Dean's Thoughts on Entertainment

Clay Aiken vs. Ruben Studdard



I’m not a big fan of American Idol, but since it is proven that the winner will have a career I guess I will throw in my two cents. I watched an episode or two this last season whenever my girlfriend or my roommate’s girlfriend made me, and I felt no love for the show and especially Clay Aiken. He really is effeminate, and whether or not he is gay, you Aiken fans can admit that much. And he always picked the corniest pop drama song that I grew sick of him almost immediately. Ruben is a big black guy who sings soul music, how could he not win? So, I cashed out on the show and was not at all surprised by the outcome of the show. The thing that gets me now, is that they are really pushing the “Oooooh, What if Clay Aiken outsells Ruben Studdard, does it prove American Idols’ decision wrong?” No, because Clay Aiken is guaranteed to outsell Ruben Studdard, regardless of talent. Why??? Because Pop music always outsells soul music, it isn’t a fair comparison. If two vacuum cleaner salesmen are pitted against each other and one has to sell in Lancaster and the other has to sell in New York guess who is going to win? Amish people don’t buy vacuums, the comparison is unfair, and the numbers would not necessarily reflect the talent of the salesman. The reason I didn’t really like American Idol is that it is really hard to compare talent across genres, and they very quickly eliminated any genre other than sappy pop, except for Reuben who was too much of a presence to destroy. I knew Ruben was going to win, not because he was a superior talent but he was more likable. The collision of the two different genres made contrast and comparison implausible so it came to a battle of preference of style and personality.

On a side note, I think Ruben will have very limited success and will not have staying power. Clay Aiken plays well to the sappy pop crowd and has the pipes to make it sound good, but his image isn’t going to win fans. If I was him I would get into a minor sex scandal so he loses both the gay and the pansy image. Until then, I think it will depend on how long he can hang on to middle-aged women, and that crowd has no taste. I mean Celine Dion still exists…

Note: I wrote this a few weeks ago and lost it. I could have edited it to the present day but I didn’t feel like it. But just to let you know Clay beat Ruben’s first week sales by 200,000 copies and Ruben got a single star for his first album from Rolling Stone.

Second Note: Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard's pictures do not exist on Google or Yahoo picture searches. I found this entirely bizarre. And beside a conspiracy theory against me, they must have exclusive rights to picture use or something. Weird. So anyway, thats why you get no pics.