My Road to American Idol 2009 Part 5: Finale Performances - Show Time! - Day 1

Ok! Here's Part 2 of what happened on the American Idol Finale Performance Day!

Let's pick up where I left off in my last post, which is when I took my seat inside the Nokia Theater just before the show.

A lot of people wonder what happens during the commercial breaks on Idol. Does Ryan Seacrest continue to work the crowd? Does the crowd get entertained by performances? Well... Neither actually... But it definitely was not dead silence as well...

Before the show starts and during intermissions, the Idol stage is manned by the American Idol warm-up guy Corey Almeida. You can see a little bit of what he does in the video below.



Before the show, Corey pumps up the crowd accompanied by a remixed version of Lady Gaga's Poker Face. He first gets a guy onto the stage and gets him to follow him do some moves. The ones that get the crowd going everytime is the butt shimmey and cowboy move. He then gets a couple of girls to flank him and do more dancing. And, of course, there has to be the mandatory shaking of some jelly by some well-chosen good-looking volunteers from the crowd before they are released back into the crowd.

Corey then basically lays down the laws of the land, which is basically to go ga-ga whenever the stage manager Debbie Williams counts down to indicate when Idol is live again. Stand, scream, shout, wave hands, anything goes. EXCEPT for the people in front of the judges table! Reason? Because if they do, they will block Ryan's view of the teleprompter and if that happens, show's over and it's their fault. =)

Corey then invites the judges to their seats one-by-one to the roar of the crowd. Paula and obviously Simon gets the biggest props from the crowd.

The crowd is then instructed to stay quiet until Ryan starts off the show with "This... is American Idol!". Debbie then begins the count down and AWAY WE GO!!!

The giant screens show the opening video segment and then pans to Ryan who says his trademark catchphrase "This... IS AMERICAN IDOL!!". And the crowd goes crackers and lights all flare up. What a rush!

The show then kicks off with the usual introduction of the judges by Ryan and then finalists - Kris and Adam. Cue screams and cheers. Everyone is informed that Adam will perform first and Kris won the coin toss and chose to go second.

Commercial break! Corey takes the stage again and chats up the crowd while going around giving Kris or Adam T-Shirts. He does this during every commercial break and keeps the vibe going.

Back to the show and the finalists were going to kick off with a song choice from the season. Adam takes the stage to perform Mad World again, this time with long black trench coat and lots of mist on stage.

All the smoke reminds me of the entrance for the Undertaker in the WWE

I thought the performance rocked, but Simon thought it was a bit over theatrical. But isn't that Adam's style in the first place? Anyways... The judge's comments were all a bit hard to hear due to the crowd cheering and also because they didn't amp up the judges mics as much as they do the people on stage. Wonder why...

Ok, next up Kris with Ain't No Sunshine!

I was seated waaaaay at the back to the right of the Idol sign. See me waving???

What a performance it was! Definitely rocked the house and was much better than when he did it the first time. Simon was right on the money this time when he said that the first round went to Kris. Fantastic!

Next up was Simon Fuller's song choices. He chose a couple of classics in the form of A Change is Gonna Come for Adam and What's Going On for Kris.

Kradam!

I think he was trying to put a message out regarding the state of the world today with these song choices. Nice intention, but I think it might have been lost to many as it was too subtle.

I think this round was pretty much a tie because both Kris and Adam really did well in their respective takes on the songs. Adam showcased his incredible vocals on the Sam Cooke classic, while Kris did a fantastic folk-pop jam of the Marvin Gaye anthem. I didn't think the latter's rendition was too light for the competition at all as it was exactly the kind of music that we expect from Kris and he delivered it superbly.

Now, the third round was just a mess... The finalists both sang this year's coronation song No Boundaries written by the New-Judge-On-The-Block Kara DioGuardi.

"Can't you tell from our faces that it was as painful for us to sing this song as it was for you hearing it?"

The song is just horrible! Kris and Adam did what they could with the song but even Adam couldn't save it with his polished vocals, and Kris was totally massacred as the song was too high for him (which Kara also admitted fault to during her critique).

The judges rightly decided to save comment on the song itself and comment on the finalists instead. What do you think though? Have a listen to both songs in the following blogpost that I did earlier and have your say: No Boundaries Face-Off!

And that ends performance night!

After the camera's stop rolling, the crew brought Adam and Kris out again to do the 'rotating pan' shot that was shown at the beginning of the results show the next day. Here's a pic that I took while they were doing the shoot.

Can you see the tiny-weeny Idols on stage?

After we got out of the theater, we saw a big crowd at a nearby tent that was set up outside the theater, so we decided to be busy body and check it out. And good thing that we did! It was the TV station interview area where the Idols would come and give their TV interviews and also meet the fans! So we stuck around and got to meet and greet some of the Idols!

As this post is getting too long, I'll blog about meeting some of the Idols in my next post!

The big grins were as bright as the neon lights. Yes, we were having the time of our lifes!