‘American Idol’ Is Not — And Has Never Been — A Singing Competition

Something truly awful happened in the season premiere of ABC’s ho-hum reboot of American Idol and no one’s been talking about it. I understand it was a subtle blow to our culture, especially next to Katy Perry’s rogue kiss and Lionel Richie pondering the meaning of “wig,” but a blow it still was. After being deservedly turned down, Koby, a 26-year-old musical theater actress from Colorado, fumed to the camera: “I thought this was a singing competition and I thought I sang really, really f*cking well.”

It happened. In 2018, a grown woman auditioned for American Idol because she earnestly thought it was a “singing competition.”

American Idol is not — and has never been — a “singing competition.” Like poker, chess, and CBS’s reality juggernaut Survivor, American Idol is a game of strategy.

Sure, the goal is to be crowned America’s next great music star, and to get there, contestants have to survive months of cagematch-like musical battles. You’ll hear judges give lip service to things like pitch and timbre. You’ll even notice the glory of a high note and catch the tragedy of a badly executed key change. But you don’t win American Idol by being the best singer. If that were so, Season 6 vocal standout Melinda Doolittle would be the show’s biggest success story.

No, American Idol is a show about what we want in a modern pop star. Season after season, the show has rewarded fresh-faced teens and “over-the-hill” twentysomethings who know how to play the game — the game being how to best mold their talents according to the theme week ahead. The person who wins American Idol must be a unique voice, an accomplished entertainer, and most of all, a savvy opportunist. The hope is that this person will sell records in an age where marketing is often more important than melody.

American Idol is in a place where it desperately needs its contestants to understand this. The show is not a vehicle to make a good choir singer’s soloist dreams come true, but an audition process for pop’s next great titan. One of the reasons American Idol began to stumble in the ratings was that its winners lost this killer edge. Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood were good singers who could rise to the challenge of being pop divas, while Trent Harmon was…well, he was a guy named Trent Harmon and he won the last season of American Idol. Did you know that? If I knew that, then I forgot that. I bet he could carry a tune, but he obviously didn’t know how to be a star.

Thankfully, this year’s new panel of judges — Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie — seem to understand what the show is. In just the first few episodes, they’ve made it abundantly clear that they are looking for someone to sell hits, not hit high note. As a trio, they’ve already turned away some perfectly good singers, telling them to come back when they’ve found their “creative” voice. And when faced with the choice to pass the perfectly adorable, apple-cheeked sixteen-year-old Layla Spring, Perry says yes because of the experience she’ll get, but Richie pauses. He explains to Spring that it’s not about being cute and talented, but actually, “it’s a mental game.”

And it is! Every week, contestants are put through a mental and emotional gauntlet. They must weather the judges’ criticisms and keep what their competitors’ are doing out of their heads. Most of the people who flunk out of American Idol after making it to Hollywood Week don’t do it for lack of talent. After all, they all had the goods to impress the judges in the first round. They flail because of the stress and pressure. They sabotage themselves by not choosing a good song to match their voice. Like many of us, they get in their own damn way.

On the flip side of this, American Idol will always favor the contestants who know who they are, through and through. I’m not talking in terms of inspirational platitudes, but in the calculus of your own strengths and weaknesses. A mediocre singer who understands their brand, and more pertinently, their fanbase, can sail through rounds where unsure singers fail. My favorite example of this in American Idol history isn’t the infamous Sanjaya, but Kristy Lee Cook.

Kristy Lee Cook started off as a pretty good contender in Season 7 of American Idol. However, once the action shifted to the live shows, Cook struggled to inspire the same praise as her competitors. So what did Cook do? She found her audience — that earnest, all-American country-loving crowd — and she catered to them hardcore. This meant picking Martina McBride ballads, religious tunes, and during the “Songs From The Year You Were Born” week, she chose “God Bless the U.S.A.”

I’ll let Simon Cowell say it, “That was the most clever song choice I have heard in years.”

And it was. It was so clever I still think about it 10 years later. (How can you vote against “God Bless the U.S.A.?” How? It’s genius.) And it was a clue about American Idol‘s big bad secret.

So, please, can we stop pretending American Idol is a singing competition? American Idol is a game of gladiators.

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