First off, congratulations to a very deserving Melanie Amaro. She did one hell of a job this season and she was quite deserving. It's also quite noteworthy that she also didn't suffer the same fate as Pia Toscano on American Idol when most of us just assumed she was rolling her way to the final and ended up going home much sooner than that.
There's a lot to get to but although I still feel that the season finale results show of this past season of American Idol was still quite superior, tonight's finale still provided plenty of memorable moments.
1) The entire Top 12 came back to sing Lady GaGa's "The Edge of Glory" as an ensemble one final time. I alluded to the Season 10 finale of American Idol when Lady GaGa herself rather theatrically performed her smash hit quite spectacularly. It did seem like quite the crowded field and it was another noticeable reminder about how hard it is for these acts to break through to any level of major stardom.
2) The three oddly placed individual Christmas songs for the three top finalists struck me as odd. Why not one group performance and then move on? Instead, they opted for three songs, followed by family and friend montages which made all three quite visibly emotional (Josh Krajcik kept his composure the best).
3) Right afterwards they had Justin Bieber come out (with surprise guest Stevie Wonder) to collaborate on "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" before Stevie literally had sliding doors close on him as he exited. Bieber immediately transitioned into "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" in which the least suspenseful moment of the evening, the inevitable Justin Bieber-Drew Ryniewicz duet was minimized to the very last part of the latter song. Bieber hugged Ryniewicz repeatedly but I can't help but feel we were al cheated, including Drew, to see that dream of hers be so abrupt.
4) By the time all that had finished, it was about 30-40 minutes gone by the wayside just on mostly Christmas oriented festivities. Luckily, we got back to the results. Chris Rene was announced as the third place finalist and I pretty much knew at that point that Melanie Amaro had won it. Although stylistically different from one another, both Chris and Josh play guitar and piano and cater to the all important female vote, both younger and older alike. Like I predicted earlier tonight, a Melanie Amaro victory almost certainly was going to mean a split vote between the two males.
5) Leona Lewis came out to sing her cover of Snow Patrol's "Run" to a season filled montage behind her onscreen. Lewis, certainly not accidentally there (especially because of eventual champion Melanie Amaro), provided a very clear guide for how Simon Cowell plans to harness Melanie's talent and her career direction. Lewis sang as beautifully as you'd expect her to and also served as a very deliberate reminder of Cowell's star making ability.
6) After Leona Lewis brilliantly sang "Run" they showed a very predictably lame L.A. versus Simon montage in one last season's attempt to play up the show's manufactured judge rivalry. They later played a somewhat more amusing "Cry Off" montage between Nicole Scherzinger and Paula Abdul in which the former ended up pulling comfortably ahead of the latter in the montage of waterworks from this past season.
7) The other contestant-guest performance that occurred was the 50 Cent and Astro collaboration in which Astro joined midway through the performance, much to 50 Cent's delight. He was certainly relishing the talented attitude of the young rapping prodigy. Don't be surprised to see an album collaboration between the two at some point. Astro (real name Brian Bradley) is a true star in the making and he could actually end up being the biggest star of all that the show produces from this season.
8) Pitbull and Neo were next and they did a rather modestly impressive turn although I can't help but feel like after watching Astro hang with 50 Cent that something was lacking; an ironic twist given that Astro is the recently former contestant and all three of the other aforementioned are already all established superstars.
9) What followed was the Melanie Amaro-Josh Krajcik victory lap rendition of David Bowie's classic anthem "Heroes" which is one of my personal favorites of Bowie's (which is saying something given how his catalog is deep with amazing material). They both sang with such genuine joyfulness, with such an honest appreciative gratitude of what they had accomplished up to this point and what's next to come. For me this was a personal highlight of the show.
10) Finally, the crowning moment of the evening and season. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have noticed that they twice featured the now familiar Pepsi commercial about who will be featured in the next Pepsi ad to be debuted during the next Super Bowl in February. (I still care far too much more about the actual game, regardless of the teams, than the ads although they are still a very enjoyable side entree for the most part. Last year's was fairly weak after a pretty strong showing the year before. Fortunately, the games themselves of late have been exciting and well played Super Bowls. Anyway, enough of my side commentary. That's another topic for a future blog post of mine.) When they showed the three finalists I knew it wasn't accidental or inadvertent timing on their part. One doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to determine the deliberate nature of it.
Still, the evening culminated in a sea of emotion, as foreshadowed during the family and friend montages from their individual Christmas theme performances, with Melanie Amaro physically shaking and sobbing in celebration of her victory. Josh Krajcik and Chris Rene both exhibited class and graciousness in their runner-up placing, which is that much tougher given that unlike the other shows, $5 million was at stake. Still, Krajcik seemed to have authentically been smiling and applauding for Amaro.
All in all, while I do feel like Krajcik's musical versatility should have given him the edge for the title, I am very pleased that America still ultimately got it right with a very, very deserving victor. Even though Chris Rene was by far the least consistent of the final three, he peaked at the right time and he showed his own artistic and musical versatility down the homestretch and he unequivocally demonstrated that he has the makings of a true star and the fact that he did a couple of his own compositions should give him an unusual advantage coming off the show part of his proverbial journey.
Josh Krajcik actually becomes the biggest mystery now because Chris has that original song angle going for him in one of the two most dominant genres in all of music these days. Javier Colon, the winner of the first season of NBC's The Voice, has reportedly only sold over 10,000 copies of his post-Voice album. Simon did tell FOX 5 New York's Julie Chang (who he was interestingly very kiss-friendly with) that Chris and Josh would both get deals "immediately" so Simon is very intent on creating more than one star from this season. (I also enjoyed watching host Steve Jones and Drew Ryniewicz with Chang, although Chang seemed to have abruptly cut off Ryniewicz just a minute into talking to her and if you saw it too you noticed how taken aback by it Drew seemed to have been about it.)
Well, that's it. We have our Season 1 winner. I will be writing more pieces on this season, as well as its contestants, and I do have so major collaborations in place with some of the artists from this year with an eye on doing more with more of them. (Hint: I'm looking to do regular work with and for these artists too.) I will do another list of my favorites from this year as well as how I'd improve these shows, make even more stars from them, and many other pieces. Plus, we have both The Voice and American Idol coming back soon so there's plenty more to write about. I still have some Season 10 pieces of American Idol to finish so this is now a great time to get back to that as we shift back into American Idol mode.
Plenty more to come from me so please stay tuned. In the meantime, Happy Holidays!
- Jamie
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