American Idol - Season 19

[taf2002]

I’m a firm believer in ignoring stuff kids do before entering high school, unless it’s violent crime. Bad enough that the clip is out there. I’m more worried about the azzhole who had enough free time to dig around and dredge this up. I hope karma catches up with them

Maybe this kid didn't have a social conscience by age 12 but it's inconceivable to me that anyone but a bigot wouldn't know that portraying yourself as KKK isn't a good thing. Did any of you dress up as Hitler or Pol Pot or Idi Amin for Halloween? If you grew up in a household where people like this were revered then I guess you wouldn't know it was wrong. And that makes me a little sad for him.

 

[Aceon6]

Maybe this kid didn't have a social conscience by age 12 but it's inconceivable to me that anyone but a bigot wouldn't know that portraying yourself as KKK isn't a good thing. Did any of you dress up as Hitler or Pol Pot or Idi Amin for Halloween? If you grew up in a household where people like this were revered then I guess you wouldn't know it was wrong. And that makes me a little sad for him.

Yup. In the 50s, my neighborhood had Hitlers and Mussolinis (because they were scary, not revered) as well as a the occasional blackface. The things we couldn’t wear were anything sexy (no Marilyn Monroe, for example) or anything related to religion. Times change.

And I don‘t see any 12 yo boy calling out one of his friends for a costume, no matter how distasteful it is to most older people, especially in the south.

 

[giselle23]

I just discovered this forum! So with Caleb eliminated, they are down to four? Wow. So quick. As a long time Idol watcher, I'd say the top 4 (top 5 with Caleb) were very predictable. The only surprise is that two female singers have survived. Chayce has been a front-runner from the start. He is another in the long line of male Idol winners--Kris Allen, Philip Phillips, David Cook, Lee DeWyze, to name a few. It would not be shocking if he won. He and Grace are pretty good bets for top 2. But Willie could surprise. I think Casey will go next and right now, I think Grace is the likely winner.

 

[Aceon6]

I have no clue who will win. In the show’s heyday, you could look at the Nielsen data and VFTW phone locations and have a pretty good idea of the voter demographics. Not so now.

 

[MacMadame]

I think its crazy that a 1.3 second video has effectively destroyed this 16 year old kids life.

I think that's highly unlikely. Most people don't watch the show and have no idea who he even is. There are many examples of people who have done much worse and as adults, too, who have gone on to have good lives and even gotten back to where they were before they were caught.

 

[Jayar]

I suspect that there is more than the video behind Caleb's departure. I also think that the rumors of Luke Bryan and Wyatt Pike fighting are true, but I am a conspiracy theorist when it comes to Idol. They manufacture EVERYTHING.

Re: Willie. I hate that they are ignoring his lack of breath control. It's why everything he sings is slow-- it masks his poor phrasing due to his shallow lung capacity. He has natural talent, but he needs to know how to get 'singer fit' (and this has nothing to do with his weight).

 

[BaileyCatts]

....I also think that the rumors of Luke Bryan and Wyatt Pike fighting are true, but I am a conspiracy theorist when it comes to Idol. They manufacture EVERYTHING. ......

What? Oh I need to find more info on that one. I haven't found anything about Wyatt other than 'personal family reasons'. I need better search skills.

 

[taf2002]

I suspect that there is more than the video behind Caleb's departure. I also think that the rumors of Luke Bryan and Wyatt Pike fighting are true, but I am a conspiracy theorist when it comes to Idol. They manufacture EVERYTHING.

Re: Willie. I hate that they are ignoring his lack of breath control. It's why everything he sings is slow-- it masks his poor phrasing due to his shallow lung capacity. He has natural talent, but he needs to know how to get 'singer fit' (and this has nothing to do with his weight).

If it wasn't for Usher I wouldn't know what you mean by singer fit. He was on The Voice, not AI, but he made his team doing physical things for this very reason. And when Barry Manilow was an adviser he worked on the same thing to improve breath control. Unfortunately he wasn't able to get Chris Daughtry to quit "goat singing" (ie singing from his head instead of his diaphragm).

 

[PeterG]

I saw the clip on Twitter. It is literally about 1.3 seconds long. Caleb isn't even the one wearing the hood, the other kid is. I'm not sure if I am thinking of the same movie (as there are dozens of movies with this same premise), but in this movie these psycho people are terrorizing a couple in a cabin in the woods and run around with masks and hoods on to terrorize them. And yes, the hoods looked just like KKK hoods. I think its crazy that a 1.3 second video has effectively destroyed this 16 year old kids life. It will follow him for the rest of his life. He will never have a career in music, not even as a song writer, because no one will want to be associated with him. Hell he probably won't even be able to get a job at McDonald's because the minute he does, someone is going to drag out this 1.3 second video from when he was 12 years old, people will harass his employer to the point they won't want to deal, and they'll fire him. How come it was okay when it was in the movie when it was released? Why was there no outrage that people were running around in hoods in the movie? The kid was 12 years old and he did something dumb and will now never have a career because of it.

When I was 10 I wanted to be a ghost for trick-or-treat so I could hide my fat ugly self. My mom threw a sheet over my head, cut out eye and mouth holes, and put my dad's tie round my neck to keep it straight. I still couldn't keep the sheet straight on my head so I could see, so she took my winter cap (the knit kind with the big puffy ball on the top), stuck it on my head and put some elastic in the brim to keep the sheet tight on my head. I recently found a picture and my first thought was OMG that looks exactly like ..... but it wasn't. If that picture was ever circulated, my life would be destroyed, I would get fired from my job because people would be calling out my employer, my home would be targeted ... all because when I was 10 I dressed up like a ghost and the picture looks like it was something that it wasn't.

You have so many things wrong in this post!

The Strangers: Prey at Night outfit

ku klux klan outfit

Caleb Kennedy snapchat video outfit

1. There is no way the original video was only 1.3 seconds long. Why would anyone post a video so short that if you blinked, you would miss it?

2. Saying there is nothing wrong because Caleb wasn't wearing the costume is wacky. My Mom taught me as a kid that if I hung out with kids who stole from a store that I would be associated with a thief and would be assumed by some as being a thief myself.

3. A KKK hood and a Strangers: Prey At Night costume look nothing alike. Actually in the movie, masks are the main costume piece, not a hood. (Although one character wears a round cloth hood...NOTHING like the long pointed KKK headpiece.)

4. Snapchat is for people 13 years of age and older. So Caleb joining Snapchat to post videos means he's both a liar and a racist.

5. There is NO WAY a major movie would have a character wearing a KKK costume. There would be SUCH a backlash against the studio, the producers, the cast and the movie itself. Your saying the costumes are similar is SO UNTRUE.

6. Your ghost costume, if it looked like the costume in the Strangers movie, would have looked NOTHING like the KKK headpiece that they wear. Look at the links I posted above to show how different they are.

 

[PeterG]

Wow. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, he was really young. Kids do stupid things. But it's very disturbing.

There's stupid things and then there are racist things. And there are racist things and then there are filming something racist and SHARING IT TO THE ENTIRE WORLD.

I’m a firm believer in ignoring stuff kids do before entering high school, unless it’s violent crime. Bad enough that the clip is out there. I’m more worried about the azzhole who had enough free time to dig around and dredge this up. I hope karma catches up with them

Your anger is for someone uncovering and sharing how a person chose to PUBLICLY share their racist behaviour...rather than being angry at someone who promotes racist attitudes online for the entire world to view???

According to Kennedy's mother, Anita Guy, the video was taken when he was 12 years old.

"I hate this has happened and how Caleb is being portrayed by people online," Guy told the Herald-Journal. "This video was taken after Caleb had watched the movie The Strangers: Prey at Night and they were imitating those characters. It had nothing to do with the Ku Klux Klan, but I know that's how it looks."

So she neglected to stop passing on her racism to her kid. She neglected to keep a child too young to both join and then post on Snapchat, which is for people 13 years and older. Then the Mom lies by saying the video was because of the movie, The Strangers: Prey at Night. That movie came out in 2018. Caleb is 16, when he was twelve (when he made the video), that would be 2017. So when the video was posted, that movie had not even been released yet. That Mom is so full of **** to blame a movie for her family's racist behavior.

 

[moebius]

Finally caught up with last week's and today's performances.

Mother's Day performances:
Liked most of them, except for Wilie's (don't like the runs). Best were all the originals, especially Chayce and Caleb.

Coldplay performances:
Liked most of them, except for Casey's. Best was Willie's, his best performance so far. Grace's was good also.

Original songs:
Best is Chayce. Didn't like Casey's.

Duets:
Chayce/Caseys better than Grace/Willie's, but Grace/Willie had better vocals

Casey needs more attitude if she wants to do rock songs. Maybe that's why she didn't make to top 3. So much for Luke's prediction that Casey would be the winner.

I hope Willie win this one. If not, then Chayce.

 

[PeterG]

My rankings for tonight:

1. Grace. Her single sounded good, I would have preferred something more uptempo.

Grace Kinstler - Love Someone (12,193 views at this time)

2. Casey. I like her best when she is singing a full-out rock.

Casey Bishop - Love Me Leave Me (14,185 views at this time)

3. Willie. He sang well tonight, but I didn't care for any of the songs he chose tonight. I can't see Adult R&B radio playing his single. Too downbeat.

Willie Spence - Never Be Alone (26,072 views at this time)

4. Chayce. Colder Weather is such a brilliant song. And he sucked all the life out of it... I had to eat my words (thoughts) after he sang his single. My thought was, "is this country"? Alternative? Wasn't sure by the arrangement what market he was aiming for. And then they mentioned that he was #1 on the country charts. So the song is selling okay, but this doesn't fit into what is being played on country radio these days.

Chayce Beckham - 23 (10,678 views at this time)

 

[PeterG]

Just found another "Official Art Track" (as the top four Idol releases are labelled) by....Hunter Metts. I think maybe they expected him to do better than he did, as it looks like they had a single release ready to go for him as well. And it has more views than the songs by Chayce, Casey and Grace:

Hunter Metts - 10,000 Kisses (23,458 views at this time)

 

[Aceon6]

Your anger is for someone uncovering and sharing how a person chose to PUBLICLY share their racist behaviour...rather than being angry at someone who promotes racist attitudes online for the entire world to view???

Coming back to this because I don’t think I expressed myself properly. I never said racist attitudes aren’t wrong and something to challenge, but most research tells me that 12 yos are still reconciling their parental, community, peer and personal beliefs. Heck, many adults tear their guts out doing it, especially when it comes to people they love. We have no context for this clip and no idea what was in Caleb’s head at 12. Malicious or stupid? We will never know.

As for the person who dug up the clip, I stand firm in declaring them to be scum. If it was easy to find, AI would have found it. Someone in Caleb’s circle brought it to light and knew what it would do. Not cool.

 

[taf2002]

Why is Chayce still there? Every time I've seen him sing he hits numerous flat notes. He's not horrible, he's just not good enough. It must be because he's a WGWG.

As for Caleb at 12 most people are still parroting their parents' take on things like race. No wonder his mother lied.

 

[giselle23]

I just discovered this forum! So with Caleb eliminated, they are down to four? Wow. So quick. As a long time Idol watcher, I'd say the top 4 (top 5 with Caleb) were very predictable. The only surprise is that two female singers have survived. Chayce has been a front-runner from the start. He is another in the long line of male Idol winners--Kris Allen, Philip Phillips, David Cook, Lee DeWyze, to name a few. It would not be shocking if he won. He and Grace are pretty good bets for top 2. But Willie could surprise. I think Casey will go next and right now, I think Grace is the likely winner.

Did I call it? (Sorry to brag.)

 

[love skating]

Am I the only one who thought Grace sounded horrible on A Moment Like This? I cringed through a lot of it. Very disappointed Casey was eliminated but not surprised. I actually could see any of the three winning - in different places it seems like different ones have bigger numbers (views, likes, etc.) so it's hard to figure out just who has the most support. I don't really have a horse in the race - I would've been for Casey if she was still in it.

 

[PeterG]

Am I the only one who thought Grace sounded horrible on A Moment Like This? I cringed through a lot of it. Very disappointed Casey was eliminated but not surprised. I actually could see any of the three winning - in different places it seems like different ones have bigger numbers (views, likes, etc.) so it's hard to figure out just who has the most support. I don't really have a horse in the race - I would've been for Casey if she was still in it.

I enjoyed Grace singing A Moment Like This, but listening back to it on youtube, I see your point. I guess I listen in comparison to her competitors, so after hearing Chayce butcher Colder Weather, Grace sounds like an angel.

I am hoping Casey can carve out a niche for herself in the Billie Eilish part of the pop charts. Or go more pure alternative or rock (like LP or Grimes) and have a reasonably successful career.

I expect Chayce will win as Willie and Grace will split the votes of people who like soulful belters (such as me).

 

[vgerdes]

Very disappointed Casey was eliminated but not surprised.

Yeah, my favorites have VERY rarely made it to the finale, much less taken the title. Very disappointed by this. I thought Chayce did well last night, but not well enough to beat Casey. She was my pick to win, and has been since the beginning. Ah well. Maybe Luke's hard-core championing of her as being "the next AI" worked against her.

 

[PeterG]

I'm doubling down on this one. Not only do I predict a Chayce Beckham win, but he will find even more fame and fortune than Nick Fradiani.

 

[taf2002]

I'm doubling down on this one. Not only do I predict a Chayce Beckham win, but he will find even more fame and fortune than Nick Fradiani.

You're probably right. I think Willie has the best voice but I don't really like his style. And I don't see star potential in Grace. TPTB could have molded Casey into an Ariana Grande-like pop star - she has the look & the voice. Chayce has a lot going for him but of the 3 I think he has the weakest voice. But voters don't really care about that.

 

[BaileyCatts]

Finally watched last weeks show and wasn't shocked at the Casey boot by the end. Her original song wasn't that great. There are some songs where she is absolutely amazing, and some song where she's just okay. She needs to stay in her style to be really great. I figured Casey/Willie would finish 3-4 in some order, so expecting Willie to finish 3rd in the finals.

As much as I hate Chayse for that atrocious version of Baby Mine, that original song was amazing. I didn't even realize that it wasn't already a song by a top country artist at first cause I didn't hear them say that until I played it back again so I could hear what top charting star that song was by, and it was Chayse.

I want Grace to win, but she probably won't with the demographics of who actually takes the time to vote on AI these days. Chayse is gonna win by a landslide. Huge landslide. I'll probably just record the Finals and watch it later in the week and watch Billboard Awards live instead.

 

[PeterG]

Grace is gone. I expected my favourite to be the first one gone tonight.

Now the drunk driver is one step closer to being the next American Idol. Can he beat Willie without the support of M.A.D.D.?

 

[taf2002]

Grace is gone. I expected my favourite to be the first one gone tonight.

Now the drunk driver is one step closer to being the next American Idol. Can he beat Willie without the support of M.A.D.D.?

That "drunk driver" admitted his fault & became sober. At least alcohol is legal. We've had druggies as champions before.

The problem for me with the top 3 was whose download would I buy? With Grace the problem was we already have a much better MariahWhitneyCeline. Every time she sang an iconic song her failings were showcased. With Willie I just didn't like his vibrato or his style. Chayce has a kind of froggy voice but at least his music choices are more like the songs on my playlist. But once Casey was gone I just didn't care. I don't expect any of them to make a big splash in the music world.

 

[giselle23]

That "drunk driver" admitted his fault & became sober. At least alcohol is legal. We've had druggies as champions before.

The problem for me with the top 3 was whose download would I buy? With Grace the problem was we already have a much better MariahWhitneyCeline. Every time she sang an iconic song her failings were showcased. With Willie I just didn't like his vibrato or his style. Chayce has a kind of froggy voice but at least his music choices are more like the songs on my playlist. But once Casey was gone I just didn't care. I don't expect any of them to make a big splash in the music world.

Agree about Grace and the iconic songs. Her I Have Nothing wasn't even as good as Jennifer Hudson's in Season 3. Too bad the show tried to peg her as a diva-type. She showed she could do contemporary (her Coldplay) and auditioned with R&B (Midnight Train to Georgia and Natural Woman). She had the most talent but talent is never enough to win AI. In fact, some with little natural talent (Philip Phillips) have won. Chayce is the classic WGWG that Idol voters love and was a front-runner from the beginning. He also has a unique and recognizable sound. He may make a name for himself.

 

[vgerdes]

Agree about Grace and the iconic songs. Her I Have Nothing wasn't even as good as Jennifer Hudson's in Season 3. Too bad the show tried to peg her as a diva-type. She showed she could do contemporary (her Coldplay) and auditioned with R&B (Midnight Train to Georgia and Natural Woman). She had the most talent but talent is never enough to win AI. In fact, some with little natural talent (Philip Phillips) have won. Chayce is the classic WGWG that Idol voters love and was a front-runner from the beginning. He also has a unique and recognizable sound. He may make a name for himself.

Agree that Grace (or whomever chose her songs for her) did her/self no favors by consistently picking "diva" songs. She's not as good in her upper register.

Chayce was always a frontrunner in my mind. He has exactly the type of redemptive back story that appeals to AI voters — plus his sound is unique, yet fits right in with the likes of Chris Stapleton and Luke Combs. And his looks certainly didn't hurt him any.

And yes, Willie was probably the best singer of this crop of finalists, but his style isn't really my cup of tea. I'm actually OK with this result.

My favorite performance of the night, oddly enough, was Hunter and Katy's duet. I thought it was really good. IMO Hunter's nerves got the best of him throughout his run on the show. He's a much better performer when he's not under competitive pressure.

 

[PeterG]

Looking at youtube, I combined the number of views for the audio and video versions of the top six contestants that appeared on this year's show. Here's the order of most viewed to least viewed:

Arthur Gunn – Save Me Now (didn’t record views on May 16th)
May 28th: 562,128 (audio) - 336,895 (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0fgETOm2UQ

Chayce Beckham - 23 (10,678 views on May 16th)
May 28th: 139,320 (audio) - 172,546 (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwRSxthuP-I

Willie Spence - Never Be Alone (26,072 views on May 16th)
May 28th: 82,317 (audio) - 45,143 (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guEQ1-IloS4

Casey Bishop - Love Me Leave Me (14,185 views on May 16th)
May 28th: 31,327 (audio) - 57,848 (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibXBlnDvDX0

Hunter Metts - 10,000 Kisses (23,458 views on May 16th)
May 28th: 49,972 (audio) - 38,691 (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPxg8e_RE_k

Grace Kinstler - Love Someone (12,193 views on May 16th)
May 28th: 35,037 (audio) - 26,850 (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gMzQ0ompOY

 

[PeterG]

A while back I posted a video of music used in the background of contestants during the audition process. I tried so hard to find out what the song was and who the artist was. And now I just stumbled upon it. So happy!

Brooke White - Into The Trees

White was on season seven of American Idol, finishing in fifth place. I shouldn't be surprised that they would use music from a contestant from a previous season. But I wasn't a big Brooke White fan, so I didn't expect to like a song by her so much.

Some other American Idol news:

‘American Idol’ Champ Chayce Beckham Teases Exciting News, Shares New Tour Dates

And news from another season seven contestant:

American Idol’s Syesha Mercado Reunites With Infant Daughter After Losing Custody of Her 2 Children: ‘Ast Is Home’