‘American Idol’: Abandon the Songwriting Contest Already
Once again, last night’s season finale of American Idol featured each of the final two contestants singing two terrific songs that everyone loves — and one crappy song that no one’s ever heard before and no one hopes to hear again. Just like last year, when beat-boxing finalist Blake Lewis’s chances were scuttled by his inability to sell “This Is My Now,†the ham-handed winner of Idol’s songwriting contest, so were otherwise good-to-great evenings by Davids Cook and Archuleta soured by their performances of two fan-written songs. Cook, above, made “Dream Big†(sample lyric: “It takes one hope to make the stars worth reaching for … So reach out for something more!â€) into a mid-tempo rocker and almost pulled it off. Archuleta, below the jump, had no problem selling “In This Moment,†in the way that Claude Monet would be able to successfully execute a paint-by-numbers picture of water lilies.