In what would probably constitute as a full circled love affair with the very growlingly charming Hayley Reinhart, this year's quintessential American Idol underdog, I have found myself fully in her corner with the sudden and most unwelcome expulsion of James Durbin, and turning my attention to rooting for her in the face of the longest of odds in her unlikeliest of journeys in her quest to become this year's American Idol winner.
Lyndsey Parker of Reality Rocks on Yahoo! Music wrote a a brilliantly summarized blog about why she'll make it to the finals in what has inevitably felt like a battle for the runner-up spot in anticipation of a Scotty McCreery rout of whichever of the young ladies makes it to the finale. The increasingly country-tanged teen-cougar voting coalition of American Idol has proven to be a devastating blow to both the non-country and non-male artists showcased as well as quite possibly the long-term viability of the show, especially on the heels of NBC's very threatening shot across the bow and even on its own network when former mainstay Simon Cowell brings the even more highly anticipated new singing competition to FOX.
Suddenly Haley Reinhart is in the cultural conscience of the American psyche, the Rocky of American Idol, where even if she goes home Thursday Night, has already surpassed any reasonable expectation of sustainability on the show. She has fought, clawed, and growled her way to the Top 3, bringing her incredibly Rasputin Idol candidacy to the forefront of pop culture and gathering social media backed steam in the form of endorsements of Twitter-obsessed former Idols Kelly Clarkson, Ashley Rodriguez, Blake Lewis, Adam Lambert, and perhaps gathering voting steam on the heels of her Idol predecessors' flattering endorsements; no small feat or matter since the Idol audience is crucially deferential to those who graced the stage before those who are still on it during any current season.
Hayley's song choices have been constructed, deconstructed, praised, and judgmentally demolished by both the judges and the show's faithful viewers and yet every single week when her number is supposedly up she continues to have moment after moment and whether it's "House of The Rising Sun", "Piece of My Heart", "Rolling In The Deep", "Bennie and the Jets", "I Who Have Nothing" or last night's historic father-daughter live performance collaboration of sacred Led Zeppelin's "What Is And What Should Never Be" bringing down the house and raising the roof of previously harsh cohorts Randy Jackson and Jennifer Lopez, there is no doubt that at least the artistic and performance momentum has clearly shifted in the competition that even the otherwise snarly American Idol thumbing coverage of the institutionally iconic gold standard bearer of the music journalism world Rolling Stone unleashed praise on the now thickly skinned battled-tested Reinhart which means that even the elite critic establishment is now gushing over the bubbly 20 year-old Wheeling, Illinois native. (Even her father is an axe-wielding bad ass!)
Conventional wisdom still has this competition in the bag for Scotty McCreery. And the dynamics of who wins isn't so much in question as much as who wins after American Idol wraps this season up. Scotty McCreery is already a superstar. Lauren Alaina remains a question mark. So far the conventional wisdom is that neither Lauren Alaina or Hayley Reinhart will have much of a career once they leave the safety (and weekly voting danger of course) of the American Idol stage.
And why is this? In praise of my new singing competition sweetheart over on NBC I both reminded and cautioned about the post-competition pitfalls of the typecasting trapping with regards to the futures of these singers. And part of that problem is that they are singing other peoples' music, not their own. I will be writing about that at some point soon (on many journalistic and personally artistically creative levels) but for now the viewers and production labels of these shows seem to be coldly indifferent to their post-show career arcs.
And that's a shame because this season alone on FOX we have seen several artists who could become hugely successful, even if only in specific genres ranging from reggae singer Naima Adedapo to bigwig contestants Casey Abrams (jazz/rock), James Durbin (hard rock/metal), Jacob Lusk (gospel/soul), to country star shoe-in frontrunner Scotty McCreery and pop standout Pia Toscano. And the sooner the better because timing is everything in this industry, especially with the ever fading attention span of the "What's next?" minded public.
So why is this? It's tough to tell. This was the season that was going to change everything and instead it looks like The Voice is measuring up much more favorably and this is potentially fatal news, or at least long-term, to the show's durability, where new judges were a mixed bag but bringing in the much needed truth telling smackdown candor of Interscope's mastermind Jimmy Iovine was just the right dose of medicine the show needed. And that has really proven to be just another disappointing falsehood of an otherwise brilliant stage and career advancing forum. However, if it's not really advancing the careers of these extremely, and often far technically superior singers to even some of music's vocal legends, is both damaging to pop culture itself as well as more specifically to these singers and even 19 Entertainment and FOX's own brand. And why? It's so obvious and counter-productive it's just plain wrong and even tragically silly.
And when you have an incredible talent like Hayley Reinhart who has beauty, sexiness, charisma, personality, and a much more subtle than given credit for toughness, it is tough to argue against trying to create the new thing as opposed to the usual boring retread of typically junky pop garbage as exhibited by Beyonce herself in that just terrible song and video. If you're that reliant on dancing and being scantily dressed, there's something irreversibly wrong about your "art" and "creative" process. It hence renders it impossible to argue against keeping someone relevant that can be a hybrid of Adele, Joss Stone, Stevie Nicks, and Janis Joplin herself.
I don't know who will advance tonight to be perfectly honest; although it'd be astonishing if Scotty wasn't at least one of them. However, when you are knocking on the door of a career of an old school spirit of someone like the charmingly cutely precocious Hayley Reinhart, it's by definition insanity to not recognize that what could be is yes, what should also be too. So let us hope that her very literal fall last night isn't also foreshadowing of a more figurative one. And now, regardless of her final placing on American Idol, we find out if she has one more, and by far the most important, act of survival that it too will ultimately be up to and decided upon by a loving but equally unforgiving typecast-prone public.
And while we await the verdict on that, let's at least take comfort in the more optimistic parallel that when she fell last night she got up, did so right away, didn't miss a beat, and smiled about it while in the moment. And perhaps more importantly and telling than anything, everyone watching took notice. Hayley knew even in that moment that it perfectly summarized her entire mega-underdog music journey up to this point and at this point falling and laughing about it was her own version of a sympathetically defiant victory lap in the face of all her doubting critics and adversity she has battled up to this point. And perhaps that's what Hayley Reinhart herself was smiling about most of all.
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