American Idol 10: Why James Lost?

American Idol 10: Why James lost?

Firstly, I'd start with his curtain call:


American Idol 10: Why James Lost



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by David Bloomberg -- 05/16/2011

James seemed to be the frontrunner to win American Idol, but instead he followed so many other talented singers who left in fourth place. What happened?! Should we be surprised? Does it remind us of a previous rocker who also went out in fourth? How did other factors affect James this past week? Why did James lose?

I should have known better.

In my prediction article with Sting7, I said I didn’t know if he would win, but, “If I were forced at gunpoint to make such a prediction right now, I’d say yes.” I did give myself a bit of an out, adding, “But this is American Idol and crazier stuff has happened!” Back and forth I went, both in my own mind and in the article. After that statement, I said, “Still, it won’t be so crazy that he’ll go home.” Then I noted, “I said something similar about Chris Daughtry at about this time in his season,” and related the story of how I predicted Chris’s win in a newspaper column that was pre-printed… and appeared in the paper the morning after he lost!

James’s loss has a similar feel to it, and as I said at the top of this article, I should have known better. I got caught up in his performances as much as anybody, but now it’s time to take a step back and objectively look at our question: Why did James lose?

Even in shocking times when I give myself a head-slap and wonder what I was thinking, we go about this the same way – by looking through What ‘American Idol 10’ Contestants Need to Know to figure out just what happened here. (And yes, for the record, I know I’m behind on Jacob’s column – but I wanted to jump ahead for James’s because I felt that question needed answering more than Jacob’s did.) While we’re at it, I have a feeling some points from Why Chris Daughtry Lost may appear here as well – like I said, this has a familiar feel.

We begin with the first rule, which says to show singing and performing talent. It should be obvious to everybody that James has both of these in spades. However, in his final night, not everybody loved him. Well, the on-site judges did, but that’s no surprise. As for those of us here at Foxes On Idol, it was a bit of a mixed bag.

In her recap, Jenn said James’s first performance was “actually … boring.” She liked his second song much better, though. Our We’ll Be the Judge of That! duo felt essentially similar, with Tyler calling the first song only “solid” and Erika saying it was a “normal” James performance. Not really criticism, but not singing his praises. The second song earned higher marks, with Tyler saying it wasn’t as good as some previous performances but was definitely worthy of becoming a hit, and Erika chiming in that he rocked the house.

Joseph, in The NGH Report, ranked James as only third out of the four performers. He said James’s first performance “felt really lazy” and “something was missing.” Joseph, like our other writers, preferred the second performance, saying it was a “great vocal” and “just soared.” However, he also noted, “it wasn’t the moment I think he needed.”

As for me, I felt pretty much the same as my fellow writers. His performance of that classic Journey song (which was my absolutely favorite song back when it came out) was not up to his usual level in my opinion, despite what the on-site judges said. And his second song rocked the house.

However, it’s time to turn back to look at what happened to Chris Daughtry. To quote from “Why Chris Lost”:

One of the items mentioned in the first rule, but rarely referred to this season, is the issue of confidence vs. overconfidence: “You need to be confident when you are up there. Look like you belong there. But don’t overdo it and become overconfident, because then people will turn against you, thinking you’re egotistical.”

At the time, I said I personally didn’t think that Chris had crossed the line, but others did. The same is true here. I have heard whispers that some viewers felt James was getting overconfident. Indeed, a little bit of that even showed after he was informed he had lost, as he talked about having done things on the show that nobody else had done.

Continuing with my Daughtry article:

Could it have been that he too believed he would be in the final two? Is it possible that some people saw this in him even if I did not? I’d have to say yes. After all, if a few people … thought it, odds are they are representative of people elsewhere, and that factor cannot be ignored.

Interestingly, another line from the first rule in the Chris article also mirrors what we have already talked about already: “But getting back to his recent performances, last night gave us a bit of a mixed bag.”

So let’s talk about that a little bit more in terms of the second rule. Besides the general opinion around here that James didn’t kill “Don’t Stop Believing,” most of us also thought it was a poor song choice. Jenn noted, “Of all the songs in the world, he chose this one? … Steven thinks this was a good choice because the song is really popular right now. Correction: It was popular two years ago when Glee did it.” I’m glad Jenn brought that up, because I was thinking the very same thing! I mean, sure, “Don’t Stop Believing” enjoyed a popular resurgence because of Glee, but even besides the fact that it happened a couple years ago, it’s also a double-edged sword because you often don’t want to compare yourself to a recently-popular song.

His second song was definitely a better choice, with Jenn noting, “The arrangement is easily the most original one of the evening – “Love Potion No. 9” as a rock song. Thank you, James!” Tyler similar said, “About time we heard James Durbin hard-rockify another song. … [T]his is the kind of song that James could have hits with. It screamed pure rock, and that's all I want.”

It may have been what Tyler wanted, but was it what overall viewer/voters wanted? We’ll get to that later.

I don’t want to leave this rule without once again looking back and what I had said about Chris Daughtry, as it seems eerily familiar:

This week, I think [another contestant] picked two absolutely perfect songs. Chris, however, picked one good song and one that maybe wasn’t so good. I can’t say it was definitely bad because some people did like it. I didn’t.

Replace “Chris” with “James” there and it would have seemed to be written about this week’s performances!

The third rule discusses the need to be consistent. James not only did well in that basic portion of the rule, but the more complex aspect involving risk-taking. We saw such behavior from Blake, Adam, and David Cook in previous seasons, and James was right to follow that path.

But there is also a part of this rule that talks about Lee and applies here in something of a reverse way

Last season, Lee did even a little better than just being consistent – he got consistently better. … There were certainly little blips here and there, … but overall, he did better and better as time went on in the competition.

The on-site judges commented on it, as did many columnists and viewers. The Lee we saw on the finale looked very little like the one we saw early in the competition – he had gained a ton of confidence, which allowed him to put more of himself into the performances and make them that much better. Lee started off good but ended up, as Simon said, going from a normal person to a star. That is even better than being consistent and even can help explain why so often we see those who are initially deemed as favorites fall by the wayside while others step into the role and win it all.

Sound familiar? James started strong and finished strong, but didn’t have that upward trend. Who did? Haley has shown it the most, but each of the other two also have boosted themselves along the way as well. It’s something of a frontrunner curse – if you’re already at the head of the pack when you start, it’s hard to get even better; meanwhile, the underdogs can catch up.

Moving to the fourth rule, it tells contestants to be unique. There is no doubt that James succeeded wildly in that regard. Sure, he was compared to Adam Lambert at first, but that was just silly. James was his own man and showed it throughout the competition. Heck, even though I’m comparing him to fellow rocker Chris Daughtry throughout this article, that doesn’t mean the two of them would ever be confused! It’s the result and some of the related issues I’m comparing here.

Similarly, James certainly gave us some memorable performances in accordance with the fifth rule. His loss definitely had nothing to do with any failures in this regard.


The sixth rule might also seem to be a gimme – James knew he had to package himself, and did so in order to show just what kind of an artist he is. He never held back the fact that he’s a rocker and wants to sing on stage with screaming guitars. And a lot of people loved it! He had talent, he had personality, and he was likeable.


But there was a problem that was somewhat out of James’s control. I’m going back to my article on Chris Daughtry again for this one (and this is also one reason I feel I should have better seen this coming):


The only issue here is that a large part of the package that is Chris is that he’s a rocker. [I]t was always clear where his true musical focus was.


At the time, I then questioned whether a rocker could ever win Idol; since then, we’ve seen it happen. But James was facing a different challenge – he was up against the country fan base. While I was focusing on Scotty and Lauren splitting that vote, apparently it’s even stronger than I realized!
But even looking at the rocker (or rockers, depending on exactly how you categorize singers) who have won, they have represented what I would call more mainstream rock. James has been emphasizing a harder rock – to the point of metal – than most viewers would embrace. And while Chris Daughtry has gone on to have a couple successful albums, when he was on, he faced a similar situation, as I noted at the time, “Chris’s brand of rock and roll went after a different audience, and that audience may simply be too narrow to win on Idol.”

This leads us directly to the eighth rule (the seventh talks about arguing with the judges, which was a non-issue for James), which discusses the need to create a fan base. Here I’m once again going to quote from “Why Chris Lost”

Chris certainly had [a fan base], and they were loyal. But were they big enough? I would have to say no. Infact, looking back, it really is something that I should have picked up on sooner... Anyway, as the show nears its end, more people tend to watch and vote. As the voting audience grows, the power of a narrow fan base will erode, which is what happened to Chris. This is not Rock Star, and most people tuning in are not looking for Chris’s brand of rock music.

The same definitely held true for James. Heck, I would say it was even more true that his chosen genre isn’t as popular with as many Idol fans, and that was emphasized greatly in his performance of “Love Potion No. 9,” with the screaming guitar and all.

At this point in the competition, it was even more complicated than that – James didn’t just have to worry about his own fan base, but about those of the other three singers. Scotty’s fans have shown themselves to be amazingly loyal (as country fans have been throughout much of this show’s history). Lauren’s fans have likewise been loyal and she was hailed as the star of the night and she was coming back from a low point – all of these things helped spur her voters on to greater heights.

And then we had Haley, the ultimate underdog this season. She was singled out for criticism by the judges, to the point that Randy even declared the first round a three-way tie – everybody except for her! While it was not necessarily good for Haley to argue with the judges, the fact is that many people thought the judges were unnecessarily hard on her, which could easily have spurred her fans and other viewers into action. Indeed, Simon seemed to have learned, through his years on the show, that when he criticized a singer too much, their fans would often respond with lots of votes. There were times when he said something mildly nice and I had the distinct feeling that was because he wanted them to go home and didn’t want the fans having a reason to vote angrily. Apparently, Randy hadn’t learned this lesson yet.


James is a great singer with a big personality who went all the way with his performances. He brought in fans from all over, and those fans certainly love him. He was unique, he was memorable, and he presented himself as a complete package. But he wasn’t perfect. He occasionally picked a bad song or had a less-than-stellar performance, as he did in leading off the final four show. And while his fans loved most of his hard-rocking songs, that somewhat closed the door to bringing in new, more middle-of-the road fans as the competition became fiercer.

The final four is a dangerous time, as many talented singers have found out – James is only the latest. It is a time when one little miscue, or even the judges being too harsh on somebody else, can tilt things just enough against you. James showed us who he was, never backing away from that, and had a great fan base because of it. But hard rock/metal fans just are not the target Idol audience, and that somewhat narrow focus hurt in terms of bringing in new voters during this crucial week – especially in comparison to the fans of the other three remaining contestants. That is why James lost.