Last Night’s ‘American Idol’ Results Has Fans Up in Arms For a Reason You Might Not Expect
ABC Reading Time: 3 minutes
On last night’s episode of American Idol, six became four…and then five.
Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon and Laci Kaye Booth were the bottom two vote-getters in this week’s live vote, but this episode was also the last chance for the judges to use their “save” to keep an eliminated contestant in the competition. They ultimately used it on Laci, leaving Jeremiah as the sole elimination of the evening. And fans are NOT happy about it.
The weird thing about this isn’t that fans are upset, it’s who they’re directing their outrage at. While the save was between Jeremiah and Laci, meaning the whoever out of those two didn’t get it would have to be the one leaving the competition, Laci seems to have generally avoided being the target of the backlash over Jeremiah’s elimination..
American Idol Judges got it wrong. Jeremiah should NEVER have gone home. It should have been Wade!
— Pic Kirk (@pickirk2) May 6, 2019
Yes, it’s Wade Cota who the fans have mainly been directing their grievances towards, just as they’ve been doing every week. Wade has yet to be one of the bottom vote-getters, so he obviously he’s obviously a favorite of many viewers, but he definitely seems to be the least favorite of a lot of people who have been supporting the other contestants.
But what is it about Wade that makes him specifically targeted to this level? The most common answer seems to be his singing voice. He’s not as strong technically as a lot of the other contestants – both eliminated and remaining – and while there’s clearly a market for singers with his type of raspy voice (Rod Stewart, anyone?) it definitely doesn’t have the same kind of widespread appeal as, say, some former winners; even though the genre country music doesn’t appeal to all people, pretty much everyone can at least agree Carrie Underwood has a great voice. The same can’t be said for Wade.
There’s been a lot of debate over whether American Idol should be “rewarding” contestants for being the strongest vocalists of their season or being the best overall artists and performers, even if their voices are weaker and/or has less universal appeal than those of some of their competitors. There really is no clear answer for this, but when there’s been this much backlash over the overall results of a season, it may be time for the producers (and in this case, the network) to rethink the voting method.
Yes, I’m back on that again. Is it any wonder the show is seeing results like these when half the country is being deprived of the ability to develop an informed opinion before voting and those who are able to aren’t being given time to digest the performances they’ve seen to them before the window closes and the results are announced?
Between the live voting and the judges not really giving much for anyone to take away and work on, there really isn’t enough emphasis on the progression of the contestants as singers, performers, and artists. It feels like people have been voting based on old performances, including stuff we saw before the live shows even started. And if that’s what the results are going to be based on, is there even a point in continuing to have the contestants do all of that rehearsing every week to take on new challenges that aren’t even going to impact the voting?
