Sailing through San Diego

Tonight's breezy one-hour Idol was a lot like last week's Dallas audition episode--a perfectly entertaining hour of television that was short on much bloggable material. The most important portion of the show may have been the last five minutes, when we got our first glimpse of Carly Smithson. Some of you may have already read about her on the Internet in the past week, but if not...she used to be known as Carly Hennessey and was the subject of a lengthy piece in the Wall Street Journal almost six years ago. At the time, she was 18, and had recorded a pop album with a major record company which spent more than $2 million promoting it. And she had sold 378 albums. As I argued in my last Idol entry about the Dallas auditions, I'm OK with the fact that contestants are allowed to have had a previous recording contract, as long as they don't currently have one at the time of the competition--but it certainly is worthy of debate as perhaps violating a little bit of the spirit of American Idol. Furthermore, in Carly's case, she was apparently considered a favorite by Simon two years ago before she was disqualified over the visa issue--so she's got to be considered a top contender this year. Personally, I wasn't all that impressed--I found her performance a little overly dramatic and her tattoo kind of gross, but we'll see.

Otherwise, I must give the Idol producers kudos for definitely spending more time this year showing us the good singers, especially at the top of each show. I liked the single dad, both his singing and his story, and loved how his young kid knew all the names of the judges. And I really liked the girl who loved Simon--good personality, kind of cute and she could sing.

Even the bad singers weren't that painful or not lingered upon as in past years. I don't understand why the Mariah Carey fan didn't, um, sing a Mariah Carey song (it wouldn't have helped, but at least she would have been going to her alleged strength). As for the guy with the fans, he claims to be a fan of the show, and then actually thinks that Simon and company would "listen to what my song was saying." Have you watched this show before? And I am liking what is turning out to be a theme of the auditions this year--the people who won't stop singing and keep trying new songs. It's much better than the cliched rave-out at the judges that we got in the premiere on Tuesday night. So, onward to Charleston, and wow, everything is about South Carolina this week, huh? Fingerhut out.