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Why K-Blocks Lost


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Last week after the Top 24 were revealed, I posted the rules that they should follow in order to win the title of American Idol, or at least make it very far.  After the Top 24 performed for America’s votes, four failed to make the Top 20, so now it’s my job to analyze why they lost.  I’ll begin with a young woman known as K-Blocks.  Just about everyone on IDF predicted that she’d be gone in the first cut and sure enough, she was.  So now the question is why she was such an obvious choice.  By looking at the rules that all of the contestants should follow, we can see why everyone thought she would leave early and why she lost.

 

The first rule states that a contestant on American Idol must show both singing and performing talent.  And how did K-Blocks do with this rule when it came time to get America’s vote?  Not very well.  She sang “Harleys in Hawaii”, and Denton Davidson from Goldderby thought that while she was an interesting performer, she missed the high notes in the song, which MJSBigblog agreed with, saying that mentor Jelly Roll was right to tell her to work on her pitch while still thinking that she was fun.  The people on IDF were even harsher, with only two of them giving her a score over 5 and only one of those two giving her a score over a 6.  I gave her a 5.5 and said that she was too off-beat while Nytsch gave her a 2 because he couldn’t take her performance seriously.  So it’s safe to say that K-Blocks struck out with the first rule.

 

What about the second rule, states that song choice is key?  Well, at least K-Blocks didn’t try to tackle Whitney, Mariah, Celine or Carrie.  But she chose to sing a song done by Katy Perry, and moreover she chose to do a song that was probably didn’t allow her to be taken seriously as a talented singer or performer.  So K-Blocks also stumbled on this rule.

 

The third rule tells you to be consistently great or better yet, consistently improve.  And given that Denton thought that K-Blocks had nailed her Showstopper performance but stumbled with her performance in Hawaii, she probably wasn’t consistent, and she certainly wasn’t consistently great given that she was at the bottom of most ratings by IDF.  So K-Blocks also fouled up with this rule.

 

At least K-Blocks was successful with the fourth rule, which states that you need to be confident.  K-Blocks certainly had the confidence to take on a song created by Katy Perry, one of the judges.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly enough to save her, so I’ll move on.

 

What about the fifth rule, which states that you must know who you are as an artist?  Well, I think that K-Blocks knew who she was as an artist, so she got that part right.  But I also noted that a contestant’s artistic identity must be current and relatively marketable.  And given that I thought that K-Blocks was too off-beat, she clearly didn’t have a current or marketable identity.  So K-Blocks ultimately screwed up here as well.

 

The sixth rule states that contestants must remember that they are a package.  I think that K-Blocks knew that she was a package; the problem was that she had a package that was hard for most people to take very seriously.  So K-Blocks failed with this rule as well.

 

The seventh rule states that contestants have to take any advice given to them and follow it.  Jelly Roll urged K-Blocks to work on her pitch but given that she had some off-key notes, she clearly didn’t follow his advice enough to save her performance.  Still, she had bigger problems than this one, so I’ll move on.

 

The final rule states that contestants must gather and sustain a fan base.  K-Blocks had a slow start in gathering a fan base, partly because she wasn’t a country singer and couldn’t get support from country fans, partly because her audition wasn’t shown, and partly because she was such an off-beat performer.  And her performance in Hawaii wasn’t going to help her sustain or increase whatever fan base she might have had.  Thus K-Blocks ultimately blew this rule as well.

 

K-Blocks had several things going against her.  She had an off-beat artistic identity that prevented her from gaining much of a fan base and hindered her ability to package herself well enough to gain fans who might take her seriously.  Still, she could have saved herself in the first round by singing a song that would be good enough for people to get on her bandwagon.  Quintavious from the first group might have sung a Carrie Underwood song, but he sang it well enough, and made it more unique to him, thus saving himself this round.  But K-Blocks chose a song that couldn’t enable people to see her as more than a joke, and she didn’t sing it very well either.  In the end, K-Blocks couldn’t be taken seriously as a singer or performer, and that is why K-Blocks lost.

Edited by CarmenSandiego
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She was never gonna go far because of her personality alone, but had she stuck more to the Amy Winehouse type of stuff, she maybe could’ve survived another round. Great analysis. 

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Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, Carrie_On said:

She was never gonna go far because of her personality alone, but had she stuck more to the Amy Winehouse type of stuff, she maybe could’ve survived another round. Great analysis. 


Possibly.  But she didn’t stick with Amy Winehouse-type songs, and she paid the price.

Edited by CarmenSandiego
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