…But this is not a story about the winner of the contest.
This is a story about the evacuation of retirement villages that happened tonight so that AI could bring us some interesting entertainment.
I mean, come on! Let’s take a look at who we saw tonight:
-Rod Stewart, whose first album was in 1969 and whose sinuously sexy movement has stiffened into the creakiness of an old man…
-Carlos Santana, who performed at Woodstock – in 1969…
-Lionel Ritchie, whose career also began in 1969, when Nixon was president (the first term)…
-Kiss, who leaped into the limelight in 1972…
-Queen, whose lead singer, Freddy Mercury, died almost two decades ago… (were they auditioning Adam for lead singer, I wonder?)
-Cyndi Lauper, whose career was launched during the Reagan administration (though pairing her with the red-headed Allison was a brilliant combo)…
-Steve Martin, born in 1945 and looking as if he yearned for the adult company he finds on SNL…
Queen Latifah brought a kind of a youthfulness to the event – though she’s almost 40…
Back in the 1960s, the fact that Fergie and the Black-Eyed Peas are all more than 30 years old would have made them untrustworthy among the under-30 crowd, but today, in 2009, they’re the freshest, hippest and most happening act on AI tonight…
It was interesting, because in a show that imposes an age limit on the contestants – they can be no more than 28 years old – most of the performers on the finale had established careers long before the very oldest AI contestants were born.
And for a show that seems to want to capture the youth market, they seem eager to provide gainful employment to people old enough to retire. Talented folks, for the most part, but a strange collection of musical artists that upset all expectations I had for the show.
Are there no young people in the American music industry? Or do youthful musicians reserve themselves for the challenge of AI?
And what about that upset? Kudos to Kris!
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