was not all that special. I'm not sure how much the Lady Gaga song choice played into his elimination. He seems to think it did. Personally I thought he totally butchered "September." I hated that take on it. It didn't even sound like the song.
Bottom line is I don't think the show is rigged. After 11 seasons the cat would have been out of the bag by now. Every time there is a surprise elimination people cry foul, but I think it's just how the voting turned out.