All Idol Edition today. This will get you set up for the finale week. Also, I have my review of the Best And Worst Of American Idol DVD set, Idols at the ACM Awards on Tuesday night, a look back at this season of Idol, and I also thought it would be fun to pull out the tape and watch the season 1 finale again to give some thoughts looking back on it. Yep, it’s finale week. The performance show will be Tuesday night at 7pm. The two hour finale will be on Wednesday at 7pm. Katharine McPhee vs. Taylor Hicks. Last season’s champion, Carrie Underwood is said to be performing on the two hour finale. The other finalists from this season will be in the house to perform too.
The finale will see Katharine take on Taylor to determine who wins the fifth season of American Idol. I can see either of these two winning as it won’t shock me really either way. The talk seems to be that Taylor is more the favorite to win that Katharine but the talk was also that Chris was going to win too so there you go. The voting last week was all lined up at 33% so it goes to show that this is anybody’s to win. Both are a different style of performer. Katharine has the voice while Taylor is more the entertainer. It is amazing to see how far that Taylor has come in this competition as I didn’t expect him for sure to get to the final two. He has really become a strong contender in the last few weeks. Katharine has had the voice power from day one and has struggled with song choice often according to the judges. This season’s American Idol saw several picked to be around for a while right after their auditions. Immediate favorites to get to the end were Chris Daughtry, Katharine McPhee, and Paris Bennett. Those were talked about a lot at the beginning. The elimination of Chris is still something that is being talked about with how stunning it was. That was the jaw dropping moment of the season that happens every year. This season has had several personalities that will for sure be remembered for years to come and that is Kellie Pickler and Taylor Hicks. I think those two just had these unique personalities that stood out over the others. The two people in the competition that I really wanted to see stick around longer were Ayla Brown and Lisa Tucker. Ayla just missed out on the final 12 and I thought that she deserved to get there. I really thought Lisa would get further than she did. She had the voice but her personality just never really showed through which may have been what hurt her.
Here is a recap of the top 12 weeks with the results and who was eliminated each week.
Week 1: Eliminated: Patrick Hall, Stevie Scott, Becky O’Donahue, Bobby Bennett
Week 2: Eliminated: Brenna Gethers, Jose Penala, David Radford, Heather Cox
Week 3: Eliminated: Ayla Brown, Gedeon McKinney, Will Makar, Kinnik Sky
Week 4: Top 12 Begins, Bottom 3: Ace Young, Melissa McGhee, Lisa Tucker. Elminated: Melissa McGhee
Week 5: Bottom 3: Kevin Covais, Lisa Tucker, Bucky Covington. Eliminated: Kevin Covais
Week 6: Bottom 3: Katharine McPhee, Lisa Tucker, Ace Young. Eliminated: Lisa Tucker
Week 7: Bottom 3: Elliott Yamin, Mandisa, Paris Bennett. Eliminated: Mandisa
Week 8: Bottom 3: Elliott Yamin, Ace Young, Bucky Covington. Eliminated: Bucky Covington
Week 9: Bottom 3: Chris Daughtry, Ace Young, Paris Bennett. Eliminated: Ace Young
Week 10: Bottom 2: Paris Bennett, Kellie Pickler. Eliminated: Kellie Pickler
Week 11: Bottom 2: Paris Bennett, Elliott Yamin. Eliminated: Paris Bennett
Week 12: Bottom 2: Chris Daughtry, Katharine McPhee. Eliminated: Chris Daughtry
Week 13: Eliminated: Elliott Yamin
Ok, let’s go back to see how I did with my predictions that I made on how this would play out. I made these predictions before the final 12 was set. When making the final 12 picks, I got Ayla Brown, Will Makar, Gedeon McKinney wrong. The ones that got into the final 12 that I didn’t pick were Melissa McGhee, Bucky Covington, and Kevin Covais. From there, I picked the final four. My final four picks were Chris Daughtry, Katharine McPhee, Paris Bennett, and Lisa Tucker. Well, I got two right. The final four were Chris, Katharine, Elliott, and Taylor. My original final two picks were Katharine and Paris but I then changed it to Katharine and Chris a few weeks later. So, I got Katharine right both times but missed the other one both times. As far as other picks, I really didn’t think Taylor would get as far as he has. I thought he would get to the final 6 and that would be it. I thought Kellie would get to final 5 and then go home. I was wrong with both. I looked to be kind of in the middle on picks this year.
The ACM Awards are Tuesday night also going head to head with American Idol on CBS at 7pm. Carrie Underwood is nominated in several categories including Top Female Vocalist, Top New Female Artist, Single Of The Year (Jesus Take The Wheel), and Song Of The Year (Jesus Take The Wheel). Carrie will be performing on the show but she won’t be the only Idol alum on the show as Kelly Clarkson is set to perform on the show as well.
I promised a review of the Best and Worst Of American Idol DVD set so I figured that this All Idol edition was the best time to review it. I got the rest of the DVD set watched over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. These DVD’s are available to buy as separate discs such as just buying the Best Of DVD or Worst Of DVD or as a set. Don’t buy them separate!! If you buy both discs as a set, you get a bonus disc that contains a ton of season 4 stuff. So, make sure that when you buy the DVD’s that you are getting the 3 disc set!! Now, on to the set itself. I had a lot of fun watching this. The Best Of American Idol DVD contains several performances from the first four seasons of American Idol. The fourth season stuff though is in the bonus features area and not in the main program. The first three seasons contain four separate performances from each season. Every winning moment performance by the Idol winner of each season is on the DVD. Wow, that Fantasia finale performance was really good. Other great performances on the DVD is Carrie’s “Alone”, Kelly Clarkson’s “Respect”,Bo’s “In A Dream” (which was without a band), Clay’s “Bridge Under Troubled Water”, and the trio of Ruben, Clay, and Kimberly Locke singing together. Only bummer is that I wish they would have included some group performances too such as the amazing “God Bless The USA” from the season two contestants. A fun bonus feature of the Best Of DVD is where Paula Abdul talks to the Idols on tour. This is just fourth season. She sits down with three different groups talking about the tour and each other. The first group contains Carrie, Constantine, and Anthony. The second group is Jessica, Nikko, and Scott. The third group is Vonzell and Anwar. Then, Paula just talks to Carrie by herself. These are a lot of fun and I recommend watching them as they do a lot of joking and tell some funny stories. The one with Carrie, Constantine, and Anthony goes for 20 minutes. The others are shorter. There is also a sitdown with Kelly Clarkson which was taped in July 2002 during the first season. The interview is about ten minutes long and is really good. Kelly just seems to be having such a great time and it was fun to hear her looking ahead to the future beyond Idol. There is also extended audition footage of Carrie and Bo which is fun to watch. Auditions are shown on the disc of Kelly, Justin , Ruben, and Clay. The bonus disc is a favorite of mine being such a huge Carrie fan. The bonus disc features separate sit down interviews with Carrie, Bo, Constantine, and Vonzelle. They also include Carrie and Bo’s visits home before the Idol finale. Great thing is that there is extra footage on it that did not air on TV and there is quite a bit more on the DVD. There is a 45 minute sitdown interview with Carrie that is amazing!!! She just sits and talks about her journey up to that point on Idol. It was taped about three weeks before the finale. There is also another 20 minute interview where she talks about small town living. The Bo one runs about 20 minutes. The others are under 10 minutes. If you are a Carrie fan, GET the bonus disc!!! I think the bonus disc was worth the whole set for me. The Worst Of disc is what you expect. Bad auditions. The main program contains kind of a highlight or lowlight reel if you will of bad auditions. The DVD also contains extended versions of some of the bad auditions. I’m not as big a fan of that disc as I just don’t like seeing people get made fun of. I feel bad for some of them. I always like the voting shows better than the audition shows anyway. To wrap up, if you are an Idol fan then you will like this DVD set. I’d highly recommend it. Of course there are many performances that were left off the Best Of that I would have liked to have seen but what can you do. For the price, it is for sure worth getting it. Wal-Mart and Best Buy have been selling it for right around $20 for the 3 disc set so there you go.
I thought this would be a fun thing to do for the All Idol post and it was fun to do. I pulled out the tape and rewatched the season 1 finale from 2002. It was back to the original showdown, Kelly vs. Justin. Yep, I was behind Kelly and voted for her. I guess I should also add that I jumped on with watching Idol when they got to around the top 6. I just had too much other stuff that I was watching on TV at the time. So, watching this finale again, there are several of the earlier contestants from the top 10 that I’m not really familiar with. One thing that was interesting to remember was how the first hour of this two hour finale was more like a preshow backstage with the second hour being the live crowd stuff. Now, the whole two hours is in front of the crowd. One thing that made me think what was he thinking was seeing Dunkleman again. If you forgot, Ryan used to share the stage with another host. Dunkleman didn’t come back for season 2. I do have to say that Ryan seemed to carry him through this finale as it just didn’t seem like Dunkleman added much as far as commentary. The performances were a lot of fun having all the finalists back again as they did a Motown tribute and also a 60’s montage. One thing I thought while watching this was how underrated Christina Christian was. I thought she was really good. The shocker of season 1 votes was the elimination of Tamyra Gray as I thought and others thought it would be Kelly vs. Tamyra which would have been a big vocal showdown. Kelly and Justin got together to sing “It Takes Two”. It was really interesting to see how much better the show production is now compared to then as they were still working out some stuff and getting in the groove. It was wild to once again watch where Kelly Clarkson started out and see her reaction to winning Idol. She got choked up at the end and couldn’t finish singing her winning performance so some of the finalists all chimed in and helped her finish the last lyric. Very cool touch to the ending. I’m glad that I watched this again as it was a lot of fun to do. I think I may have to rewatch some of the other finales too.
That is all I have for this thing. Who will join Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, and Carrie Underwood as the next American Idol champion? We’ll find out on Wednesday night’s two hour finale. Don’t forget the Idol Tonight preshow on TV Guide Channel at 6pm on Tuesday night. Enjoy the Idol finale week!!
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