idol worship

a love letter to the lost joy of watching the same thing

“p.s. BO BICE MADE THE TOP 12! kari had to ask me to sit down because when they were announcing it because i was like running around the room freaking out like an idiot. awesome.”

-an actual excerpt from my livejournal in 2005

i often joke that i’m the last person on earth who still watches american idol, even though i don’t even really watch it anymore. but every year, without fail, i’ll tune in to view the first episode of each season in the hopes that the magic and comfort i came to find in it might be recaptured.

that hasn’t been the case in more than a decade, but it never stops me from hoping. can anyone name an idol winner since 2005? i don’t even think i can, dude. but during the show’s heyday in the early aughts, it was an entire universe. ripped, potato-quality limewire versions of “foolish heart” by corey clark (whom, anecdotally, i became inexplicably twitter friends with for a period of time) and “don’t let the sun go down on me” by clay aiken that i’d casually sneak in between tracks by the strokes and the juliana theory on my mix CDs. team kelly or team justin (as history has proven, there was only one right answer). ace young’s 2006 performance of “father figure,” which my college suitemates and i watched with dropped jaws and which spurred my second sexual awakening (after brandon boyd in the incubus video for “drive,” natch). the early-internet virality of the crying sanjaya girl, and relatedly, the trolling site vote for the worst that gained a surprisingly impactful amount of traction. taylor hicks and his soul patrol. randy jackson’s eminently quotable, “it’s a no from me, dawg.” william hung. “pants on the ground.” i once even found a voting phone number scrawled in a school library book during the first season; the immersion was real and complete.

during the summer of 2007, i worked as a hostess at a faux irish pub in downtown boston, often during the busy wednesday night pub trivia shift. my colleagues and i would play along once most of the patrons had been seated and we were rendered useless, and the bonus round typically consisted of photos of celebrities that you had to identify. one evening, it was idol top 20 finalists from past years. my time to shine!

of course, i correctly named every single one — and i still chuckle when i think about how our always-sarcastic manager strolled by, took one glance at the sheet, and dryly quipped, “that’s sad.” in 2010, i indoctrinated my idol-virgin roommate and had her feverishly narrating each episode after a few weeks. and in 2014, i attended a rally held at my former high school’s track for alex preston, who had made it to the top three contestants in season 13; undoubtedly the most exciting thing that had happened in my hometown in years. while it’s been a little more than a decade since then, i really can’t imagine such an event occurring today in the same way. hundreds of people coming together in person to support a local singer on a competition show? that behavior belongs to a different time, a past version of us.

when you really think about it, idol represented one of the last major vestiges of monoculture in a rapidly-changing technology and media landscape. like the seinfeld series finale or survivor, the first handful of seasons conjured that fever-pitch excitement that can only come from gathering with your family and friends in front of the TV set, biting your nails in anticipation of the winner reveal. and for me, it still represents the comfort and warmth of that unity, those memories, and that era.

i consider myself pretty pop culture literate, even at my ripe old age of 39. yet, it seems as if every week, i have to look up some celebrity whom i’ve never heard of on instagram, only to find that they have millions of followers. can you imagine someone in 2003 having that kind of reach without being at least somewhat widely known?

call me old-fashioned, but i also miss having more common media ground with the people i meet. sure, there are the streaming behemoths like succession and severance — and admittedly, i’ve only seen a couple episodes of each — but the immediacy has dwindled and the urgency has cooled. the phrase “must-see TV” is all but extinct. i understand that i’ll never again be 16 years old, writhing with anxiety and excitement on the living room floor, willing ryan seacrest to say kelly clarkson’s name, and i’ve accepted that.

but i’ll also probably never again be writhing with anxiety and excitement on my living room floor about anything on television ever, and i think that’s worth mourning.

you’d think that a world with countless choices and shows for every niche interest and taste would be ideal. and i guess it is. but if i had my way, entertainment would be less fragmented and more familial again. in a time when we’re divided by technology, politics, and perspectives, it feels like one of the last tethers of connection has been severed. like, yeah, everything is burning and the most benign social media post will provoke someone’s ire, but how about that performance of “mad world” last night, huh? sure, we still get the occasional glimpses and brief flickers of how things regularly used to be — tom holland’s performance of rihanna’s “umbrella” on lip sync battle, coldplaygate, and dancing with the stars come to mind — but we’re not only on different pages of a book these days…we’re all reading different books completely.

without those collective cultural moments that remind us, if only for an hour or two, that we have something in common, do we drift further and further apart? i take solace in the fact that idol will forever be that link for me, even when it isn’t at all. at least i’ll always have bo bice and constantine maroulis to keep me company.