Spring Showers and American Idol

First, a quick promo mention: Samhain and Coffee Time Romance are sponsoring a terrific "Spring Showers" Event that will last nearly a month...excerpts by Samhain authors and chances to win prizes! Yes, I'm participating, and even better: you'll get to see some excerpts from One Night in Memphis, my novel that's releasing with them in July. It doesn't start until next week, but mark your calendars...and I'll remind you as well...

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Well, I tried it again this year. I tried to watch American Idol. I will admit that I watched, enraptured, for the first 4 seasons. After that it seemed to get *so* staged, and so overly dramatic, that I lost interest. I'm also quite suspicious that as much as they claim "America votes" and picks the winner, really, the producers of the show decide who the winner will be.

Anyway, I gave it a shot and watched both the Top 10 Men (Tuesday night) and the Top 10 Women (last night). My thoughts? Without having seen anything else of the hype leading up to it, I thought the men overall were better - and more notable. The women seemed to be mostly carbon copies, either of each other or of other singers. There were also some really rough notes for many of the women. (Hubby walked through the room at one point and said, "Is someone strangling cats in here??")

If I had to pick, I'd say David Cook singing "Hello" (in a very cool modern version) and Jason Castro singing "Hallelujah" were the best of the men, and Amanda Overmyer singing "Hate Myself for Loving You" and Brooke White singing "Love is a Battlefield" were the best of the women. But who knows? It's so much about popularity and the sad story behind the face, and who AI producers think they need this year.

Anyone else watching it this season? Anyone else have an opinion?