American Idol

by Richard Rushfield

  The reports posted by the women’s soccer team began to spread virally. “So we got pulled aside by the producers, who said, ‘We need to know what happened . . . Because if anything else happens and it’s on our money then we’re going to get in trouble.’ And I said . . . ‘I partied with them and I made Chris go to bed. . . .’ Thank God there wasn’t Twitter then. MySpace was the biggest thing, and people couldn’t access things on their phones like they can now. It was really amazing to go somewhere and have your picture taken, and then get an e-mail from somebody else with that picture in, like, thirty minutes.”

  If one man can truly be said to have single-handedly changed American Idol, it is Chris Daughtry. The hard rocker from North Carolina brought to the Idol stage an edginess that had never been seen in the pop-dominated show. With other rockers, such as Maroulis, it was like they were playing the rocker character. In fact, Cowell often reminded them that no serious rocker would appear on American Idol. But Daughtry disproved that rule. His style arose from a contemporary world of hard rock aimed at a middle-American audience, typified by bands like Fuel and Nickelback. It was the type of music Chris would later label “flyover rock,” suggesting rock that was to be enjoyed by average Americans and distinguishing it from the glitzy sounds being produced in New York and Los Angeles.

  But more important than the fact that he kicked open the doors to rock music on the Idol stage, he showed what could be done with the songs. Since the beginning, contestants had struggled to distinguish themselves with music dictated by the various theme weeks. How do you take songs by Elton John or Billy Joel or Burt Bacharach and make them your own? And how do you do it week after week in front of judges who are pressuring you to show what kind of artist you are? Contestants would play with the keys and the tempo, but few dared to truly mess with the classic songs.

  Then came Chris Daughtry.

  No matter what the theme, from Queen to Elvis, from love songs to country night, Daughtry made the songs come to him. He’d speed them up, flatten the melodies, and turn them into hard rock numbers, complete with flashing lights, hip wardrobe, and angry strut. No matter what the origins, Daughtry transformed it into a rock spectacle. It was no longer just a question of singing your heart out. It was about performance, energy, and finding a way to take the Idol songbook and bend it to your image, make it something contemporary and relevant rather than just an oldies review.

  It would be a couple years until a rocker in the Daughtry mold won the competition, but now this element was out of the box. There was no turning back.

  Offscreen, season 5 was turning out to be another topsy-turvy year for Paula Abdul. In April, she reportedly got in a physical fight at an L.A. nightclub with a former CAA agent. Abdul filed a police report saying the man had grabbed her and thrown her against a wall, resulting in a concussion. The New York Post soon reported that the police investigation had been called off, speculating that Abdul had been drunk and “out of it.” The paper wrote, “Two witnesses tell Page Six Abdul looked ‘drunk’ and ‘out of it’ and was the one kicked out of the party with ex-boyfriend Dante Spencer. Insiders theorize she concocted a story to counter witnesses’ claims that she’d been tossed from Xenii for being ‘falling-down drunk.’ Lefkowitz’s lawyer, Michael Nasatir, said yesterday: ‘The press accounts of the so-called altercation between Jim Lefkowitz and Paula Abdul at Xenii last Sunday morning are completely outrageous and utterly false. Mr. Lefkowitz did not have an argument with Ms. Abdul nor did he have any physical contact with her whatsoever . . . he was merely an innocent bystander at an unfortunate incident.’ A rep said Abdul was unavailable for comment.”

  As season 5 wound down, the end of Paula’s current contract loomed. Aware that Cowell had wrestled gigantic numbers out of the network, Paula was determined to take a stand. It was not magnificent timing. Given the troubles of the previous season, reports of her car accidents, and off-camera squabbles, this wasn’t the moment to play hardball. As in her past negotiating round, sources within the Idol camp let slip to certain parties in the media, in this case to US Weekly, that talk of some other younger, more current pop starlets was in circulation around the office.

  “Paula was being very difficult. [She was] crying all the time and arriving late for meetings,” the US Weekly story read. The producers, US Weekly’s source continued, were actively considering other names. They “liked Jessica [Simpson] a lot. And some were pushing for Britney.”

  Sure enough, within days of the story, Paula committed to another three years for a mere $1.8 million a year.

  It wasn’t a payday to sneeze at, especially considering that the Idol live season was all of three months long and required two afternoons of work a week, plus six road trips for the auditions. And the Idol exposure, as the Fox negotiators pointed out, kept Paula in the public eye, allowing her to launch other ventures like her QVC jewelry line. Also hanging in the air was the fact that Fox had just put itself on the line in a big way to defend her.

  On the other hand, a superstar lifestyle doesn’t come cheap. After Uncle Sam took his half of the $1.8 million, there was that vast coterie to be paid, not to mention basic living expenses: house, clothes, travel, limos. . . . Her entourage of revolving staff and handlers was the stuff of legend. For one who had seen her opportunities dry up before, living this close to the bone was not a formula to breed security.

  And then there was that other matter, respect.

  Beneath the ditsy demeanor, Abdul had an incredibly sharp mind and the instinct of a survivor of two decades in show business. After five years of being happy just to be there, she had begun to bristle at what she saw as the lack of respect paid to her by the upper echelons of Idol. Never mind how her erratic behavior might have contributed to this problem. After Gail Berman moved on from Fox to become president of Paramount Pictures in 2005, Paula and Cecile Frot-Coutaz stood as the only females in the top ranks of Idol among Lythgoe, Warwick, Darnell, Fuller, Cowell, Seacrest, and Jackson. It was a position that Paula often enjoyed—indeed, she would not like it one bit when that changed. But the flipside of being one of the only women in the room was the feeling of being excluded from the boys’ club. Now, however, with the wounds of the Corey Clark incident still fresh, was not the time to make waves, but the seeds of discontent were planted.

  Season 5 roared toward another blockbuster conclusion, the year’s stand-out personalities having made a major splash in the media. For once it seemed that everything had gone right and everything Idol touched turned to gold. The song used for each contestant’s farewell montage, “Bad Day,” a year-old overlooked novelty ditty by Canadian Daniel Powter, became a Billboard number one hit.

  Chris Daughtry’s shocking ouster in fourth place had been a huge disappointment to the team, but again, the surprise only boosted the interest and drama. Even nerdy Elliott Yamin had found his own in the final weeks, becoming a genuine favorite of many. Typically in the case of a surprise ouster, the other most vulnerable who survive become the targets of fan wrath, as it had been for Nikki McKibbin, but in this case, no one begrudged Yamin his success.

  The only asterisk on the season, in fact, was the winner; the fact that as they approached the showdown between Taylor Hicks and Katharine McPhee, it seemed that this unlikeliest of contestants was actually going to win.

  In the end however, almost all of the Idol winners had been completely unlikely. When Idol came to America, the public, and certainly the critics, had uniformly assumed it would be a machine to produce shiny, pretty, disposable, bubblegum stars, inoffensive singers who would be easy on the eyes, unchallenging to the ears, interchangeable, and instantly forgettable. In the first season of Idol, the judges’ comments focus heavily on appearance, worrying that various contenders didn’t “look like a pop star.” But cookie-cutter heartthrobs, in the end, were, as it turned out, not at all what the show produced.

  Of the Idol champions to date, only two, Kelly Clarkson and Jordin Sparks, even fit in the “pop singers” catego
ry. Clarkson was a feistier phenomenon, beyond pop pigeonholing, while Sparks, far from being a cookie-cutter type, was an actual plus-size model before coming on the Idol stage. Carrie looked the part, but working in country, she had moved Idol to an entirely new genre than it had ever planned to be in. Kelly, Ruben, Fantasia, Carrie, Taylor, and Jordin had almost nothing in common. Yet each of them, in their way, convinced America that they were real people with real stories and real talent that had been overlooked by the entertainment machine.

  “We’d always said why we thought we were going to be successful both in England and here is the record companies had sort of given up doing their job, which is going around, finding the talent, the A&R, and bringing it back to the record company,” Lythgoe reflects. “That wasn’t really happening. They sort of sat down like fat cats and had the talent come to them. With Idol and Pop Stars, we went to the world and brought the talent in.”

  In his own way, along the path that he very consciously and cleverly carved out, Taylor Hicks was as much a part of that tradition as the rest.

  Bringing these talents from all walks of life together and creating that fairy tale made for a great storyline every year, no matter who ended up going home too soon and who ended up winning. Thus the show would find, as the seasons went on, you no longer needed to win to benefit from being on Idol. In the early seasons, Seacrest would crack that for those who failed to win, little was waiting but ignominy. “The ones who go home will have a future summed up in three words: paper or plastic,” he joked in season 3.

  But as runner-up Clay Aiken became a monster album seller far surpassing the sales of Ruben Studdard, the man who beat him, as fourth-placed Chris Daughtry became the biggest rock seller of the year, as eighth-placed Jennifer Hudson went on to win an Academy Award, it became clear that all the contenders who took part in this annual adventure had won a place in the nation’s heart. Which is not to say that all of them would become durable stars, but the door was open to many more than just the winner, and even those who did not remain household names would find ways to carve out places on America’s broad entertainment canvas.

  For those on the inside of that fairy tale, the bond between them often remains very strong. In the early days, the producers scoffed at the idea that the contestants, competing against each other, would become friends and root for each other’s success, but year after year, with exceptions and the occasional diva, that is what has happened. They stay in touch, remain friends, and continue to roll down the road of show business together.

  Ace Young remembers getting a call a couple years after season 5. “I was on radio tour and I was eight hours away from Birmingham. I found out that Elliott Yamin’s mother passed away. I canceled my radio tour. I got in a rental car and I drove for eight hours. And I was there with Elliott and his family and I remember hanging out and being there for the service, and being there for the burial. They actually buried her. I watched them put the dirt on her. It was a beautiful, emotional thing, and I was just sitting there thinking, If it wasn’t for Idol I wouldn’t have even met this kid. We’re best friends, so much so that we’re family. When the real personal shit actually goes down, we have each other’s backs. Because we’re real friends, not celebrity friends. That’s when your publicist sets up a playdate. We’re real friends.”

  Chapter 14

  PONYHAWK

  When it was over, the pundits would not be kind. “There was no disagreement whatsoever on the sixth season: It stunk,” wrote the Biloxi Sun Herald. “Even staunch fans acknowledge that this season, Idol is off,” reported the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes. “They point to the uninspiring crop of jaded Idolettes, whose stated goal in interviews was not to win the competition but to make it to the top ten, securing a place in the summer’s American Idol tour.”

  A nation full of bloggers and morning show personalities chimed in with their opinions about what had gone wrong. Too many celebrity mentors. A dull cast. Out-of-date themes. Too much spectacle. As if that weren’t enough, Ryan Seacrest pointed a finger at sparring partner Simon Cowell. “Clearly there’s been an oversaturation of his character,” he said in an interview.

  The season began as others had, with a dependable Idol subplot: another Paula incident. On January 11, 2007 Paula was interviewed by satellite with Seattle local TV as part of the standard season launch PR run-up.

  The public was used to Paula’s quirky behavior, her hyperemotional responses, her ability to get tongue-tied over the simplest statements and flummoxed to the point of breakdown by her sparring partner’s bon mots. This time, however, she appeared not ditzy but actually intoxicated, majorly trashed. She bobbed and weaved in and out of the frame and her eyes rolled wildly in her head. In response to questions she waved giddily to the camera like she was seeing an old friend across the room. She took long, bizarre pauses before answering. Asked about comments by Cowell that the Seattle auditions had been horrendous, she said uncharacteristically, “You know what . . . I have to agree with Simon,” and then immediately contradicted herself, rambling, “You know what, it is what it is. And it was brilliant.” The video was a viral sensation, with comments on YouTube kicking off a long and heated debate on the now ubiquitous topic of What’s Paula On?

  The subplot unfolded according to convention. Springing into damage control mode, Paula sat down on the Jay Leno show and offered the explanation that the sound from the satellite feed of two different stations had simultaneously been sent into her earpiece, leaving her struggling to sort out who was asking what. Anyone who has done these satellite tours can attest that such things happen, and there is little more confusing than being in that position. Watching the video, however, her answers and body language seem wacky even when she is responding directly to questions. That YouTube footage was hard to explain away—why would competing satellite feeds cause her to sway, for example—and this one would stay with her for a while. Fox issued its now familiar statement of support. Privately, however, many eyes rolled at Paula’s explanation and the always present fears of what else she might do or say in public ratcheted up many notches.

  The awkward incident would be a fitting opening to a season that flailed and struggled to find its footing. Even to the Idol team, it’s something of a mystery why the talent resonates in some years and falls flat in others. Funny things often happen on the way to the top twelve. People who seemed promising early on fade under the spotlight. The brightest prospects get eliminated in the semifinals. Some of the most talented fail to make an impression in their ninety seconds before that first reviewing table. Singers who would go on to great careers, including pop star Colbie Caillat and Glee’s Amber Riley, tell of auditioning for Idol and failing to clear the first bar. Others who eventually made it on Idol, including season 6 champion Jordin Sparks, had to try their luck in multiple cities before getting a thumbs-up.

  Whatever the reason, some years fail to light the public’s imagination. Season 6 was one of those years. The sixers as a whole were not without talent. The group initially centered around a trio that was cast as the three divas redux, a cluster of the very able African American female singers Melinda Doolittle, LaKisha Jones, and Jordin Sparks. Beatboxer Blake Lewis still stands out as a truly singular presence on the Idol stage, his post-Idol albums becoming some of the most critically lauded of any contestant. There were a handful of likable personalities, including wisecracking oversized moptop Chris Sligh and active naval officer Phil Stacey. But after the supercharged personalities of the previous season, it was a lower-key affair.

  Except for Sanjaya.

  The Sanjaya phenomenon started slowly. When the sixteen-year-old auditioned there was nothing ironic about the judges’ praise for him. Sanjaya was first introduced as the quiet sidekick of his vivacious and strong-willed sister Shyamali, both of whom sailed through their auditions. “She has the better stage presence, you have the better voice,” Cowell told Sanjaya. His rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours”
had, in fact, been well sung and even understated by the good-looking boy with the long flowing hair.

  During Hollywood Week, however, Sanjaya was showcased less for his vocal talents than for his emotional roller coaster offstage, breaking into inconsolable tears when Shyamali was eliminated, and he was left to make the journey on his own.

  In the semifinals, he gushed, “I guess I’ve always put my sister on a pedestal. The day my sister got cut I kinda felt like half of me was gone.” His singing also came under its first attack from the judges. Randy admonished him for chutzpah in taking on a Stevie Wonder song and Cowell called it, “without question the dreariest performance we’ve had all night.” He might already have climbed above where his abilities could sustain him, but by this time the Sanjaya genie was out of the bottle.

  Sanjaya’s rise was driven by a remarkable alliance between Idol’s tween viewers teamed up with “the haters.” To the tweens, Sanjaya’s high voice, lithe physique, flowing hair, dark eyes, and laid-back style—not to mention his ability to cry, for his beloved sister no less—made him a viable target for prepubescent crushes. Reminiscent in his manner of a young Michael Jackson, Sanjaya’s demeanor was reminiscent of teenage girl’s, a quality that called out to the young Idol viewers. The ranks of these fans was most notably represented by the appearance of perhaps Idol’s most passionate fan, Ashley Ferl, otherwise known as “the crying girl.”