"Ellen Degeneres debuts on 'American Idol.'"

By Bob Zerull

America’s favorite show is back. This is the 9th season of “American Idol.” This will also be the first season without Paula Abdul as one of the judges. Back are Randy Jackson, Kara Dioguardi and Simon Cowell; however this is the last season for Cowell. Joining Randy, Kara and Simon will be new judge Ellen Degeneres. For the first show, which took place in Boston, the judges would be joined by none other than Posh Spice herself, Victoria Beckham.



The show kicked off with a recap of Kris Allen’s season 8 victory and Paula’s announcement that she was leaving the show. Then they showed the 9,000 in attendance for try outs in Boston. The first tryout was a slightly chubby girl who had mastered the “American Idol” video game. Apparently the video game is a fraud because she was terrible and the judges thought the same. The next two hours consisted of various montages. Good tryouts then bad, then good, then bad. In between they’d focus on a contestant for good or bad.



I’m not a big fan of the tryout episodes. It’s just the same thing over and over again. It’s the tryout portion of the season that is going to miss Simon Cowell the most next year. Some of the standouts would be a couple of 16-year-old girls. One was named Maddy Curtis who is the 9th out of 12 kids. Her older brother (the 8th of 12) has Down syndrome. Then her parents went on to adopt 2 (maybe 3, I missed it) more children with Down syndrome. Simon pointed out that he liked her because unlike most 16-year-old girls, she’s not annoying.

A couple other standouts were Tyler Grady who looked like a rocker (a rocker based on “AI” standards, he kind of looked like Jim Morrison if Morrison were in n’ sync) but sang Marvin Gaye and nailed it. Ashley Rodriguez was another contestant that looked like a pop star already. She sang Alicia Keys and made it her own. Justin Williams is a cancer survivor who sang ok, but definitely has the story to help him make the show.

Some terrible performances: I call her Anime Girl. I didn’t catch her name, but she was really into Japanese animation. She sang Janis Joplin and butchered it. Apparently she’d had two different vocal coaches and had been training for 14 years, although you’d have never known it. A white dude named Pat Ford who yelled “Holla” a lot sang Britney Spear’s “Womanizer.” My personal favorite was Andrew Fenlon. He was pissed off that he had to wait around all day to audition. Simon called him on it right away and told him if he was going to be smart ass he could leave without auditioning. He wasn’t a good singer, but he didn’t stand out for being a bad singer. He stood out because Kara hated him. Kara hated him so much that Simon actually voted for him to go to Hollywood, but he was out numbered three to one.

What did you think of the show? Sound off below.

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Bob Zerull is the Managing Editor of Zoiks! Online. He writes pop culture commentary, does interviews with bands, and reviews music and stand-up concerts. He also administers Zoiks! Online's Facebook page. Follow Bob on twitter at bzerull.