Despite it going on for 5 years already, this is actually the first time I'm following the competition, albiet not at all religiously. Thanks to the time when I stumbled upon Constantine's jazz performance last year in one of the rounds (read all about it here), I began to sit up and notice the contest. The auditions are still a pain to watch, and so I haven't started by watching the auditions. I started when the real competition began.

Missed the girl's contest last night and only caught the men's one tonight. Chris Daughtry is still my favourite, and I think that he has been delivering consistantly powerful performances each night. Hope he goes far in this competition. Frankly I can't really remember how the others fared cos I was having dinner while it was being shown on StarWorld. However, memorable ones included Taylor Hicks who impressed me with tonight's performance, and Kevin Covais who still made me cringe. I thought he absolutely butchered that beautiful song 'Starry Starry night'. I mean, that pseduo-opera-like voice is just sooooo out of place with that song, and it seriously doesn't help that, as I've said before, he makes singing sound like a chore. And I can't believe that Paula and Randy were all praises for him....

Which brings me to my comments on the judges. Of course, even if I've never followed a single episode of AI for the past 4 years, the reputations of Randy, Paula and Simon Cowell have reached farther than the show itself. I've heard a lot about how Simon is so mean and how Randy and Paula were the more compassionate ones. Now that I've seen it for myself, I think that it is true that Simon is mean. But you know what? I actually find myself agreeing with him most of the time. Some of his comments may come across as being quite uncalled for, but most of the time he makes real sense. In fact, it is Paula's and Randy's comments that I find the most unbelievable and at times so favourable that it is to the point of exasperation.

But one thing I do note about this competition is that unlike us Asian who always think about 'losing face', these people seem to be able to take criticism in their stride and almost always manage to say something in response that do not come across as pretentious (again, unlike some of the reality shows in Singapore. Urgh)and defensive but show a sense of fair competition. I like that feeling. Ok, maybe the the groups round which I never watched wasn't at all like this, I dunno. Whatever it is, that's one of my favourite things about AI so far.