1 - I was shocked as well. But here is my geater question will his CD sell? Chris reminds me of Tamyra Gray as she was a good vocalist as well. From the season she was on, she was the first to win a recording deal. When her CD went on sale. it did not sell many copies. I believe it was only 125K copies (and I was one of them).

The thing that sucks is that no American Idol contestent can have a CD released before the seanson's winner. So my thought is will the public remember him or be patient for his CD to be released.

I am not a fan of Taylor because he is unique but he is too quirky. when he is concerned about his dancing/flaying his performances suck. He really can't pick good song choices consistently. I think Elliott will win. Are there many Elliot's? it realy depends on the genre he chooses. I reallu like Chris. but Elliott on the in the shows leading to the final 12 caught my ear because he had captured the song style -- I thought it was a Stevie Wonder song.

oh well... maybe next season.

2 - Chris was my pick from day one when I saw his audition. I told my husband "there's your winner". I was pulling for the 'rocker dude' again this year... was disappointed last year when Bo Bice came in second, so I really thought that Chris would/should win this year... and I truly believe he is the best overall - just seems to have the whole "IT" factor that the judges always mention, so, yes, I was shocked (as was my mom, as was my husband, as were a few of my friends who watch the show). The reaction is the same as your families: no one wants to watch anymore.

In reading some of the posts on the Idol Forum (yes... I know... get a life, Joanne ), this seems to be the first time that people are really outraged by someone getting kicked off. In the past, the posts were more or less, "didn't wanna see So-n-So go, but I understand..." Now, the posts are more along the lines of "NOT FAIR!"

In all fairness, all the remaining singers are talented... they can sing... otherwise (as I state the obvious) they wouldn't be left on the show... but the one who really seemed to have it all together is Chris (imho).

Taylor Hicks has worn thin to me. Not that I judge someone by one performance, but "In the Ghetto" is one of my favorite Elvis songs, and I really disliked Taylor's rendition of it. (Ever hear Eric Cartman from "South Park" sing his rendition of "In the Ghetto"? Hehe - now THAT I enjoy )

Katherine - well, she forgot some lyrics - admitted she forgot lyrics - sounded like she was straining - and she still pulled through (ok - she's pretty... she can sing... but she comes across as 'stiffly giddy' if you ask me... I dont' know if that even makes sense...but there's something 'cardboard-ish' about her personality - something I can't quite put my finger on...:- )

Elliot - the underdog - he's the one I hope wins now that Chris is knocked off. He's actually grown on me, and he's never annoyed me ... just wasn't my first choice.

So in summary - my face when I heard the news about Chris:

3 - I'm with Gregg. I have also never seen a single "reality show". No Survivor, no Apprentice, no Amazing Race, no Surreal Life, no Big Brother, no Fear Factor, no Real World, no Road Rules, no Newlyweds, no Punk'd, etc....

And, I have also never seen American Idol. Idol isn't a reality show, I know, but the group of talent/variety shows (Dancing with the Stars) get lumped in there in my mind. Probably because of the whole 'unscripted' thing plus the use of real people.

That being said, this isn't the first time the voting results have been a little odd, is it? I had the impression from water cooler conversations that the better performer has been voted off several times. Isn't that unpredicability supposed to be part of the charm? If we wanted a well-judged talent show, we wouldn't let the American public vote, now would we? We'd get someone with a clue instead...

4 - Rock,

Here I am again, making an unusual appearance on your blog. As you know, I only make my voice known when it is something that REALLY gets me....last night's Americna Idol REALLY "got" me.

While I understand that if you don't vote, you can't complain; I also understand from people who did try to vote that Chris' line was busy all night long. I agree with you that Elliot should have been number one, based solely on Tuesday night. However, I though that Chris was number 2, Taylor number 3 and Katherine number 4. It was apparent by the reaction of the audience, the judges, and the other contestants that this end result was WRONG!!!

Chris was BY FAR better than Katherine McPhee. Yes, she is cute, and sexy, and knows how to play the camera. Yes, Taylor has the unique personality, and Elliott has an awesome voice, BUT Chris has the ability to capture the audience. On more than one occasion, I have fast-forwarded through the others performances because it was dull, or a bad fit for their voice. Chris made all of the song types work for him. He truly was the best that the show has offered in 5 seasons. If you go back and listen to early interview with Simon and Randy, they predicted Chris as the winner...even before the 24 were shosen.

As you said in your post, Chris will survive. He will have a contract in hand by week's end. I believe that he will be a Grammy winner, and I don't think it will take him 4 years to win one. America messed up by letting him slip through the cracks last night, but I believe that he will come out as the top performer that AI has ever had.

As for me, lesson learned. IF and I say IF I watch AI again....which is very doubtful, you can make sure that I will spend hours and hours making my vote count.

Deb

5 - I think I'm to blame. I used the entire two hours calling Elliot's number. He's who I'd like to see win. My first choice, Patrick Hall was one of the first four knocked out from the top 24. I liked Chris, but began to see Bruce Willis in his performances. That turned me off. I'm sure Chris will do well. Tommy Matola loved him!

6 - "We gave up watching both after successive winners of the UK competition were not the right ones, with what should have been clear winners eliminated sometimes weeks earlier as a result of (let's be polite) tactical voting."

Chris, who did you think should have won 'PI1' and 'PI2'?

My choices would have been Darius Danesh (or possibly Hayley Evetts) in series 1 and Sam Nixon (or possibly Chris Hyde or Andy Scott Lee) in series 2.

7 - chris was great he deserved to win, but unfortunatly the snobby girl who i hate had to go farther in idol than him

8 - Even though I have a fear of being laughed at, my little secret is that I have NEVER seen American Idol, Survivor, or any of the other reality shows. So, this thread means nothing to me. However, it looks like you weren't the only shocked person, Rocky:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-05-11-daughtry-interview_x.htm?POE=LIFISVA

9 - I know that a lot of people were upset that Chris didn't win the American Idol as well as him not excepting the gig for Fuel as lead singer/front man......well as humble as Chris is, I am 100% that he will make it on his own with the help of the good Lord. Everything happens for a reason.

I have Chris's CD bought by my boyfriend whom is well aware of the love and respect that i have for Chris. He woke me up the morning the CD came out and said, "I have a suprise for you...," when I opened my eyes it was Chris that I was looking at......needless to say I have been listening to it ever since....


I love you Chris and hope nothing for the best for you and your family.

Gin

10 - We get American Idol over here in the UK too (it was a British invention - ours is called Pop Idol).

We gave up watching both after successive winners of the UK competition were not the right ones, with what should have been clear winners eliminated sometimes weeks earlier as a result of (let's be polite) tactical voting.

It isn't meant to be fair, and it's not, but I can't take it seriously any more and so I don't watch.

11 - I think Katharine will win. She's gorgeous and young, has great personality, and can sing AMAZINGLY!!! Admit it people, don't deny it, she has talent! I voted for her eight times last night!
I think that if Taylor wins it will be by popular vote, but not because of a particular talent he has. I really don't think he's that great. And I'm glad Elliot is gone... I was never a fan of his.
I LOVED/ LOVE Chris. I was sure he'd go all the way. I cried when I heard he got eliminated! There's no doubt in my mind, though, that he'll go far in his singing career. And I will be waiting for the day when his first CD comes out. I'll definitely buy it!! He's my kind of guy! He's got absolutely everything!

Good luck Chris! Good luck Katharine! You've got my vote, whether on American Idol or on the music hall of fame!

12 - All i have to say is...how do we know there isn't a little bit of cheating going on? yes chris' lines were probably busy and yes that is hard to get your vote in, however, the others may have lines just as busy. Chris was one of my picks from audition stage to go all the way. as was Elliott and Taylor, and Paris. Now as the compitition went on it was so clear that Chris could have went anytime as he was just wasting his time on the show. good exposure though. It just would have been nice for Chris to win simply because we need to get back to the roots of what this country is, what kind of music is in the foundation of the united states! There are still a few of us left that really don't appriciate where music has gone.having said that now it is up to the american people to make Taylor our idol. even at that our chris will be very successful in what ever road he goes down i have no doubt of that. and more than likely a bigger star than the idol himself, or herself (just in case)

13 - At this point, there are no easy answers as to who should be voted off the show. Of the four that were left, I do think that Elliot is the least marketable of the group. There are many people in the world that are great singers, but Chris is one of those who are actually stars. I truly expect that this will be the best thing to have happened to him in the long run. He'll have more control over his career this way, but I will miss seeing him perform.

Sean---

14 - American Idol Secret - Impossibility of Counting Votes
rpvm (847 ) View Listings | Report May-25-06 13:39 PDT
I can't believe that there hasn't been any real questioning of the fact that the last three contestants on Idol received almost the identical number of votes. Any mathematically inclined individual would be quick to point out the statistical improbability, the miracle this would entail.

They say that 50 million people voted during two hours for three people on six lines. Impossible. There isn't a phone system yet that can collect information from 1/5 of the population of these United States (250 million) calling in two hours. That is why many people get busy signals. The only calls that are processed are the ones that are able to be handled by the phone lines. The three lines were maxed out. There is no other plausible explanation for this occurence.

There is one company that has predicted the results of almost every competetion by dialing to the different voting numbers and noting which ones had the least number of busy signals. The ones with the least busy signals had the lowest overflow and therefore the fewest votes. According to their records, only one out of every four got through on the last night.

Why else would American Idol deem it necessary to double the amount of phone lines and then double the call-in time for the last event? Essentially this quadrupled their ability to handle incoming calls, but still were about 75 percent inadequate to the number of call-ins. So I imagine that the lines became maxed out again with a relatively equal number of votes for each contestant with the winner based on the difference, the minor vagaries, of each incoming line's hardware.

Maybe Chris really should have won? We will never know.

15 - I got McPheever. I got it bad.

16 - As an early fan of Katherine, I have to say, she has the pipes, but not the personality or gumption to pull this off. I am a Chris fan, but while the vocals were ok for game night, I thought both his songs were rushed and without much connection to the audience. I can't see either of the guys left able to carry this...Elliot - not enough of the right stuff and I'm sorry, just can't see quirky, gray-haired Taylor as an american idol.

As far as being robbed.....AI is NOT A TALENT CONTEST! It's a simple addition contest.

17 - maybe now you'll give up on American Idol as being a resource for real talented musicians and seek out clubs to find authentic musical talent that aren't voted on by people judging artists by looks and hoky personalities ...american idol is just a glorified gong show...

18 - Chris you are my favorite snger ever. You wre my favorite from the start. I cried when you got voted off. I still and will for always will think you should have won. My mom really likes you to. I always listen to your new CD. I got so exided when I found out you had a CD coming out. Then my mom and dad got it for me for Christmas! I love you Chris Daughtry!

19 - Hey Rock,

My wife and I share your guilty Idol pleasure, and your shock that Katherine didn't get the boot last night. Funny, but I think the person most shocked at the turn of events was Katherine herself, judging by her expression.

Two thoughts:

1) it probably doesn't matter that much for Chris's career that he didn't win, since as you point out he'll get a contract anyway. The same is probably true for Elliot, but I'm not as sure about Taylor or even Katherine.
2) Katherine may surprise us if she takes the attitude that whatever happens now is just a bonus, and relaxes enough to avoid dumb nervous mistakes. If however she thinks as I do that she needs a win to succeed in her career, she'll probably blow it. Not that she won't win anyway

FWIW, we've never voted, so I guess I can't complain.

20 - For me, Elliot's performance of "Moody's mood for love", which Paula incorrectly atrributed to Stevie Wonder, was the best so far this season. No other Idol contestant ever could pull that off like Elliot did.

For artistic integrity, Chris may be better off without the Idol contract.
Stylistically, Taylor may be the best, but Elliot can pull off a broader range of tunes.

21 - I don't dislike any of the final 5 in this year's competition. However, pretty much like last year, I had a couple of favourites from the start.

Last year, though I did like Carrie, my favourites were Bo Bice, Antony Fedorov, Constantine Maroulis and Anwar Robinson in that order. I didn't think any of them had a chance of winning though. I had Carrie down to win from her first audition. I don't think I've ever seen such an obvious winner from day 1 in any talent show on either side of the Atlantic.

This year my favourites from the start were Katharine McPhee and Patrick Hall. It's still beyond me how and why Patrick, who I still maintain was the best singer in the competition, went out in the first week of the public vote. I liked Elliott's voice from the start and I thought Taylor had something special all-round.

Katharine has had a couple of off weeks lately but I actually enjoyed her performances this week far more than Taylor's who gave an embarrassingly bad performance of 'Jailhouse Rock' and though he gave an excellent vocal performance of 'In the Ghetto' (my favourite Elvis song) suffered from the awful backing and arrangement the song had been given.

That said, I still maintain Katharine is not just the best female singer in this year's competition but the best female singer in any year of this show. In a straight sing-off, and given that they both had a good day, she would wipe the floor with the very talented but more limited Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and, most certainly, the unbearable screech that it Fantasia Burrino.

Taylor has worn thin on me while Elliott has not ceased to grow on me week by week.

I do like Chris. I think he has a great tone to his voice, is almost instantly identifiable and is a very good performer. It was difficult to believe from the very first public vote show that this was the same guy who Simon Cowell had said he doubted had any charisma. However, I am not at all shocked that he has gone out at this stage. Any of them could go now and any of the last five could have won it in my opinion.

I wish Chris all the best. I think he has a great voice that, as many have said during the series, would sound great on record and radio. I hope he does get a recording contract (I very much doubt that he won't) and I hope his sales are deservedly high. I will certainly buy it. However, for me, Chris is not a patch on Bo Bice and this week's performances made the difference in the levels of their performance skills very evident - from the rather lacklustre start to Chris' songs, to the irresistible urge to be too Chris at the end, to the attempts at 'rock' microphone stand dragging during which Chris missed his mouth and smacked himself in the cheek a couple of times. If Bo was incapable of winning last year's competition then I am not at all surprised that Chris has gone out at this stage this year.

Having said that, I did have to feel sorry for Chris, Katharine and Elliott on the results show. Elliott was so clearly anxious that he almost wore a hole in the palm of his hand. Katharine looked more shocked than Chris at the result even once she'd walked back to the seats and Chris was the first eliminated contestant since Ayla Brown's emotional performance after her underserved elimination the week before the final 12 to give his final performance with a look of sheer disappointment and disbelief.

I hope Katharine gets it together and performs as she did in the early shows and up until as recently as four weeks ago. For me, she remains the whole package - voice, looks, personality - the question is does she have the nerve? I hope Elliott keeps up the standard he hit this week. As for Taylor, if he was to get to the final or win I wouldn't be that disappointed. The guy does have something and has undoubtedly a good voice but he is my personal outsider now.

22 - well, i think there probably were people that decided not to vote because they figured he was safe, but i don't know if you heard that the phone lines were mixed up! there has been MUCH talk about it on the official AI message boards, even before the elimination happened.

many times when we tried to call Chris's 06 line we would get Katharine's voice thanking us for her vote instead! i got her 5 times and only got Chris 1 time out of the whole 2 hours i tried calling! every other time i either got a busy signal, an error message ("please hang up and try your call again") or awkward dead air.

many of us also didn't get confirmation on our text votes. i didn't. i resorted to texting after i decided the lines weren't working, so i sent quite a few text votes. i had never sent a text vote before though and i had no idea until i was reading the message board that you were even supposed to get a confirmation on them. i didn't get a single one!

23 - We also get a delayed version of AI here in South Africa. I agree wholeheartedly that Chris is fantastic.

The difficultly, though, is that he's not ever going to make sense as a solo performer. His voice, his look, his performance attitude -- all add up to the front man for a band, not a solo performer. At least not until he's already got a huge career behind him.

He needs to front an act in the vein of Live or Tool or Nickelback.

The show is always a popularity contest, not a talent contest -- I think we all know that. But the non-winners usually do okay, too. Didn't Constantine from last season get signed 3 days after he was voted off?

Actually, having worked in the industry, and having a number of friends with record deals, we might all want to reconsider whether winning is really that great. The performers themselves are probably stuck with deals that make them less than 10 cents on a CD sale. Record labels & publishing companies are, by and large, run by demons.

24 - I've never liked Chris all that much. He's very very good, and very consistent, but his best performances don't rise to the level that I want to see in a winner.

I want the winner to be able to reach the level that Fantasia did when she sang "Summertime"... that defining performance where you're transfixed by pure talent, you can feel what the artist feels, and the performance rises above the music itself.

None of this year's contestants have gotten to that level (not that I've heard, but I did miss a couple of weeks)... but here's the thing: Taylor and Elliot have it in them. I don't see it in Chris. I definitely don't see it in Catherine. They can both rise to the level of the music they select -- and Chris especially makes good selections -- but they will never rise above it. Chris' performances always sleave me feeling flat. He's technically right on, but the performance doesn't communiucate anything over and above the words and music.

Elliott and Taylor both find ways to put more into the song than just the music and words -- Taylor especially so. That's why one of them will win. Taylor and Elliott are uneven, and sometimes weak, but there's a reason: they take more risks. They put more of themselves into the music, and sometimes that works and sometimes it misses badly.

I thought Taylor was terrible the week he did "Play That Funky Music " and "Something". The judges disagreed with me, but I thought he butchered "Something", making it into a song of near desperation instead of a song of hopefulness. I thought for sure he'd be gone because those performances wouldn't inspire his fans to cast the votes; but he survived. He may have had the wrong interpretation, but he clearly had an interpretation and he put it out there where anybody could feel it with him.

Elliot has had a couple of bad weeks, too, and I think it's because he tries to put more lof himself into the performance than anyone else. He doesn't have Taylor's flamboyant attitude, but he doesn't need to be. He could stand there perfectly cool, perfectly still, and still put his whole self into the performance. Sometimes what he puts in doesn't mesh with the music, or doesn't mesh with the audience, but that's the risk he's taking -- and that's why his best performances rise way up Chris' performance.

25 - sorry - typing too fast - make that "your family's"

26 - @15 - Nathan: Demons, eh?

Didn't you used to work for a record company?