Kris Allen Is Just As Surprised That He Poses A Threat To Adam Lambert’s “Idol” Victory As You Are

noah | May 14, 2009 9:15 am

Kris Allen is in! Adam Lambert is in! And Danny Gokey is out! And now… American Idol is actually a race? All the conversations I’ve had about last night’s American Idol results–in which Ryan Seacrest made Danny Gokey’s hopes of bringing his “movement” to the masses via a cheesy Kara DioGuardi song go kablooey–have focused on the fact that Kris Allen’s dark-horse ascent, aided most by him rising to the Top 3 show’s occasion with a well-placed cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless,” has made the outcome of next Wednesday night’s results show a lot more murky. Kris and Adam have shared a fanbase; Kris and Danny shared a religious background; and Kris and the tweens of America share a very special bond that will be discussed in therapy sessions for years to come. So who’s the real front-runner? If there even is one? Perhaps we could look at the numbers of people who actually put in an effort as far as their Idol fandom goes by actually trying to acquire digital copies of the hopefuls’ perforamnces. Since Idol is notoriously stingy about iTunes chart data, why don’t we look at the next best thing–freeload statistics for the studio versions of Tuesday night’s performances, as culled from the awesomely batshit leak blog Music Is The Heart Of Our Soul: Kris Allen, “Heartless”: 2,141 Kris Allen, “Apologize”: 1,136 Adam Lambert, “One”: 719 Adam Lambert, “Cryin'”: 687 Danny Gokey, “You Are So Beautiful”: 285 Danny Gokey, “Dance Little Sister”: 147 (OK, so I linked that in part because you all should see Vicki’s Courtney Love-ish raging about other bloggers. Who knew that the business of free single-trading would be so cutthroat?) Anyway, there is a definite pro-Kris (and pro-crazy!) bias on that site, but those numbers are pretty startling. (Also, if I can say it one more time: Poor Allison.) It’s hard to discuss Idol without going into analysis of previous years, but part of me wonders if we’re seeing a sort of flipped-script Cook Vs. Archuleta battle this year, where the judge-anointed front-runner with a slightly dated aesthetic (Archie in ’08, Adam this year) is eclipsed by a contestant previously thought of as cannon fodder who peaked at precisely the right time, thanks in large part to new-to-the-judges reworkings of the moldy old pop hits that the Idol faithful are supposed to slog through (Cook / Allen) . Last year, of course, ended with David Cook and his warmed-over grunge taking the crown, and even though my instincts about Adam getting the boot last night were wrong, I’m wondering if we’re going to see a similar situation unfold next week. Especially if, as I suggested to someone this morning, Kris gets super creative and whips out his version of Fountains Of Wayne’s version of “…Baby One More Time”:

C’mon, you can see it, right? American Idol [Official site]