Karaoke Night

"This was like...the full circle of this show. We're gonna take this nobody and make him such a huge somebody that this nobody will totally worship him." Top 40 Reality TV Moments on VH1

There are certain aspects of the zeitgeist that I try to experience from a position with various and clear exit routes, and preferably from a significant distance. This goal can usually be met fairly successfully when we work concessions at the DCU Center to raise money for the Booster Club (when you work the concession stands your organization gets 12% of what the stand makes). In this way, I have been able to experience small doses of Hannah Montana without being amongst the screaming youngsters, monster trucks without the exhaust inhalation and deafness, bullriding without the fine coating of dirt...and now, American Idol without, well, the screaming youngsters AND oldsters.

American Idol is a phenomenon that has largely escaped me. It debuted in my freshman year at American, and it was clear more or less from the get-go that a new age had dawned...it was all people talked about and was obsessively watched, to the point that you could tell when the commercial breaks came on, since the dorms took on a deathly still while the show was on. A lot of people have "their shows" by which they regulate things like going to the bathroom and switching the laundry...I learned to pee in accordance with OTHER people's shows, thanks to American Idol. Now, of course, everyone watches it, including my parents. (NB: While we're covering voids in my pop cultural awareness, I am also not up on the Twilight series, don't have an iPhone, and am frequently confounded by technology.) I usually have a vague sense of what's going on, just because it's a huge "news" story, but that's about the extent of it.

We worked the Sam Adams stand during the Idol concert, which meant we were right there as people came into the building via the Box Office doors. I find that concerts spawned by reality TV make for utterly bizarre audiences; I first witnessed this when we worked at the Rock Star: Supernova concert, which was attended by all ages from elementary school to retirement home and was distinguished by having absolutely no cohering factor from one attendee to the next besides everyone being psyched out of their mind to be there. So in come all the Idol fans, and again, there's no common thread. I didn't really know what to expect from the concert. I kind of have a vague idea that the losers of the competition would be singing their own songs.

Obviously, no one can take anything away from the Idol producers in terms of their success in general use of capitalism. The amount of money involved in the Idol juggernaut is mindblowing. As impressive as that all is, the most impressive achievement, to my mind, is that they have convinced people to pay money by the fuckload to see...karaoke. Every single song was a cover...Queen, Heart, The Beatles, Usher, Rhianna, Gnarls Barkley. While I give them credit for a diverse set list, it's all cover, all the time. Just for perspective, I had a guy come up to me to get a soda who noted that he had paid $600 to bring his daughters to the show. $600! From one bank account! For KARAOKE! I'm sure it was an exciting show and I get that the Idol contestants are a draw, but STILL, holy crap, the fact REMAINS.

Dear Future Children,

I will not love you that much.

Love,

Me

I'm sure that the success of Idol in view of its karaokitude says nothing good about the artistic integrity of the current generation of pop stars. I frequently seem musically out of touch because I don't really listen to the radio much...so much of what's on the air is just disgustingly trite or bland, and what isn't is likely being overplayed to within an inch of its life. Frank said it best a couple weeks ago - "the best music has an actual story." If you've ever had to sing in a different language, you may have discovered that the best way to really kick ass on the tune is to get the piece translated so you know what you're singing about. True emotion, true connection to what you're singing about, is the way to make really outstanding music. Now that American Idol's success has legitimized the pop cultural presence of this kind of covering, I worry that we'll only see a continued rise of music that's written in teams, randomly paired with an up and coming singer, and that people will stop worrying about writing and performing and buying music that's actually ABOUT something. That is a damn shame.