SI Bitching Part 1: These kids are singers???

Before this blog becomes the World Cup blog in the next four weeks (I am so excited just counting down to the kick-off tomorrow night!), it will be a temporary Singapore Idol rant blog.

Based on the first 2 piano shows, I am just aghast at the talent and skill level on display. If these people are the top 28, I shudder to think about others in the Top 100 that got eliminated at the Theatre Audition stage. They must have been horrendously bad to the point of tone deafness.

I know that Singapore is a small country and the talent pool is smaller etc, hence we cannot expect to find talent comparable to what we see on AI. I don't think the AI contestants are all that great, honestly, but the SI contestants make Taylor Hicks sound like frigging Placido Domingo. Never mind not being able to find as many talented people, the overall standard is so embarassingly poor, they have not managed to find even ONE indisputably decent singer. The best that we have seen so far would probably not even get to go to Hollywood if they auditioned for AI. The piano shows have seemed more like extended bad auditions than actual performance episodes.

Sure, most of them have something going for them in their quest for idoldom; in most cases, extremely telegenic smiles, and in other cases, "interesting" self-identities. But not a single one has shown that he or she is just plain and simply A GOOD SINGER. Imagine that, a good singer on Singapore Idol. Maybe they missed Simon Cowell's memo that this is, on occasion, a SINGING competition.

Is karaoke the only training these people have received? Have none of these kids ever taken a singing lesson? I don't mean studying with Lee Wei Song or enrolling in an expensive music school, but just simple stuff that a school choir teacher could teach. Like how to support a note on a breath and how to sing from the diaphraghm. Like learning the meaning of the lyrics and bringing that out in a performance.

What happened to the talent in Singapore? I assume that they just did not audition for Singapore Idol, or we could not have ended up with a top 28 that contained these 14 not-so-inspiring performers. I mean, I have heard better performances in hotel lounges and in bars. Heck, I think you could probably hear better singers at a college jam and hop.

I think the judges are grasping at straws and all except Ken have resorted to praising people that would have been canned last season. Even Ken has basically nattered on about "potential", which is probably code for "you look the part and as for the singing, we'll fix it in the studio."