On The Air

So Chris Sligh is gone. Eh. Won’t miss him. That’s not something I would have thought I’d ever hear myself saying even a month ago, but it’s true now. He started out pretty fantastic, in fact his first audition was the best out of all of them. But then he started slipping by degrees, each week getting a little worse. I used to be excited when I’d see him coming up, wondering what kind of performance he would put on. And I found myself disappointed each time. It got to the point where I was feeling…not dread, exactly, but more like “eh.” That’s all I would feel when I saw him. “Oh, yeah, whatever.” And this week I actually found myself looking forward more to Sanjaya than Chris Sligh, so that’s when I really knew it was over. And then when he came out and completely butchered a Police song, worse than anything even Sanjaya himself could have done? Yeah. Really over.

America agreed, so he’s gone. Chris also had no hook to set him apart. Like LaKisha has her voice; Melinda has the whole scared rabbit thing; Blake has his beatboxing and his being from the future; Phil looks like Gollum; Haley knows how to shake her boobs; Sanjaya has a whole box full of Sanjaya and is a magical creature all unto himself. Everyone has a hook that makes you remember them and makes you want to keep them around. But what does Chris have? The hair, that’s about it. He used to have an attitude, and some humor, but he took a jab at Simon early on and I think he got a talking-to behind the scenes, because all of a sudden it was all gone. It’s like when Tigger wasn’t allowed to Bounce anymore. The life was gone out of him. Leaving him with…what? His fat? His glasses? A whole lot of nothing was what he was left with, and I’m really surprised he didn’t go sooner. America just got tired of him.

So let’s go out remembering Chris for his greatest moment. And even this is 80% Blake.