Everybody thought San Diego pop singer Adam Lambert was a shoe-in last week when the American Idol song contest whittled down to only him and a boyish guy from a little town in central Arkansas. In fact, international music mogul and critic, Simon Cowell was so confident that “his” contestant would win that he literally told everyone before a world-wide audience that Adam Lambert would be the next American Idol.
That just didn’t happen, however, and when the final votes came in, that cute, “boy next door” image, Kris Allen was chosen before hundreds of Kodak Theater screaming admirers – including members of his own family. Kris won on his brilliant final song, “No Boundaries” which may have partially tipped to voting scales in his favor, even though all the judges, especially Simon, thought that Adam’s rendition of
“A Change is Gonna Come” was better than the original by Sam Cook He also was brilliant with the old Cat Stevens classic “Mad World”.
But try as he might, he just didn’t get enough votes of the 100 million cast to win. Perhaps, due to Allen’s improvement over the past few weeks, plus his clean-cut, boyish personality (compared to Lampert’s smoother, more professional appearance) was enough to excite the millions of young girls between ages 12 and 16 who swooned when he came on the stage. His brief homecoming to Conway a couple of weeks before gave an indication that this 23 year old had the American Heartland in his pocket. But perhaps his versatility (he is also an excellent guitarist and concert pianist) also put something in his favor.
The evening was also full of guest stars, both musicians, and otherwise, which included British rock icon Rod Stewart, pop group Black Eyed Peas, and actor and comedian Steve Martin, who played the banjo.
At the end, Allen was so overwhelmed that show host Bryan Seacrest had to help support the new idol star, who sang again his winning song “No boundaries”.
The show isn’t over by far for second place finisher, Adam Lampert, however, as often people who don’t win first place wind up getting better recording and performing contracts. Examples of this are Jennifer Hudson and Carrie Underwood.
And let’s also not forget the coming summer Idol tour of the top ten, including Allen and Lampert as well as third place finisher Danny Goky.
Cowell went out of his way to tell both contestants that “your both winners, the future is yours!” Does that mean his record company is already preparing contracts?
What will happen when Israel’s Idol version, Kochav Nolad comes on in a few weeks will be anybody’s guess. But we’re sure that wanna-be contenders have been watching the American version to get some pointers.
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