QuickDrop said:
If she didn't start it, McPhee certainly perfected the AI contestant using sex appeal to overcome her deficiencies. It's possible I'm confusing performances, but there something so Freudian about a woman in a low cut dress singing a song most people know from childhood while basically lying prone on stage.
First of all, what deficiencies are you referring to? I'm not suggesting she didn't have them, rather am just interested in hearing what you deem them to be.
Secondly, she was never lying down while singing the song. She was sitting on stage the first time she did it. Some opera singers manage to sing arias while lying down (for dramatic effect) but it is far from an ideal position to sing in and yields far from optimal results. Thirdly, if she was lying in a "prone" position as you say, that means lying face down which would complicate vocal projection even more
It's kinda funny that so many people lapped it up. Though really, good for her. I think she wanted to be an actress more than a singer anyway and she certainly acted her way into the final two.
Sounds like you were never a fan
She had strenths and weaknesses like everyone else inside and outside the show.
As for Archuleta, his neutering of Imagine definitely came from an intellectual angle. Randy Jackson actually called him on it the first time he performed it.
If he was neutering the song for moral reasons then it came from a moral angle. If he was neutering the song for political reasons then it came from a political angle. Either way I doubt it came from David. More likely from whomever he consulted on song choice etc. Maybe his father? He certainly had a reputation of being a, shall we say, keenly interested party. David was only, what, 17 years old at the time. Seems unlikely that his major goal was to sublimate, neutralize, or commoditize John Lennon's left-wing politics. I think a better word for David would be
guileless and there's certainly no crime in that for a teenager.
Imagine, though, is a strange song in our culture. It's probably one of the few songs that have become a "standard" during the rock era of pop music and is widely beloved here in a country that is probably the most dogmatically Christian and capitalistic in the world, yet the whole point of the song is how great an atheistic communist utopia would be. For me, what made John Lennon solo career interesting was he married very personal or political lyrics to a 1950s era rock n' roll sound to show that musically "rocking out" didn't necessarily mean singing vapid lyrics.
Yes, most of us knew all that. It also has a soft, lyrical melody which is as easy on the ears as the politics are hard on the ears.
If he didn't like what the song said he should have found a song with lyrics he was more comfortable with.
Most songs on A.I. are truncated anyway. Why not edit out the politics and focus on the beautiful melody and longing sentiment? Most people don't want to be beat over the head by politics in art anyway except those who share in the political mission (for, in this case, an atheistic, communist utopia). Needless to say, most American Idol viewers are not on that mission.
Last year, Brooke White, who adheres to the same religion as Archuleta and seemed to be personally very religious, said in interviews that there were songs she wanted to perform but after reading the lyrics realize she couldn't because they conflicted too much with her belief system, which I consider a much more honest approach than Archuleta ignoring the majority of Imagine.
Ok, but as I say, lots of songs get trimmed for A.I. performance. The version David sang skipped over Lennon's political message, true, but we don't know that David is the one who
crafted the
lite version. He sang Lennon (politics) lite but the music itself was not changed so far as I know. The convergence is that Arch gave it the same yearning, longing simplicity that Lennon did without the politics. If that's "intellectually neutering" the song then so be it, but we still don't know it was David's idea.
Of course, his performance probably helped to sell Lennon's original to people who might not otherwise have bought it. And there is something very subversive in turning an anti-religion song into a hymn (I might be the first ever to call David Archuleta "subversive.")...
Ah ha! Yes, that was probably David A's real intention, to subvert and bring about the fall of World Capitalism!
What an evil genius David Archuletta was! :lol: