idol thoughts #1

Familiar with the little girl in the shampoo TV ad? She is the flower girl who shrieked her heart (and lungs) out for her mommy when the ring bearer messed with her hair. Well, I did something similar to it when I first heard about Constantine Maroulis being voted out of American Idol last week.

I first noticed Constantine during the auditions. There was a feature on him, with Ryan Seacrest tagging along, breaking the news to his band mates that he is leaving their group to join search for the next American Idol. Understandably, his band mates weren’t exactly jumping joy. There were, I recall, some shouting and a bit of musical instruments banging around. Anyway, to cut this story short, America must have seen something in this Greek rocker because he was voted in to the Top 12 finalists of this season’s American Idol.

Week after week, Constantine charmed the audience with his velvety voice and, as Simon Cowell called it, smoldering look. I didn’t, for one second, think it would be possible for anyone to break the spell he had over America. Well, until last week that is.

Ok, so maybe, he’s more of a performer than a singer (I just can’t seem to stop hearing Randy Jackson’s voice in my head saying over and over again, "This is a singing contest.") but I don’t believe his fans mind at all. In fact, he was never in the group of three finalists with the least number of votes since the start of the competition. So, what went wrong?

Song choice? The six idol finalists were asked to choose among the songs released from the year 2000 up to the present and Constantine chose . Personally, I don’t dig rock music but Simon and Randy were right in saying that a true singer is somebody who can sing any kind of song and people would willingly listen to him/her.

Performance? I almost swoon over his rendition of ‘My Funny Valentine’ during the Musical week and I was literally in awe when he sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" for their Birth Year theme. Boy, this guy really owns the stage or what! But, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t feel any semblance of excitement in his performance last week. Hmmm…… Maybe it’s because I’m not familiar with the song after all or I was just plain scared of getting hit by his kicking all over the stage? Whatever the reason was, I still didn’t think it was possible he would be in the bottom three, much less be voted out. My goodness! Constantine Maroulis is one of the more, if not, most popular idol finalist this season. There’s no way his fans would not vote for him Actually, I was more concerned for Carrie Underwood last week but that’s a different story.

When American Idol host Ryan Seacrest gave a hint at the start of the result show that the person to leave the competition has a cumulative votes of 35 million, the possibility still didn’t cross my mind. Then, there were two groups, Carrie and Bo Bice, and Vonzell Solomon and Anthony Fedorov. Ryan asked the remaining finalists seated on the sofa, Constantine and Scott Savol, to choose the group where they want to be in. Both joined Carrie and Bo before Ryan announced them to be the top group and Constantine was in the wrong group.

I could feel the shock waves engulfing the studio. Constantine in the bottom 3? Unbelievable! But the worst is yet to come. After Ryan asked Vonzell to join Bo, Carrie and Scott, he dropped the bomb. Constantine is out of the competition.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Constantine!!!!!!!!" I couldn’t believe it then and I still wouldn’t believe it now. It really boggles the mind until this very minute how Constantine ended up with the least number of votes last week. One thing is for sure though, everything is possible in American Idol.