Idol Tour Reviews - Oakland

Snarky comments and weird, random analogies are all over the reviews I've seen from the Bay Area media for the American Idol concert in Oakland Saturday night.

The analogies were all over the place in the San Francisco Chronicle review. The writer compared Kris Allen's "Ain't No Sunshine" to Dana Carvey's "Choppin' Broccoli" skit (WTF?! Ridiculous.), called Adam Lambert a "androgynous, Bjork-like power singer" who "came out dressed like he should have been in a dune buggy chasing Mel Gibson across the Australian Outback", and said Matt Giraud "had a populist Rowlf-from-'The Muppet Show' thing going". The only reason I think the latter two are supposed to be somewhat complimentary is because they were really the only ones, along with Danny Gokey, who were mentioned in a positive light. Actually, those four were the only ones mentioned at all. Matt and Danny were singled out as two who "could have won in a lesser year", and he went on to say Matt was "a standout in the pre-intermission set". In regards to Adam, he wrote, "The audience made it clear that in the Bay Area, second-place finisher Adam Lambert was the majority choice. The androgynous, Bjork-like power singer didn't disappoint, giving the most memorable performance - justifying the crowd's decision to stand for every one of his songs, while sitting through most of Season 8 winner Kris Allen's performance."

The last part of that sentence is annoying because it implies that people sat for Kris' set because they didn't like it or because it wasn't good. But come on! You're not going to stand up and go crazy during a song like "Ain't No Sunshine". You sit down and listen and take it in.

The Oakland Tribune review was pretty brutal to what he termed as "nine vocalists not named Adam Lambert". Adam, who the writer called a "bona-fide star" even got a backhanded compliment here: "No matter what a person thinks of Lambert's dramatic vocal style — I find it more than a tad nauseating — it's still nearly impossible to deny his almost limitless potential. Indeed, just how the singer goes about trying to make good on all that promise should make for one of pop culture's most fascinating story lines over the next few years." The others pretty much got trashed, with the bottom 6 being called "pretty weak, but they did serve a purpose. They set the bar so low that the big guns had no trouble clearing it." And then he went on to call those "big guns" a "17-year-old Ashlee Simpson wannabe that delivered Radio Disney-appropriate versions of such rockers as Pink's 'So What' and Heart's 'Barracuda'" (Allison Iraheta) and "a blander version of John Mayer, if indeed, that's even possible" (Kris).

Ashlee Simpson and Radio Disney, my ass! But this is all coming from a guy who called David Cook "arguably the weakest participant in the cast" last year (OMG WTF?!?! Was Ramiele missing from the show that night?!) and wrote that Haley Scarnato could "become Season 6's breakthrough artist", so grain of salt and all that.

All is not lost with the Oakland Trib review, though ... at least their website has a slideshow of nice photos from the concert.

And then there's the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, which added a review after I made this initial post. And it just goes to show - different strokes for different folks. Unlike the Chronicle, this reviewer said Matt was "shockingly not-so-good" and included Kris in the "best" category along with Adam.

Here's how the Top 10 was categorized (Megan Joy wasn't included in this list because the reviewer earlier called her "obviously out of her league with this group"):

Shockingly good: Lil Rounds, Scott MacIntyre, Michael Sarver.
Shockingly not-so-good: Matt Giraud.
Not-so-shockingly what you’d expect: Anoop Desai, Danny Gokey, Allison Iraheta.
The best: Adam and Kris.