Watching the “American Idol” finale, all 127 minutes of fluff-packed filler, a casual viewer might be forgiven for assuming Ryan Seacrest announced the winner first, instead of in the last few minutes.
That’s because it was Adam Lambert’s show. In between appearances by contestants and auditioners we’d thankfully forgotten, such as Norman Gentle, Kris Allen did a duet with Keith Urban.
Adam Lambert, however, performed a duet with KISS, and after the curtain flew away, the stage transformed into an explosion of pyro and lights. It was a signature Adam
performance: over-the-top, loud and in your face.
Later, for their final song, Kris and Adam performed a duet, singing “We are the Champions.” Queen joined them, and at times it seemed as if Kris just left the stage, with Adam’s voice and stage presence dominating.
As so many “Idol” evenings have been this spring, it was Adam Lambert’s night.
So it was at least a little surprising when, in the final few moments, Ryan Seacrest announced that Kris Allen was the actual winner. Even Seacrest pointed out that it was a surprise, saying that “the underdog, the dark horse, comes back and wins the nation over.”
The look on Kris’ face suggested he was surprised, too. “Are you freakin’ serious?” he said, adding, “Adam deserves this.”
Check your conspiracy theories at the door
Kris’ victory, however, is not an upset, and shouldn’t have surprised him. It is not absolute evidence of a conspiracy or bigotry on behalf of bigoted anti-Adam voters, even if there were, tragically, some of those.
Certainly, many arguments will be made in the next few days about how it was possible that Kris Allen, despite being an extremely strong singer — especially in the last few weeks — could have beaten Adam Lambert, who was clearly the favorite all season long. The judges loved Adam, the studio audience loved him, and the producers seemed to love him, frequently giving him the pimp spot and otherwise not-so-subtly favoring him.
Promoting him certainly made sense for the aging reality show, and was deserved, because Adam was a contestant and performer unlike the show has ever seen. He may scream and he may not sing everyone’s favorite type of music, but he owned the stage and each and every performance. More importantly, he made every song his own, as the judges often beg contestants to do; finally, in Adam, they had a living example of what they were talking about for all these years.
Adam Lambert fans don’t need to fret; not being the winner may actually work in his favor. For starters, he doesn’t have to release that melody-less song “No Boundaries” as his first single. Whatever success he would have had as the winner will come to him now, and he may even get more attention because of the perceived upset.
All the evidence one needs to realize that Adam was never a lock to win came three weeks ago, the night Matt Giraud was eliminated.
On their way to the final two, both Adam and Kris found themselves in the bottom three only once, and they were there together, on that night. In other words, neither was even close to being the front-runner that week.
Did the Gokey voters switch to Kris?
There’s plenty of similar examples, starting with the fact that last week, just one million votes separated Kris and Adam. That was the week that Danny Gokey was eliminated, and if you’d bet back in January or February that Kris would beat Danny, never mind win the competition, you would have been an idiot.
Danny Gokey was an early favorite, and look where he was during the finale: he had no chance of winning, and instead was singing awful group numbers with musical guests who probably couldn’t believe that they were being forced to perform with the “American Idol” finalists.
A similar outcome happened last season, too, although on a less epic scale, when presumed favorite David Archuleta lost. The night before the finale, Simon Cowell all but declared Archuleta would win, since he performed better than David Cook. In addition, little Archie even had the teenage girl vote, the conventional wisdom said.
But that wasn’t accurate, as both Davids found out one year ago.
Figuring out why people vote or who they’re going to vote for is nearly impossible, especially with nearly 100 million votes coming in Tuesday night alone. And interest in a contestant — Adam Lambert got lots of press, especially for his not-so-ambiguous sexuality — doesn’t necessarily translate to votes. A person can Google a contestant or even download their songs on iTunes without ever picking up the phone to vote, especially if they presume that person is a lock to win and therefore doesn’t need their vote.
Ultimately, “American Idol” is never quite what it seems, and one of the reasons why it’s the No. 1 show in the country, is its ability to surprise — and viewers’ ability to surprise themselves.
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