A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

And to think this is only my second American Idol post.

We watched Idol last night only because the Idol-aters were asked to sing Queen songs. We went straight to the performances and just skipped Seacrest’s blathering and the judges contrived disagreements. Thank you, DVR.

Queen was part of my childhood and would definitely be unknown to the youngsters who grew up on Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Incubus and their ilk. Despite Green Day’s energetic rendition of We Are The Champions in the last Live8, it will hard to top Queen’s Wembley Stadium performance in 1986. Aside from the occasional song or two popping up in a movie the band has kept a low-profile since the death of their charismatic frontman, Freddie Mercury.

But Queen is touring again with Paul Rodgers, of Bad Company and The Firm. The tour and the new album is billed Queen + Paul Rodgers, a clear sign that Rodgers was not meant to replace Mercury. And so the remaining members of Queen, or more precisely, Brian May and Roger Taylor shows up on American Idol to push their new gigs. Not sure that works though. After watching that Idol episode, I miss Mercury even more and had to stop myself from going out and getting an old Queen album - just to purge the voices of the Idol amateurs out of my head.

And from that episode last night, there’s not one rocker from the bunch. Would’ve been nice to hear Bice or Constantine or evern Fantasia take on Queen. The only one guy who might have had the attitude and the vocal chops to pull it off - Chris Daughtry decided to play it safe and sing Innuendo. Enh? Braver souls like Kellie Picker and Taylor Hicks took on fan favorites. Picker’s Bohemian Rhapsody was Queen filtered through Britney Spears (or Hillary Duff as Petite mentioned). Hicks, bless his soul, tried to rock out, flailing his arms and legs all over the stage, forcing Simon Cowell to ask if he’s drunk. He missed the first time he tried to kick the mic stand. Not very rock. Ace Young had the audacity to ask Brian May to make changes on the classic We Are The Champions forcing the guitarist to say “I am not doing your arrangement on my song.” Heh.

The other Idol wannabes where underwhelming in their rendition of the songs. Paris Bennett’s The Show Must Go On was the best of the lot but only because the song itself has a show tunes quality to it as opposed to being a headbanger.

Idols are more pop than rock. I now definitely prefer Rockstar over Idol. Rockstar’s next season will have Supernova composed of Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee, Guns N’ Roses Gilby Clark and Metallica’s Jason Newsted. Ought to be rockin’.