Another season is over.
It is still hard to believe that the sixth Canadian Idol has been named and that it will be another year before the new one is crowned. When I look back at the songs that I heard, the performances that I saw, and the season that has now culminated in the coronation of someone who I feel could challenge as the best winner of all-time, there are two themes that I feel completely encapsulated this season.
This season of Canadian Idol has been all about surprises and stereotypes. Let me explain.
Monday night featured the final performances from the final two and there was something that not only fascinated me about the show, but also completely caught me off-guard. It was when host Ben Mulroney revealed that Mitch MacDonald had won the coin toss and elected to go first instead of second. It didn’t make any sense to me! I mean I know I have been harsh on Mitch this season (it wasn’t personal, strictly based on my live observation), but I just couldn’t understand why the coin toss winner wouldn’t want to go last and be the final person to give Canada a performance before the voting lines opened up. If I remember correctly, I think most of the Idol winners of the past have almost always gone last.
It shocked me that others didn’t pick up on this fact either. I guess that’s why I am the world’s foremost reality television expert. After the finale, while I wanted to talk to everyone, Mitch was who I wanted to talk to the most (fine you caught me, only if Mariah Carey wasn’t around, which she wasn’t) to ask him why he chose to go first. He explained to me that the coin toss happened last Tuesday after he and Theo finished their Top 2 photo shoot. He said that Jully Black, some eTalk people and some Idol staff members witnessed it and then he answered my question about what was one of the most shocking moments of Idol this year.
I decided to go first because Theo is tough to follow at times,” MacDonald admitted. “He is always very consistent with his performances so going first helps to take off a bit of pressure. I do not regret the choice at all. I was very relaxed going into my first performance and it was a lot of fun opening the show.”
While the coin toss was the biggest surprise for me and that there have been many other shocking moments on Canadian Idol this season, I think the one thing that surprised no one was the fact that Theo Tams was named the winner. The Lethbridge Alberta native dominated the competition immediately after the Top 10, and it came as a shock to no one in attendance that he was named the ultimate victor. The interesting thing to note, however, is that Tams’ expected victory was the only exception to the rule of surprise that took over the sixth season of Canadian idol.
On Monday night, Tams proved his dominance with a killer set list that included a brilliant version of “Good Mother” (by Jann Arden) and the best “I Wanna Know What Love Is” cover that I have ever heard. The thing is that Mitch MacDonald did not throw in the towel (as I almost expected him to do). He made strong song selections as well and I especially enjoyed the winner’s single that was penned for him called “Where We Begin” which I felt was a perfect match to highlight his vocal strength. To be fair, while I thought that Tams was the better performer of the pair on Monday, I actually thought that Mitch’s single was stronger (although I enjoyed Tams’ “Sing” as well). In hindsight, I guess it shouldn’t be a shock that Mitch did an incredible job on Monday, but for me it certainly was as I had been calling his dismissal from the show on an almost weekly basis.
The marvellous spectacle that was Wednesday’s finale also did not come as much of a surprise. It was pretty hard to beat a line-up that featured:
Hedley (“Old School”)
Jully Black (“Queen”)
John Legend (“Green Light”)
Mariah Carey (“I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time” and “We Belong Together”)
This was in addition to a couple of group performances as well as the duet between the final two which has become synonymous with Idol finales as Mitch and Theo sang “Hasn’t Hit Me Yet” with each playing their signature instrument of choice (the piano for Theo and the guitar for Mitch). I thought it was the best line-up and organization of stars that any season of Canadian Idol has featured and that’s not even counting
After nearly 100 minutes of phenomenal music, when Ben announced the winner… it didn’t come as a shock to me or most of the people in the John Bassett theatre that Theo was named the winner.
I know that I have discussed it at great length, but this season of Canadian Idol will forever be remembered as “the one with all the dudes.” I never thought that any Idol season would ever feature a Top 10 comprised of eight male competitors and only two female singers and it is a point that I am still not in favor of and this was something that I have focused upon for the entire season.
On Wednesday, I was featured in the Toronto Star where I talked about why I felt the way that I did. Judge Jake Gold disagreed with me and after the finale, I caught up with him and asked them to talk to me about it.
“Two out of the past five years, the final two were two guys. So it really doesn’t matter what the make-up is. Next year, we could end up with 9 guys and 15 girls,” Gold said. “We don’t know. We got the mandate to pick the best 24 and that’s what we wanted to do. There isn’t a chart just for females and a chart just for guys.”
Host Ben Mulroney agreed with Jake and said that I was wrong.
“I think anytime you draw an arbitrary line and say half the lot is going to be women and half the lot is going to be men, I think we have tried and it has worked to a certain extent and there have been advantages and drawbacks but this year, I think we saw the cards we had been dealt and they were mostly jacks and kings and not so much queens,” he said.
Ben said that there was a “Eureka” moment when most of the Idol stuff all realized that they had the opportunity to reinvent the show.
“You don’t want to pick someone who doesn’t deserve to be there and there were more guys that deserved to be there than women. That might change next year, but this year, I think it was completely representative of what we found and that’s the whole point of the Top 22 or Top 24 is to give Canadians a cross-section of what we found.”
The reason that I have maintained that Idol should be an even split between guys and girls is because I have always looked at it as a reality show. While its mandate has always been to find the best singer, I still feel that it is more about appealing to as many people as possible and by only have two girls in the competition, it unintentionally geared the show to girls who vote repeatedly for the boys. Mulroney addressed the stereotype and said that the show is, has, and always will be about finding the best musician.
“I think last year when we introduced instruments, I think a lot of musicians sat and home and said ‘we’re going to wait a year, we want to see how this works out.’ I think this year a lot of people came that stayed home (before) and what we had 8 out of the 10 who played instruments and then you look at a guy like Mitch who is such a good ambassador for our show. You look at the song choices they had… anyone who is a struggling musician next year and is sitting at home and going ‘oh, I don’t want to go out for Canadian Idol… they are going to make me be someone I am not’ is clearly not paying attention. Or they don’t want to pay attention,” Mulroney said. “Canadian Idol is anything you want it to be as a musician. We don’t tell you what to be. You tell us what Canadian Idol is going to be and that I love because that’s what changes every year.”
Last year’s winner, Brian Melo also talked to me about the stereotypes and how they are wrong. I asked him about how he felt about a new Idol being crowned and if this would finally help him shed the Idol image.
“I feel it’s a good thing. I did my Canadian Idol thing, but if I was worried that this was it for me after this Idol thing, I’d be done. I want longevity in this career and the only way you do that is by being a credible artist and getting better with your craft. I am so happy for Theo and Mitch and what they have accomplished and I am pleased to hand the crown over. It’s just my time to establish myself as an artist.”
Melo said that he wasn’t concerned about being forgotten now that Theo Tams is the new Idol in town.
“I don’t think you’ll ever get rid of the Canadian Idol brand which is fine because they have given me so much, but at the same time, I know what he is going through. I have grown a lot this past year,” he said. “I have learned a lot and I am excited to show people where I am going to go with my career. I am not worried at all.”
About three hours after he was named the winner, Theo finally arrived to the red carpet outside the finale after-party and I had to obviously asked him the question (that I am sure just about every reporter did over the past few days). It’s one of those questions that you don’t want to ask (just because it is so overplayed and you know you will receive a generic answer to), but that you have to ask just because it is mandatory to ask it.
Murtz Jaffer: Alright Theo how does it feel? (Somewhere, my journalism teacher’s stomach is turning!)
“It’s just the most surreal feeling, I am trying to put it into words and I just can’t. I just can’t. I am just so happy to be standing here and to be the last one of the 24 that we started with,” Tams said. “It’s such an honor because everyone was so talented and such strong musicians and I just can’t believe it.”
When I asked Tams what his favorite moment was, aside from winning, he hesitated before finally claiming that it was when he sang “Sweet Ones” because of how it also broke a stereotype.
“I think the best moment for me was when I played the Sarah Slean song because for me that was a big turning point in terms of showing that the piano can be a huge performance instrument too. It’s not just a ballad instrument. It’s not just something you need to sit and be serious at,” he said. “It can be a lot of fun and I was glad that I was able to do something that felt like home for me but still be really show-y and a lot of fun.”
I told him that I knew he had won when Idol producers chose to leave both the piano and the guitar on-stage before Ben announced the ultimate victor. I thought that it while it would be easy to move the guitar to the back (which is what happened after Theo won), it would be impossible to roll back the piano quickly. Theo addressed my thought.
“Mitch said that if he won, he was actually going to use the piano and he was going to like stand on it or sit on it or something so he was going to use it as a prop but I am glad that it was there and I got to play it.”
Showing the media prowess of a wily career veteran, Tams was quick to credit the runner-up.
“I think it just goes to show so much about Mitch. Mitch just has this aura about him that draws thousands of fans and he has a huge fanbase. Either way, both of us, we just have a huge start to a career and that’s what I am just so proud of,” he said. “After Ben said my name, Mitch gave me a hug and said ‘I love you and I am so proud of you’ and it was so genuine. It was so much bigger than winning to me, for him to be able to say that to me.”
When Mitch followed Theo on the carpet, I asked him if he really told Theo that he loved him and he explained that he really was happy for Theo before flashing me the trademark smile that he has become so famous for.
“Not in the man to man kind of way of course, but he’s an amazing person and we have built a great friendship through this competition,” Macdonald said. “It’s always great to win but I got to be happy for Theo. He just wanted this so bad and it was just so happy to see him happy and that’s what I felt right off the bat,” MacDonald said. “He was so excited to win and you have to feed off that joy.”
I continued with my surprise line of questioning when I asked Mitch if he was caught off-guard with the loss, especially after being the only contestant in the Top 10 who had never been in the bottom third of voting. He agreed that it might have been a result of Drew’s support base leaning more toward Theo after their favorite was sent packing.
“Maybe… there’s a lot of votes there and they had to be split somehow and maybe they went in that direction. That’s cool man,” he said. “It was out my hands, it was in Canada’s and you don’t know what caused it but hey Theo’s in the winner’s circle and that’s all good.”
Mitch said that he was going to go back home to Port Hood, Nova Scotia in a couple of weeks to relax before starting work on his own record. When I asked him what the odds were of naming the record “Murtz,” his answer wasn’t really a surprise.
“Probably not very great odds,” he said. “Sorry Murtz.”
After interviewing on the red carpet, I went inside to enjoy the Idol after-party. The next day, I stopped in at eTalk to check out the Top 10 who were appearing there to answer some final questions. It was a cute segment and featured some baby pictures where the audience was asked to matc h the pics to their favorite idols. It was amusing.
And so another season is in the books. And after covering them all, I have to say that this one will stand out to me for a long time, precisely because of all the surprises it featured and the stereotypes that it addressed.
I just hope we can get some chicks on the next one.
Oh wait, there’s always So You Think You Can Dance Canada…
