American Idol Finale – Moment By Moment Recap | MuchMusic.com

American Idol Finale – Moment By Moment Recap

May 24th, 2007

What’s this?! Turns out that my 2-hour season finale of Lost (which I was thoroughly enjoying) gets interrupted for the live 2 hour season finale of American Idol. So naturally I had to do a play-by-play recap. Enjoy!

8:03 – Blake Lewis and Jordin Sparks take the stage and do a contrived cover of “I Saw Her Standing There”. I sink into my couch – this is going to be one long show…

8:05 – Ryan checks in with Gwen Stefani via satellite, who is in the middle of her tour. She sings her new single and she is kind of in-tune for once. Too bad her outfit is completely off-key.

8:12 – Kelly Clarkson graces the AI stage for the first time in ages and sings Never Again and sounds quite good. Now if only the song had a melody, I might give it a second listen, but no – never again.

8:18 – Margaret Fowler…? Big Bird…? Whoever she is, she wins some joke award, molests Seacrest and gives me nightmares for years to come.

8:20 – The “Top Six Guys” perform something boring and then introduce a man made out of plasticine. Oh wait – that’s Smokey Robinson. He has eyes made out of FIMO polymer clay.

8:31 – Blake does more beat-boxing. I beat my head against the wall. Paula is waving her hands in the air, waving them like she just don’t care.

8:38 – The “Top Six Girls” perform something boring and I wonder why I don’t recognize any of these people. Melinda “No-Neck” Doolittle introduces Gladys Knight. And I laugh because I thought Melinda had said she was “glad it’s night.”

8:47 – Tony Bennett. Zzzzzzz

8:55 – I wake up from my nap and see Doolittle singing with people whom I have never seen before. Somethin’ gospel me thinks.

9:01 – The obligatory American Idol Ford commercial: this one is cowboy-themed to the tune of Time After Time – wait – did I just see Kermit? You’ve lost me.

9:02 – Carrie Underwood, backed by a man with a violin, performs The Pretenders’ I’ll Stand By You. Gosh darn it, it’s actually kinda pretty. I’m a sucker for strings.

9:06 – Mega-producer Clive Davis makes a lengthy speech. I have no idea what it’s about as I just keep staring at his twitching right eye. Then Carrie Underwood gets some plaque for breaking some album sales records… or something. She looks as bemused as I am.

9:15 – The African Children’s Choir comes running onto stage with way more energy than this show deserves but they end up sounding better than any of this season’s finalists. A smile actually crosses my lips. Their genuine happiness is slightly infectious.

9:17 – That genuine happiness is quickly squelched due to an off-colour parody segment that likens JFK and Martin Luther King Jr to Sanjaya. I cringe. Sanjaya then sings off-key. I cringe again.

9:21 – Green Day?! Singing John Lennon‘s Working Class Hero?! …with a Darfur backdrop? I’m so confused.

9:26 – The preview for the new Harry Potter flick comes on during the commercial break. It provides me with the much-needed energy to keep me going for the remaining 34 mins.

9:30 – Oh great – it’s the “Soul Patrol” himself: Taylor Hicks. He continues to creep me out. And Paula waves her hands in the air, and waves them like she just don’t care. (You know, you gotta hand it to her – even with a broken nose and drugged to the core, that girl’s got spunk. I appreciate her chutzpah).

9:34 – Jordin Sparks and Ruben Studdard sing a duet. Who the f**k is Ruben Studdard?! Oh wait – he apparently won a few seasons ago. Who knew?

9:41 – Bette Midler shows up singing Wind Beneath My Wings. I didn’t realize it was 1989. And I didn’t realize Bette’s head was so freakin’ huge! She must be so top-heavy. I’m happy my TV isn’t high definition – I do NOT want to see that in greater detail.

9:50 – Seacrest: “And now an American Idol tribute to the one and only Sergeant Pepper!” Kelly Clarkson and Joe Perry then proceed to prance around the stage. I don’t know what this means. Apocalypse?

9:52 – Then Taylor Hicks comes out again, followed by Carrie Underwood, then Ruben Studdard (who?), then all of this season’s Top 12, all singing Beatles songs. OMG – it IS the apocalypse!!!

10:02 – We are running overtime and the winner is about to be announced. Randy thinks Jordin will win. Paula rambles something inarticulate (doesn’t she know we are running overtime?!). Simon says Jordin will win.

10:04 – And the winner is….? Jordin Sparks. Jordin is emotional. But I feel nothing.

10:06 – She sings that horrible ballad that won the songwriting contest. They must have had some pretty weak entries. This Is My Now…?! Um, that doesn’t even make sense.

10:07 – She starts to cry. The crowd goes wild. The fireworks start. The credits roll. The life has been sucked out of me.

10:08 – The apocalypse is actually looking pretty good right about now…

10:09 – Oh goodie – back to the Lost.

- Photograph courtesy Getty Images

Posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 10:48 am by Soja and is filed under Celebrities & Pop Culture.