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Also available on The National Post’s The Ampersand!
Monday night marks the first live performance episode of Canadian Idol’s 6th season. The competition looks as tough as ever as 24 of Canada’s top singers from all over this awesome country fight to earn the seemingly useless title of Canadian Idol.
This year’s finalists feature singers from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Newfoundland, British Columbia and Ontario. Looking at the Top 24, I can’t help but notice that my home province, New Brunswick, has been shut out yet again. That marks two straight years that not one officially bilingual singer has gotten through to the viewer-voting portion of the popular summer series.
Come to think of it, New Brunswick has never had a serious contender for Canadian Idol, which seems surprising seeing as how we are the home of such famous singers as Roch Voisine and….
Some New Brunswickers will argue that in Season 3 we had Casey Leblanc, who made it all the way to the Top 5. But those people are also from Nackawic and in the minority. The rest of us look at Casey like our own little Sanjaya: an okay singer who over stayed her welcome, thanks to a devoted voting population.
That voting population also tried to help Brandon Jones from Quispamsis, but he only made it as far at the Top 7, at which point he most likely returned to his job at the ever popular New Brunswick call centres.
But then again the voting process for Canadian has never really been all that fair has it? How can it be when some provinces have millions and millions of people while others celebrate reaching six digit-sized populations?
It seems odd to me that no one as ever really acknowledge how unfair the voting process is in Canada. Out of the past five seasons two winners have been from Ontario, two from Alberta and one, irony acknowledged, from Quebec. Which, correct me if I am wrong, are also Canada’s most populated provinces.
Maybe the show should be split up to make it fairer. The smaller provinces and territories (Yukon, Nunavut, NWT, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and PEI) should all team up for their own version of Under-Populated Idol. The eventual winner takes on the champion of Over-Populated Idol. The winner of that can be crowned the real Canadian Idol and collect their prize of low-rotation radio play and a lifetime worth of awkward conversations with Ben Mulroney.
At least for now, it looks like fellow New Brunswickers will just have to wait until maybe next summer to have our day in the spotlight. Until then, we’ll have always have the McLobster sandwich and Roch Voisine. Suck on that Ontario!
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I don’t like to leave my apartment. If I do it usually means that I going to spend money, get called “moby” by a group of guys in a hummer and get sunburned. Plus, what happens if I miss a show on MTV or Much More Music, my Tivo stops working, then I get to work and they have all decided to start watching TV and it’s a show on MTV none the less, than I have nothing to talk to them about and because I have nothing to talk to them about they stop talking about television and go back to talking about knitting and their children……what happens then huh? HUH? I think I’ve proven my point.
But every now and then I will find a solid reason to leave my apartment and for the first time in three months that reason will be taking place on Wednesday night.
Andy Brown is a singer/songwriter from my hometown of Fredericton (well actually Woodstock but is there really a difference?), I never got a chance to see him while I was in Fredericton but I just found out that he’ll be in Calgary this week, so I figure now is better than never right?
Hope to see you there Calgary readers….and hard core Edmonton fans!
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Even though I swore I wouldn’t do it, I ended up watching the final episode of Canadian before the Top 22 24 start performing next week. And I actually have some favorites. They include:
Mookie Morris (Toronto)
Sebastian Pigott (Toronto)
Oliver Pigott (Toronto)
Mitch MacDonald (Port Hood)
Earl Stevenson (Lloydminster)
Tetiana Ostapowych (Toronto)
Paul Clifford (Port Moody)
Martin Kerr (Edmonton)
Lindsay Robins (Montreal)
Lindsay Barr (Halifax-pictured)
Quick thoughts
I don’t want to be insensitive (for once) but didn’t it seem that every contestant had a family member that had recently died?
I can’t help but wonder how they really talented folk singers are going to be able to tackle a summer full of cheesy songs.
How did so many of them not know the lyrics to Umbrella? Is there a more overplayed/covered song out there? You would think osmoses would have sunk in there some where. I blame CBC and all their talking.
If I never hear Maroon 5′s “She Will Be Loved Again” it will be too soon
Not one person from New Brunswick or PEI. I’ll never understand why either of these provinces that I love have been able to put in a serious contender for the Idol crown. And yes, I’m excluding Casey LeBlanc.
I have no problem saying that this group is probably the most talented group of finalists I have ever seen in Idol. Seriously crazy.
I hate when Ben Mulroney hauls out his french accent to announce someone’s name.
It’s the first time that I can remember that there are more guys than girls. I guess the producers realize that boys always win this thing anyway. Unless you count Melissa O’Neill…which let’s be honest, no one does.
>When it comes to Apple Products Canada has always pretty much sucked. Not as much as Canadian Idol but pretty close.
We still don’t have the Iphone, Apple Stores are as scarce as my chances of ever getting on Survivor and Itunes caught up in copyright hell when it comes to Tv shows, movies and videos.
Well a couple of months ago we finally got the right to buy and download TV Shows on Itunes, granted they are Canadian shit like Heartland, Corner Gas, Robson Arms and JPod. Over the past couple of weeks things have been getting a little better. South Park has recently popped up. So has The Tudors and pretty much the entire Spike TV line up.
And on Wednesday morning many Itunes users in Canada probably noticed that we FINALLY have movies….to rent. Hey, it’s pretty than nothing. Prices of the movies range from $3,99 to $5,99. To how do you rent a digital movie? Well once you download it you have two months to watch it BUT once you start watching it you only have 48 hours to finish. In that 48 hours you can watch the movie as much as you want. I also checked into it and as of Wednesday you cannot rent the movie 48 Hours. unfortunately
The great thing about renting these movies is that you can rent them the same day they come in video stores (remember those!) But be warned you can only watch them on Video Ipods, the new Nanos, Ipod Touch and those 4 people with Apple TV can watch it too. So as long as you have one of those gadgets you too can now rent THX 1138 which for some inexplicable reason is #98 on the Itunes rental charts. Seriously.
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Canadian Idol sucks.
There I said. We were all thinking it but I just said. Actually it doesn’t all suck. Usually they are actually capable of finding some wonderfully talented singers, it’s just they always end up losing to shit like Kalan Porter. And yeah I know that I will now have the wrath of Kalan-ites on me now because they use Google Key Word search to track all things Kalan. And you know what else I’m not scared of? Telling you that Kalan was actually in rehab last year for anorexia but it’s big secret in the industry.
Oops.
I’m sorry but after 5 months of American Idol we only get a two week reprieve until we have Ben Mulroney all in our face. And trust me nobody wants that. Tonight’s 1 hour premiere just seemed too rushed. I’m all about skipping the bad talent but three cities in one hour is just crazy! Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton were all covered in tonight’s show which featured about 5-8 singers from each city. Thus giving those who actually got air time a HUGE advantage once some of them get into the Top 24.
Anyway in case you did watch it I wanted to give a quick shout out to
Caitlynne Medreck who made a quick appearance in the final moments in the confessional montage saying “I don’t want to sing pop music anyway”. This broke my heart because I did
a play with
Caitlynne a couple of years ago (see above picture) and I don’t think I have ever seen anyone has much talent as she as. I’m not joking. (Although I do feel like now is a good time to bring up this still painful
Nomination shocker) At only 18 this girl is definitely going to be huge and I can’t wait to keep telling people that I knew her. Because if there is one thing Calgary has taught me, I can hold on to memories for as long as I want.
Oh and if you are in the Calgary region you can check out Caitlynne at the Oh Canada Eh dinner theatre in Canmore. Check her out and you’ll see exactly what I mean!
