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Just Shuts Down
Ranking American Idol contestants might exit with Soundscan expectations, but I'd imagine few viewers look out for post-show artistic success. Idol as talent search is about the search. It's a program about judgment, it's not about results. It has manufactured three undeniable stars: Simon, Paula, Randy.
Idol has had musical success stories, sure, at least three big ones (Clarkson, Underwood, Daughtry). Even with its recent ratings slide it's still the highest-rated television program in the country, the biggest marketing platform you could get. I would guess the show's sold a few Ford hybrids, too. But reaching beyond whatever remnants of the fanatical texting populace remain after the finale, reaching people who actually listen to music to listen to music, not to judge and root, that's a whole new competition.
There was no reason to think Kellie Pickler (myspace) - sixth place on Season Five, if you're counting - would record anything worth hearing. Or record at all. Cast as an exaggerated (but winning (or at least, placing)) dumb blonde hick, Pickler was more grin than voice. She seemed destined for the role of TV Personality. Morning talk show correspondent. Something like that.
Her 2006 record Small Town Girl went gold, landed at #9 on the Billboard 200 and topped the magazine's country chart. Oh, and: There's some seriously good stuff on it. All three of the record's singles, two of which were co-written by Pickler, move differently. "Red High Heels" sasses, struts. "Things That Never Cross a Man's Mind" smirks, drives. And "I Wonder" digs in and breaks your heart.
Have a hanky handy:
Perhaps it's because she's an Idol alum, one who very consciously developed a personality to act out, one who returned to the show with a very surgical makeover... that any hint of truth from her proves so affecting. Especially when she works in a genre that loves to profess authenticity as a requirement, package it as a selling point. She's introduced here as a "small town girl made good" who's "singing her story straight from the heart." Go on, pull the other one.
But while Pickler's life and manner might have been mined for yuks on Idol - She was a roller skating waitress! She can't pronounce "calamari!" -she's had enough knocks to make at least a couple good country songs. This one's for her mother, who at eighteen abandoned her two-year-old girl. (Kellie was raised in a small town in North Carolina by grandparents. Her father's an ex-con; that song'll come later, I guess.)
The songs are good because the songs are good (and this one was written by Pickler and three other people). I like the recorded versions just fine, but I've really responded to the live performances (like that unplugged, charming version of "Man's Mind"). Which isn't surprising. The assumption is that these reality contestants have their vocals tweaked into place during production, so the singing's where it should be on record. But Pickler's a personality, not a voice. She came from TV, so of course YouTube>mp3.
This performance at the 2007 CMAs is amazing. Not technically. She's still stylistically erratic. Even her accent seems a smidge fake. But it's not (despite a brush with questionable choreography and that oddly unused earpiece) overworked or oversold. Just as the song is direct and meaningful but restrained at the right moments (that dangling thought about forgiveness is a killer). When the tears come (hers and mine) I do not feel manipulated at all. There is a greatness as Pickler struggles to regain her poise, just as she might if talking to her mother, and as the crowd roars to support her.
This is A Moment, it can only exist with this song and this singer at this venue. Because "I Wonder" uses geography to represent places in Pickler's life: Carolina is where she was left behind and brought up; California is where she thinks her mother's supposedly run off to (the line "I hear the weather's nice in California, there's sunny skies as far as I can see" seems like a flub - the second "I" should be a "you," right? - but works as an economically conveyed fantasy reunion), and Tennessee is where Pickler's headed to make her life. It's a song about growing up and leaving things behind and Pickler here - here, on stage in Nashville, Tennessee - sings a daughter's pain as a grown woman.
*
There's a new Solomon Burke (myspace) record, and... a lot of it's pretty bad. Not the singing, of course, that couldn't be. But the tone on Like a Fire's set by its title track; written by Eric Clapton, it's the sort of gruel Clapton's been ladling out for years. You can stream the whole thing at AOL. I dare you to ask for seconds.
This track, though, is devastating. I'm not going to want to talk about it when it's over.