Idle Musing: Singapore Idol

The best thing about Singapore Idol is probably the guest performer spot on the results show. For five blessed minutes, we actually get good singing on a Singapore Idol episode!! I think having this spot is also the biggest mistake the producers made.

Coming hot on the heel of a SI performance recap, the guest performers show up this year's SI hopefuls so badly that it is just embarassing. Is there one person in this year's crop who could have sung as well as Olinda Cho did a couple of weeks ago? I thought Olinda was great in the first SI season and she has shown growth as an artist, pulling off a beatifully restrained yet impassioned version of "You don't have to say you love me". Mathilda is this year's Oli, but she's all brass and sass and very little tenderness. In her hands, this song would have sounded like an Aretha Franklin remake (not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but Mathilda is beginning to be just a tad one dimensional). I don't even want to think about what Jasmine, and to a lesser extent, Rahimah, would have done to this. Cringing would probably be involved.

If Oli was a difficult act to follow, what about Kit Chan? Man, she just about took those Idol contestants by the scruff and slapped them around all the way back to their singing teachers. She just kicked complete and total ass tonight and showed these wannabes how it is supposed to be done. If this lady had slightly more appealing orthodontics, she would be a bigger superstar than Steph Sun.

Some thoughts on the performance show (I refuse to call the performance shows the "Spectaculars" - whose bright idea was that?):

... National Day stories, oh yay (not)! Give the kids more time to sing and cut out these boring pre-song stories!

... Wow, all these emo kids dedicating their songs to their dads et al. Okay, I will have a heart; it was actually quite touching.

... "The Living Years" !! A favourite song from my university days! Why is Mathilda singing it like some up-tempo R&B dance track? It's a sad, sad song with very poignant lyrics - not a clap-along! Girl can sing, but this was wrong.

... The "Friends" theme song. Hehe, if you aren't strumming a guitar while singing this, you're pretty much going to come off like a dork singing this song. Oh, poor Joakim, like you don't have enough working against you.

... What's with Ken ? He's getting to be rather bitchy - like a nicer, less funny Simon Cowell.