Too Strong for Too Long
The inevitable American Idol article.
written by Emily featuring B on May 30, 2025

April:

"No, seriously, I think an ‘American Idol’ post could be really funny. I know not everybody would be familiar enough with the show to get all of the jokes, but isn’t that always the case, with anything we write?" You don’t want to do it NOW. The season is half over. At this point people would just feel like they were coming into the middle of something that may have been funny if they’d any idea what you were talking about. "Hmph."

May 24, 2006. Five minutes after the ‘American Idol’ finale has gone off the air:

"Fuck it, I absolutely HAVE to write about this glorious train wreck." Yeah, you’re right. 

I’m not going to bother with explaining the concept of American Idol, because you all know it. Even you commie elitist fucks who claim you don’t watch TV know what American Idol is. There are children in Rwanda living in constant fear of gunfire who, if prompted, could tell you why Justin Guarini was once culturally relevant. I’ll skip the history lesson. Let’s just move right on to the fromage.

The fifth season of American Idol was said to have produced the most talented top 12 of any season thus far. Granted, that’s kind of like saying the strawberries you bought at Kroger’s this past winter were better than previous winters: it might be true, but the strawberries were still pretty weak. Anyway, 12 young people ages 16-29 were plucked out of their normal circumstances and thrust into our living rooms for the nation’s favorite dog-and-pony show. Let’s meet the goats.

Melissa McGhee

Introductory haiku:

First one voted off.
Can’t remember the lyrics.
Face like a stripper.

Date voted off: March 15
Performance style: The most talented singer at the county fair.
Why she wasn’t going to win: Melissa had a deep smoky voice, which AI never knows how to handle in it’s female contestants. But fans of the show just couldn’t jive with that vibe Melissa gives off where you kinda know she’s given someone in hand job in a grocery store parking lot somewhere.

Introductory haiku:

Hey, Chicken Little!
I’ll bet this show got him some
mondo teen pussy.

Date voted off: March 22
Performance style: A really decent voice housed in a 16 year-old "I’m in the jazz choir!" package.
Why he wasn’t going to win: Kevin was always a bit of a joke. He wasn’t a bad singer, really. But he was a teenage talent show singer who got by on being an adorably dorky novelty act. And though Kevin was all too willing to go along with the joke (like on Stevie Wonder night when he decided to sing "Part Time Lover" with ZERO irony), it was really for the best that Kevin got booted before we all started to hate him.

Lisa Tucker

Introductory haiku:

So talented but
when she sings all you see are
Soviet eyebrows.

Date voted off: March 29
Performance style: Singing robot.
Why she wasn’t going to win: Lisa, despite being one of the youngest contestants, was ridiculously poised and polished. Her downfall was that she couldn’t bring herself to sing anything not on the Rhino records release, "Song for your Grandma." And while it’s awesome that at 16 years old she can do a show-stopping Jennifer Holliday cover. . .who the fuck is Jennifer Holliday? I know, right? Exactly. When she finally did try to sing something modern (choosing to sing a Kelly Clarkson song, oops), it turned out that she. . .just wasn’t that good. Furthermore, and I can’t stress this enough, it’s incredibly disconcerting to watch a lovely young girl sing and be fixated on her version of The People’s Eyebrow.

Introductory haiku:

Learned her lesson that
You don’t fuck around with the
Velvet Mafia.

Date voted off: April 5
Performance style: Better. Than. Everyone.
Why she wasn’t going to win: Because America is horrible. Also, because on a show like American Idol, you pretty much have to cater either the tween power vote, or the housewife vote. But when you’re a plus-sized belty diva type whose pushing thirty and only goes by one name, who is your audience going to be? Why, gay men, naturally. So if this is your fan base, choosing to sing a contemporary Christian song and specifically pointing out that a person’s "lifestyle" is not as important as God is. . .well, that’s going to get you voted off way too early. Good luck with the Kirk Franklin shit, though.

Bucky Covington

Introductory haiku:

Growly Southern rock.
Seems like a nice enough guy,
but may have head lice.

Date voted off: April 12
Performance style: Boomhauer.
Why he wasn’t going to win: One of the guys who do recaps of AI over at Television Without Pity (another reason I hesitated to write this post, they’ve pretty much made every joke I could and then some) once commented that, while Bucky isn’t a bad singer at all, he always seems like he’d be much more comfortable singing in the type of venue where there would be a beer waiting for him at the bar when he’s done. Bo Bice’s success in the competition ensured that this year we’d have at least one long haired Stillwater type, and Bucky was it. Lightening doesn’t strike twice, however, especially not when you’re Bucky and all of your songs sound like, "ItellyouwhatmanthatdangolAllmanBrothersdaswhatdisisItellyouwhat."

Ace Young

Introductory haiku:

Boy band charisma.
Seemed like the total package.
Crest Advanced White Strips.

Date voted off: April 19
Performance style: Bullshit Top 40 posturing.
Why he wasn’t going to win: Really, Ace seemed like the obvious choice to win. He’s a very pretty man (every guest artist on the show, from Barry Manilow to Kenny Rogers, fawned over him), completely generically likable, and he spoke in vague niceties about how he just wants to make babies and puppies smile or some shit. So what was the problem? Well he. ..what am I trying to say here? He wasn’t very good at singing. That’s it.

Kellie Pickler

Introductory haiku:

Big tittied blonde girl.
Stupid as a box of hair.
Calamari, what?

Date voted off: April 26
Performance style: Hillbilly karaoke.
Why she wasn’t going to win: If Bucky was the faux-Bice, Kellie was the faux-Carrie. The success of last year’s winner in the country music genre proved that there is a lot of field to plow there, and Kellie was the perfect ho. Kellie could not only sing (kinda) but she also came prepackaged with a "My daddy’s in jail" sob story. And she was kind of a looker, to boot. Only in the way where she’d be way prettier if someone had loved her more. Fortunately (for the viewers and Kellie, I think), by about mid-season Kellie had gotten tired of having to perform every week while carrying around her 87 pounds of stupid (at one point Simon Cowell referred to her as a "minx" and she accused him of calling her a coat), and was clearly ready to go home. Thankfully the voters granted her wish before she had to resort to drawing faces on her stomach to make her belly button talk, or accompanying her songs with armpit farts.

Paris Bennett

Introductory haiku:

How is she this good?
Ella, Lena, Aretha.
In a tiny girl.

Date voted off: May 3
Performance style: Anything you wanted her to be. Paris could sing anything, in any way. She was like the movie, "Little Voice," only sometimes she would sing Beyonce. And this one time she did some krumping, and it was FUCKING AWESOME.
Why she wasn’t going to win: It sounds lame, but Paris was almost too good. To make it into the top 5 on American Idol you have to be, on some level, an asshole. There just isn’t a way around it. Why else would you be there? And American likes their assholes in neat little boxes they can put on a shelf. Paris had the asshole part down (she was so polite as to be completely smug right up until they voted her off), but she had trouble finding her box. She would sing a bluesy standard and you’d think, "okay, retro soul singer," then she’d sing a loud Streisand song and you’d say, "well, all right, belty diva." Then she sang that new Mary J. Blige song and everyone went, "that was cool and all, but we’re done. Peace out." Not winning this show was the best possible thing that could’ve happened to Paris, really, ‘cause now she can go forward and perform any type (or all types) of music that she likes, on her own terms. But in the context of this competition, her unwillingness to accept one adjective and run with it ultimately killed her.

Chris Daughtry

Introductory haiku:

An ‘Idol’ shocker!
Chris, voted out number four!
Boring ‘alt’ rocker.

Date voted off: May 10
Performance style: Late 90’s wallet chain throwback.
Why he wasn’t going to win: During the media blitz in the days following Chris’ "shocking" early departure from the show (and by "shocking" I mean "seems to happen every year"), Daughtry went out of his way to not only make himself look like the biggest ungrateful douche in the universe (sorry, John Edwards), he also made it clear that his not winning the show was based on voter complacency. Not the idea that people might have enjoyed a different performance more, no, it was definitely that HIS fans didn’t vote enough. At first I thought this was true, because I totally thought Chris would win the entire thing, too. But then when I thought about it, Chris just wasn’t trying very hard by the time he left the show. His best performance had happened in the second week of competition (when he sang that Fuel song with the chorus that goes, "BLEE BLAH BLEE BLEH IN MY HAAANDS, IN MY HANDS AGAAAAAIN.") and he’d been coasting ever since. So, note to future "rocker" contestants: either keep your one-note performances fresh and exciting, or, if you do get voted off, make sure to practice the non-committal pageant answers so you don’t wind up in Entertainment Weekly sounding like a butt wipe.

Oh, and while I still think Chris is a super hottie and would like to touch his big bald head in a sex-type way, if anyone would like to see the real life definition of "smug bastard," try to get a look at Chris receiving the news that he’s been voted off. His expression is really priceless. I wanted to link the video, but YouTube failed me.

Elliott Yamin

Introductory haiku:

Tiny Elliott:
Cutest troll under the bridge.
Diabetic, deaf.

Date voted off: May 17
Performance style: Blue-eyed soul crossbred with extreme nervousness.
Why he wasn’t going to win: Now, Elliott was my favorite, I adored him. So I certainly don’t want to come across like a bitch, but. . .look at him. In fairness, he didn’t always look as. . .Amish as that picture would lead you to believe. By the end of the show the stylists had made him into a pretty adorable little hobgoblin. Still, he’s like 5 foot nothing, he wears an insulin pump, he’s deaf in one ear, and he always seemed to be crying. Combine that with the fact that he was so nervous during every performance that he looked like Bruce Davison after he’d been turned into a mutant, and he was just an ad wizard’s nightmare. This does not, however, change the fact that his voice makes me ridiculously happy and I want to give him hugs forever.

Katharine McPhee

Introductory haiku:

In her opened blouse
she holds five years of Drama
and a decent voice.

Date voted off: May 24
Performance style: Natural talent with complete lack of sincerity.
Why she wasn’t going to win: Because she needed it less than anybody else on the show. Bucky needed it more and he could barely walk upright. Katharine is young, beautiful, talented, rich, and living in Southern California already. Her reaction when she didn't win? It was OH WELL GREAT HONOR TO BE HERE HEE HEE! Katharine just don't give a fuck.

Taylor Hicks

Introductory haiku:

Gray haired number one.
Bastard son of Joe Cocker.
"Twenty nine" years old.

Date voted off: N/A, he won the fucker.
Performance style: Cruise ship schadenfreude.
Why he was clearly going to win: America loves an underdog. They especially love an underdog that’s 48 years old, dances around like your drunk Uncle Lester at a bar mitzvah, and was told specifically by the show’s evil puppet master Simon Cowell that he had zero chance of winning. Don’t get me wrong, I think Taylor is a pretty talented guy. When he’s not doing his frat guy at Mardi Gras dance, he’s got a really beautiful voice. But do I think the people who voted for him want to see him standing behind a mic sweetly singing a ballad? No, they voted for him so he could wind up on the Today show doing the white man boogie and singing , "Crocodile Rock." It’s been said a lot of times this year, but America gets the Idol we deserve. Lord help us, we fucking deserve Taylor Hicks.

So. . .now that everyone is at least partially familiar with American Idol and it’s parade of assholes, lets get to the fun stuff: the finale! American Idol finales are, typically, two bloated hours of all the participants and Ryan Seacrest patting themselves on the back and singing medleys. This particular finale had all of that, plus a handful of random guest stars, PLUS ridiculous filler! It really did make me happier than any other two hours of television in recent memory.

Ten things that made the American Idol finale great, in random order:

*Mean-spirited producers and famewhore rejects!

Like I mentioned before, the one thing that defines AI finales is their ability to stuff the show to the hilt with crappy filler nobody cared about. This year, they did it with a gimmick: a fake award they called the "Golden Idol." The awards were handed out over the course of two hours, and were really just an excuse to bring back scary audition people and make fun of them some more, but live this time. The one exception to this was the award they gave to Elliott’s mom for being. . .I don’t know, a good mom, I guess. Really, I think they just wanted to acknowledge that she had been there for every show, cheering on her soon, being proud, and looking kinda close to death.

Aside from the nice award, they also awarded a crazy guy named Dave Hooper, who was actually selected for the second round of auditions, only to flip out in Hollywood, jumping onto the judge’s table and making them afraid. When Seacrest announced his name they tried to act like he wasn’t actually there, but then all of the sudden there he was, frightening as ever. He came tearing out onto the stage and was so excited that he ran right off and face-planted into the front row. Luckily, all the coke in his system had rendered his entire head completely numb, so he just climbed back onstage to act a fool some more. The best part was that he was barefoot, more than likely because the producers had taken away anything he might use to hurt himself.

After that, they gave an award to a creature named "Rhonetta." Now. . .do I describe Rhonetta? She auditioned for the show, and was terrible, natch. She then spent 20 minutes or so on camera cussing the judges and their bad decision. I think at some point she declared that Paula Abdul didn’t have the moves that she has. Anyway, at the audition Rhonetta had on a blonde wig, little white skirt, go-go boots and a silver tube top. And like, you know how sometimes at Wal-mart or like, standing in line for the tilt-a-whirl you’ll see a woman who has NO business wearing a tube top, so not only is the fabric straining to keep her tits reigned in, but one of them is also hanging lower than the other? Visualize that.

The best/worst part is that the woman they gave the award to wasn’t even really Rhonetta. They just stuck a random black chick in the same outfit and assumed no one would notice. Though really, I doubt many people did.

Finally, they gave a fake award to a group of guys from auditions that they dubbed the "Brokenote Cowboys." Because if there is nothing else we’ve learned in the last year, adding the word "broke" to anything involving the west equals high comedy. The Brokenote Cowboys consist of a funny little guy named Garret (who looks about 15 and actually wears a neckerchief. Garret has that sort of William Hung appeal, where he’s cute to laugh at for about a minute, then when other people keep laughing you just start to feel sort of bad about life and want to hug the kid and take him back to his house), a hunky guy named Mathew Buckstein who sings in an exaggerated faux-twang, and Michael Evans, a black man that somebody told to wear a cowboy hat.

Anyway, the three guys come out after being given a fake award for "best male bonding" or some other stupid bullshit (you know, ‘cause they’re cowboys. So they’re GAAAAY). They do a quick cover of "Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys" and then split before I can start to feel bad for any of them. All in all, fairly harmless. These awards, however, were nothing in comparison to the penultimate Golden Idol, this one involving. . .

*The melted visage of Clay Aiken.

Okay. Okay okay okay. So they make up this award, right? And they call it "Best Impersonation." And they give the award to the ferrety little gay boy named Daniel Standecki, who is very obviously rocking the Clay vibe: gelled hair, pointy features, cute little glasses. He even kind of speaks like Clay. He does not, however, sing like Clay.

In fact, during his audition, he announced that he wasn’t doing a very good job because he was nervous and "really had to pee." So the judges actually let him go pee. It didn’t help. Despite this, they give the poor guy his pretend award and then ask him to sing a song. So there he stands, an American Idol reject standing in the Kodak theater, where they hand out the Oscars, trying to sing "Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me." It’s surreal and awful, but he gets about a verse in before the stage opens up behind him and out walks the real Clay, of course. You wouldn’t know it at first though, because Aiken for some reason looks like this:

Choose Your Own Joke Obscurity

Low: K.D. Lang
Elevated: My Claymical Romance
High: Paul Reubens as The Spleen
Severe: Sandy Frink

Seriously, what happened to his face? Was he always that smooth? His little fan, naturally, goes completely ape shit, yet awesomely just keeps singing along with him. Eventually Seacrest has to bring him a stool, both so he can avoid crapping his pants on stage, and also so he’ll let Clay sing. It was an incredibly sweet moment, and yet so. . .sad to watch, for all parties involved.

*Retrospective on Fun Time Had at American Idol Brings Tears, Confusion

Because American Idol so loves their goddamn skits, the finale featured Taylor and Katharine heading to an abandoned drive-in to watch a video package of the year's finest, including:

Chris Daughtry being thuggish ruggish...

...Katharine making Kermit the Frog horny...

...and Taylor pausing his ongoing Layman's Tom Waits impression for five seconds to impersonate a parrot.

These memories are too much for old Taylor, and he begins to cry. D'aw. Then he staged a series of diamond robberies in Gotham City to perserve those memories.

*Mary and Elliott

All of the top five finalists got to sing a duet with "their American Idol." We’ll get to some of the scarier entries in a minute, but I have a really hard time believing these are actually the people that the finalists wanted to perform with. Okay, Paris sang a duet with old-ass Al Jareau, that makes sense.

Ladies and gentlemen, Al Jareau's penis!

But I can’t imagine Elliott, he who had to be forced kicking and screaming to sing anything recorded after 1980, would choose Mary J. Blige to sing with. More likely I think the producers could GET Mary, and they just disregarded that Elliott is tiny and fragile and could easily be eaten by Mary J. Blige right there on stage. It almost happened. They performed a duet of the song "One" by U2, Elliott started off alone on the stage singing wonderfully as he always did. Then Mary comes out and it’s just all over for him. She moves to the center of the stage to diva the rest of the song by herself, while E stands off to the side waving his arms over his head not knowing what to do. Finally she pulls him over and grabs his hand.

He mistakenly thinks that it’s time to sing again, but no, she’s going to finish this one up solo, while he stands there grinning like a goof. They sounded great together, the three seconds she let him sing, but it really put into perspective what a non-entity Elliott is as a performer. He’s the little frog from "Spirited Away," and Mary totally No-Faced him. It was kind of amazing, actually.

*Meatloaf’s Palsy.

Less amazing was Kat’s duet, singing "It’s All Coming Back to Me Now" with Meatloaf.

When he walked out on stage both of my parents visibly shivered, like someone had walked over their graves. And, again, I know that Whitney is a lovable crackhead now, and therefore unavailable, but we’re supposed to buy that Kat chose MEATLOAF? Last year at the finale Carrie got to sing with Rascal Flatts. Which, like, whatever, but at least they’re relevant and a band she’d previously copped to being a big fan of. But like, what can you say aside from typing MEATLOAF in all caps over and over, increasingly more confused.

There’s not much I can say about the performance itself. Well, okay, there is plenty, because it really wasn’t good. Kat does her best with her side, making what appear to be exaggerated drama faces through the whole song to convey that it actually IS coming back to her now. But look at the picture above and I think it’s clear that what he’s actually conveying is a fear that Mr. Aday is going to eat her. Meat, for his part, is just terrible. I was worried for his health. His hand was shaking really badly when he started to sing and I thought that maybe he’s got Parkinson’s now or something. There is so much mean I could say about it, but I read just this morning that he apparently gets awful stage fright, and after the performance went backstage and burst into tears because he sounded so bad. So I just can’t make fun of Bitch Tits knowing that.

*Carrie Underwood - The Prototype.

Carrie Underwood is a robot. No, seriously. She was Clockworked Orange and now her head can flip open to unleash missile attacks. When she was on American Idol barely a year ago she was a bland, normal blonde girl and 365-ish days later she's a Dolly-haired, still-standing hip-smacker in the mold of the countless Lee Ann Womacks and LeeAnn Rimeses before her. She's almost chillingly competent, avoiding the cracks and whistles that made her a game show contestant by staring forward, darkly, and praising Him.

On the finale Carrie sang two songs. The first one was the Manilow Ode to Dreamers that gets sung every 2 1/2 shows, and the second, only moments before she was doused with blood from the rafters, was "Don't Forget to Remember Me." That song, as you may know, is about blah blah blah country music blah blah farrrrttttt.

American Idols eventually become those monsters in the tombs in Zelda who walk really slowly until you get up next to them, then howl and jump on you. They're successful, yeah, but then that's really all they are. Ruben and Fantasia and Justin Guarini and Claiken are just kind of standing around in popular culture, waiting for somebody to walk by so they can go REEEEAAAAAAH and latch on. REEEEAHHH I'M RUBEN STUDDARD LOOK AT MY AREA CODE JERSEY DON'T YOU REMEMBER YOU TOLD ME YOU'D LOVE ME BAY BAY, and then you're dead. All of your hearts into Ruben's belly.

Look at Carrie's hair. It looks like the air in church.

*Burt Bacharach makes everything better.

. . .he really does. They seem to roll him out every year. He walks out and you think, "oh god the half-decayed corpse of Burt Bacharach."

And he sits at his little piano and he smiles his dead smile, and you just couldn’t care any less. Then he starts to play, and people start to sing, and you remember that Burt Bacharach has written every good song, ever. For this medley, one of three medleys the assholes performed in the stretch of a two-hour show, all the girls are wearing pretty red dressed and pounds of whore diamonds from the Paula Abdul QVC jewelry line, and all the guys have on tuxes, but in the way where there’s no tie and the shirt is unbuttoned, so they look like Prom is almost over. And now, a mini list in the middle of the major list, all the great things about the Burt Bacharach medley:

*Mandisa getting a solo on "I Say A Little Prayer," but not actually singing the line, "I say a little prayer for you," because it would dishonor God, or something.

*Lisa Tucker singing a sweet little version of "Alfie," but looking, as always, like she wants to kill me for beating her hockey team in the 1980 Olympics.

*Kevin Covais singing, "What’s New, Pussycat?" I want all of you ladies to imagine a lisping 85 lb 16 year-old singing about your "sweet little pussycat lips." Then go wash yourself with lava soap.

*Chris Daughtry doing his damndest to emote while singing "Arthur’s Theme," but only managing the uber-intense death stare he sings everything else with. Dudley Moore’s alcoholism was never less funny.

*Dionne Warwick being rolled out of cold storage to sing "That’s What Friends Are For" while clearly hating everyone she‘s singing with.

*MOTHERFUCKING PRINCE

So SeacrestDSV gives out another award for BEST PERSON TO DID MAKING FUN OF, and that's the end of the show. Time for the results portion, time to find out who is YOUR (pause) a-MER-ican idol.

BUT WAIT THE STAGE OPENS UP AND THE MOTHERSHIP KNOWN AS MOTHERFUCKING PRINCE WALKS OUT LIKE AN EGYPTIAN TO ENTERTAIN HIS PEOPLES. I have decided after a deep scientific study that Prince is the coolest motherfucker on the entire planet.

Without any introduction or warning, Prince just shows up and IS PRINCE, the last surviving black person in Minnesota, doing his antiquated hand-jives and Darling Nikki falsetto owwws, and it is incredible. Absolutely incredible. Nobody on Earth should enjoy Prince being Prince, but he's just SO confident and SO arrogant and SO sure that what he is doing is cool you are forced to believe it as well.

When he whips out a comb (!!!) to comb his hair in the middle of a performance you should be cackling and mocking him, but you CAN'T, because his Mexi-stache emits PHEROMONES and you are too busy fucking your television.

The best part is that immediately after his song, Prince stands for a moment smugly, then turns and walks backstage before Ryan makes it over, cockblocking Seacrest's obvious desire to Seacreast all over him. Then Prince is gone, and it's like "okay, do you want the bitchy singer chick from your high school or the goofy lounge lizard 0.2 Joe Cocker to perform." It's like choosing between dirt and stinky dirt.

PRINCE~! symbol symbol

*Ed Kowalczyk discovers his reflection.

Jesus, I really can hear the dolphin’s cry.

*Toni Braxton’s Vagina and the fear of death.

Okay, so in the history of this show, one of the better decisions that it’s ever made was to have drunk old bloated Taylor Hicks sing "In the Ghetto," a song in which drunk old bloated Elvis sang about how sad it was when black people are born poor, or something. So. . . You’ve done that, what is the next step?

Obviously, you have him sing it again, only this time you bring out Toni Braxton, whose voice has gotten so low that you can barely hear her sing. So you put her in a slinky teddy that almost shows off her C U Next Tuesday, and you have her rub herself against Taylor’s crotch until he gets freaked out and runs away.

Because I don’t know about you, but when I think about a cloudy gray Chicago morn, my best means of expressing how tragic poverty is is to put my inner and outer labia onto a stranger. Actually, that’s my reaction to most situations. I’m a naughty little coat.

*Mitch Buchannon cries for no one.

Okay, so they announce the winner, Taylor dances around like a shithead, Katharine is disingenuously polite about losing, there’s a gospel choir and blahdy blahdy blah. Then, for absolutely no reason, it cuts to a shot of David Fucking Hasselhoff out in the audience, and dude is CRYING. And not like, I find these events moving and I’ve gotten a little puddly, like rapturous joy crying. He is SO HAPPY. And it only last for like a second, but it’s like when Janet’s boob popped out on the superbowl. You only saw it for a second, but all of the sudden your life is different. You’re left sitting on the couch thinking, "did I seriously just see that? The hell?" Suddenly everything that came before was rendered completely irrelevant.

And that’s what it comes down to, really. David Hasselhoff cries. In the ghetto.





. . .in the ghettoooooo.