'Idol' Speculation

After months of watching the tryouts, then the Hollywood round, the the Top 24, 20, 16 and finally the top 12, “American Idol” is now finally down to its final two contestants.

We here at Idol Speculation won’t recap all the action tonight, because chances are you watched the show and saw everything for yourself, so we’ll handicap the final two contestants and try to figure out who should, and will, win the season 7 “American Idol” crown.

We’ll start be saying that tonight’s resut was somewhat anticlamactic, as Syesha Mercado was ousted — for several weeks now it has looked more and more like it was going to be a David Cook and David Archulta final, and now we’ve got it.

So  what we have in Tuesday’s showdown is the rocker (Cook) vs. the teen idol (Archuleta). Here is a look at the breakdown

Cook
Strengths: Willing to take chances (often changes the arrangements of well known songs to suit his style), plays guitar (shows he’s not just a singer, but a musician), and is a versatile vocal stylist (can sing a slow burning post-grunge-style version of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” then pull off a close to the cuff version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ”The Music of the Night”).
Weaknesses:  Can tend to sound like he went to the Eddie Vedder/Scott Stapp school of singing, tends to stand in one place and doesn’t use the whole stage.

Archuleta
Strengths: At 17 is remarkably poised performer, has arguably the prettiest voice of all the season 7 contestants, has a huge teen voting fanbase and a likable “aw shucks” personality.
Weaknesses: Can be rattled (he forgot the lyrics to The  Beatles’ ”We Can Work it Out”) and reportedly has a ”stage dad” who may be putting too much pressure on the teenager (his father Jeff has been banned from “American Idol” rehearsals).

Idol Speculation predicted a few weeks ago that David Cook will be the winner, but there is no way to guess, barring Cook or Archuleta completely melting down on Tuesday, how America will vote.

Both will have good careers, but here is why we at Idol Speculation think Cook, whether he wins “American Idol” next Wednesday or not, will have the bigger career: broader appeal.

We can see Cook making a rock record a la ”Idol” alum Chris Daughtry that will appeal to the wide-ranging “Idol”  demographic as well as fans of hard rock and alt-rock.

Archuleta’s fanbase may be relegated to the wide-ranging “Idol”  demographic and, if he’s marketed that way, to teens and “tweens” into “High School Musical.” He’ll sell a lot of records, but it’s hard to see the sweet-natured good kid from Utah pulling in the over-25 rock demographic that Cook will.

So, all that’s left to do now is tune in on Tuesday for the final performances from Cook and Archuleta, then visit the Idol Speculation blog to get the analysis of what went down.   

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.