The Final Idol Blog of 07

I don't think it was much of a contest tonight. Jordin was much better than Blake. The songwriting contest winner was unfairly skewed towards her, but even if you throw that out, she outperformed Blake in the previous two rounds.

To start off, he reprised his previous triumph of "You Give Love a Bad Name" and I think he did it even better than his first performance. However, Jordin chose to do her new song first, and she chose a recent Christina Agulera song, "Fighter", and the combination of her performance, and the subsequent erasure of the only knock on her style, namely, that she can't do modern songs, scored more points in my book.

The second round was Blake's "She Will Be Loved" from Maroon 5 versus Jordin's reprise of "Broken Wing" by Martina McBride from country week. Blake was flat flat flat off pitch for the entire song. The judges failed to notice, so I'm beginning to wonder if the fix is in. Then Jordin did her song and she took a previous "10" performance, and topped it, bringing the house down. Second round to Jordin as well.

The third round wasn't even fair. The two of them had to perform the same song, the winner of the songwriting competition, which was supposed to spare us from the god-forsaken inspirational insipid honey-sweet mediocre ballad that Idol tortures us with every season. What a difference! We got a slightly more hip god-forsaken inspirational insipid honey-sweet mediocre ballad named "This Is My Now". Blake struggled from the first note and by the end he was just coasting to get through it. The judges were inclined to give him a mulligan, but should they? Jordin took it and, as predicted, ripped down the roof with it. She choked back tears on the last line, and darned if it didn't fit perfectly. The judges quickly reverse course and pretty much handed her the trophy right then and there.

Now for some criticism about Idol that I've been holding back all season.

Idol needs to fire the sound crew and director. The sound has stunk all season. Microphones cutting out, improper volume mix, incompetent mixing board, feedback, backup vocals disappearing...it's all happened far too often for the #1 show on television. I've felt that on many occasions, one performer has had a good performance turned mediocre by a bad volume mix between the band, the backup vocals, and the lead vocals. In the "Idol Gives Back" show, the group performance was a train wreck where the person singing lead almost never had their microphone active. On that same show, even Ryan had his microphone cut out in the middle of introducing a performer.

I don't understand why the stars that perform on results night are allowed to have monitor earphones while the actual Idol contestants don't get them. Pitch problems have been prevalent all season, and that one common (and for pros, it's essential) piece of equipment can prevent it. (Have you ever tried to sing on pitch with accompaniment when you can't hear the music or yourself?) It's crazy not to do it.

Tonight, I felt that Blake was drowned out on the last song by the background vocals, while Jordin had the opposite problem during her turn.

I've also been vastly underwhelmed by the band this season. Tonight was their worst performance all season. I heard at least twice a horn player (a trombone, I think) playing a stray note during a rest (sacrilege!!) in the middle of a song. The acoustic guitar was grossly out of tune during both versions of "This Is My Now", which contributed to Blake's out-of-tune-ness, and nearly threw Jordin off in the middle of her version. The background singers were as sharp as Blake was flat during his turn, and I don't think they all knew the words, because the chorus sounded quite 'mush-mouthed' in places.

This is supposed to be a group of professionals? I really wish I could watch the show once with my friends Ed and Jeff, because I'm sure they'd notice a lot more problems than I did.

I've also mentioned this before, but the recap clips shown at the end of the show were quite obviously not the same performances we saw live, as Jordin's tearful break in her voice was not present, and Blake's pitch was better.

OK, I've run out of gas. All in all, I think the best singer is going to win. We'll see if I get shocked tomorrow.