Iggy Pop and Pia Toscano: What was the most bizarre thing about last night’s ‘American Idol’?
It used to be that the results shows were the least-interesting thing about "American Idol." There would be group-singing from the contestants, a vanilla performance by an up-and-coming artist you’d never heard of, endless vamping by Ryan Seacrest and then — finally — one peachy-keen young singer would get their dreams crushed at the end. A truer waste of time had never been imagined.
But this season, surprisingly, things worth talking about have been happening! Two weeks ago, Casey Abrams was saved from elimination in memorable fashion and now this week, two things Metro never would have thought possible occurred.
First, Iggy Pop performed. Yes, that Iggy Pop, the punk legend famous for cutting himself of stage, rolling in broken glass and, perhaps most troubling of all now that the man is 63, performing without a shirt. Readers, who would have been a less-appropriate musical guest for "American Idol"? Possibly only The Residents, or Gwar. But credit to him, he rocked it, and gave the Fox censors an itchy trigger finger to boot:
After that, it came down to the actual results. The final three: Stephano Langone, whom we suspect has a medical issue that causes him actually fall asleep while performing; Jacob Lusk, who passive-aggressively told America it would be their fault if they didn’t like his lame "Man in the Mirror"; and front-runner Pia Toscano, a talented-yet-robotic balladeer who took baby-steps outside of her comfort zone with an awesome "River Deep, Mountain High." The results, complete with an epically douchey Seacrest fake-out, below:
So why was Pia sent home? HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall has some good analysis: Part of the blame lies with the judges, who gave near-uniform praise to every contestant — and part lies with the demographics of the "Idol" voting audience.
"The vast majority of people who vote for this show are female, and they’re apparently not voting for someone they can relate to, but someone they’re attracted to. As Fienberg notes in his recap, pretty women seem to get targeted especially these days, and as J-Lo noted often, and noted tonight, Pia was gorgeous."
What do you think? Who would have been weirder than Iggy? Who should have gone home instead of Pia? (Stephano. The answer to that last one is Stephano.)
