Kris Allen, because of you I have carpal tunnel

I had never before voted for anyone on American Idol…until Kris Allen. I’ve always considered it a crappy show geared for the Celine Dion wannabes and the occasional aspiring Michael Boltons and never really thought an overproduced show like it could discover any form of talent. I tuned in last year when David Cook won, and I was pleased, mostly because David Cook just didn’t resemble the typical American Idol winner and so I had placed my bet on David Archuleta. When Cook won, I was happy because it showed that America, despite the judges’ pushing and shoving for a clear favorite (Archuleta) decided they wanted to hear someone else on the radio as their American Idol.

This year, I watched AI not expecting anything, and was immediately drawn to Kris Allen. Honestly, I did think he was cute when he sang “Man in the Mirror”, but I also thought Adam Lambert was cute, so there. What I am trying to say is that cute can only get so far. Talent gets you further. And this season of American Idol was pretty good in terms of talent. Matt Giraud and Allison Iraheta were my early favorites, but during the top 13 they seemed to falter sometimes and weren’t consistent. Kris Allen and Adam Lambert seemed like the only two performers who knew exactly who they were and what music they wanted to do. I had willed the finale to be between them because it would really be a showdown. But alas, the AI machine had other plans. They wanted a Lambert-Danny Gokey finale, just to showcase a storyline of good versus evil. Well, too bad, but Danny Gokey went home, and good riddance or it would have been a pretty pathetic finale. But the producers still tried to go with the same storyline – playing up Allen’s boy-next-door qualities and red state origins and emphasizing Lambert’s flamboyance and affinity for fog machines and guyliner.

Tonight was part one of the season 8 finale, and it was sort of a major letdown primarily because the coronation song, written by judge Kara DioGuardi, was pure and absolute drivel that it was simply unsingable. I don’t care if you are David Bowie or Mariah Carey – “No Boundaries” is an awful song. It had a cheesy melody, strange lyrics, and frankly, it wasn’t epic enough to be a coronation song. My 9-year-old sister could write better lyrics than that. But let’s start from the beginning.

Adam Lambert started off the show with “Mad World”, a repeat performance of his that was so good, the normally belligerent Simon Cowell rose to his feet and gave Lambert a standing ovation. Lambert was much more subdued in this finale performance, and I liked that he didn’t attempt to shriek out his high notes as he normally does. I liked the performance – it was pretty haunting, with the dry ice and silvery blue lights. It didn’t blow me away, but it was still decent. Kris Allen picked “Ain’t No Sunshine” as his repeat performance – a song that I had loved when he performed it during Motown week. To me, his second rendition of it seemed a bit strained; he wasn’t hitting the same notes he did when he performed it the first time, and he had more fire in his voice the first time around. Allen appeared like he was exhausted – maybe he was saving his voice for later, who knows? It was still a good performance, and I like that he switched up the arrangement a little bit from the original performance he did.

The second round was AI creator Simon Fuller’s picks. Lambert got “A Change is Gonna Come”, a classic Sam Cooke song which has been sung to death during Idol auditions. It was an interesting pick for Lambert, and probably a metaphorical one too. He started off pretty well, remarkably subdued and classic – and then came the high notes and the performance went downhill from there. Normally for a song you have a beginning, middle, bridge and then the end. For Lambert it was a beginning and a bridge. Lambert doesn’t know how to reign in his voice. He just unleashes it during the high notes and really pretty much butchered the song. I couldn’t stand listening to it – had to put it on mute. Too bad, as he had started off pretty well with that song.

Kris Allen was given “What’s Going On”, another classic song from the great Marvin Gaye. I was nervous at first, because the song is very bluesy, R&B-ish and Motown, but I rememered that Kris can pretty much take on songs that aren’t typically his genre [see: Heartless] and when the song started, he was barely into the first verse and already I wanted to do cartwheels. His rendition of “What’s Going On” was phenomenal. It wasn’t as exciting as “Heartless”, but it was pretty close. It was an almost bossa nova/Latin salsa version of “What’s Going On” and I am telling you, I love this song to death, and I almost wanted to cry because of how much justice Kris brought to singing it. It was the best performance of the night, primarily because it was the most original, and he had made the song fresh. I can’t wait to download it on iTunes tomorrow!

And now we come to the coronation song, “No Boundaries”. I won’t even dignify it with a review, except I thought Adam Lambert made it sound so dated – like a horrible 80s song. Kris, on the other hand, made it a bit contemporary, but the notes were far too high for him, and he was really straining himself in order to hit those notes. Luckily for him, the timbre of his voice allows him to sound relevant and not like he was stuck in the 80s like Lambert was. Though I can say that both of them sang the song poorly, mostly because it was a horribly-written song to begin with, I thought Kris did a much better, albeit more bearable version than Lambert.

So with all that in mind, I decided to text my fingers off for Kris tonight. It was absolutely exhausting having to do that for four hours straight, but I did it. I worked three cellphones and I think I may have pulled 2000 votes or something. It was crazy. Whatever happens tomorrow night, Kris Allen has a bright future ahead of him, because he is a very relevant, record-ready artist who knows exactly what he wants to put out as a record. I hope he wins, because he deserves it, after all the hard work he has put into his performances and how he has dealt with the AI machine, even after they preordained their winner 13 contestants beforehand. No matter what happens, Kris Allen is my American Idol – and the first and last finalist on that horrible show that I ever vote for.