Idol Watch

Simon Cowell to quit American Idol

Another season, another story about Simon Cowell departing the show he helped make a phenom.

Except, this time, it just may happen. After all, Paula Abdul is gone from the program for its coming ninth season. Everything ultimately comes to an end sometime.

Simon's contract expires after the ninth season ends in May and Reuters reports his brother blurted out that Simon's "bored" with the show and ready to move on.

 Can you blame him? Here's a program that introduces several exciting new contestants each season and voters keep on giving the title to bland, forgettable "Idols" such as Kris Allen and David Cook. We'd be bored, too, altho Simon's millions could tend to make even Kris seem interesting and endurable for another few months.

It could also be the usual pre-show hype given that Idol's season begins in a few weeks on Fox. Simon could re-up if, say, the addition of Ellen DeGeneres as a judge stirs his interest for one more go 'round. If I was a betting man, however, I'd bet he leaves this time. Idol's really run its course, the introduction of  Adam Lambert, notwithstanding.

(Speaking of Adam, excellent appearance on Jay Leno Show the other night. He sang his current single, Whataya Want From Me, which, like the album it comes from, is proving to be a real grower, and he was engaging and upbeat in the interview portion.)

Here's the Reuters story on Simon. Photo: AP

Follow Howard Cohen on Twitter @HowardCohen

Fallen Idols

Despite the Adam Lambert Media Explosion, it doesn't appear the recent season of Idol will do anything to reverse the trend of popular show, unpopular CDs.

This week, only Season 4 winner Carrie Underwood manages to find a birth in Billboard's Top 10 with her third album -- and even then Carrie's Play On, promoted heavily via TV appearances, isn't moving the kind of numbers her first two did (granted, album sales overall are down).

Adam Lambert's For Your Entertainment had an unexceptional bow at No. 3 with 198,000 copies and plunges to No. 22 in his second week. His often infectious album deserves better. Everyone's talking about him, but where it counts, at the cash register, he's coming up short with this album. Maybe a tour will help expose FYE's fine songs like Music Again, Soaked and the Lady Gaga-written Fever.)

Not surprisingly, the forgettable Kris Allen hasn't managed to excite either his fans or rope in new listeners as his debut album is on target to be the poorest seller for a winner's CD yet (and, yes, that includes Taylor Hicks who everyone outside of the Soul Patrol makes fun of. But Taylor's debut a few years ago will wind up far ahead of Kris' in sales at the rate Kris is going. He debuted at No. 11 two weeks ago and has already dipped to No. 52.)

 
Fourth place finalist Allison Iraheta is a more promising long-term act than bland Kris, but she, too, has a disappointing first week as her album, Just Like You, opens at No. 35.

Perhaps if a single from Allison's set can gain traction she might hold on a bit after the competitive holiday season is over.

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ABC: A ban channel for Adam Lambert

 
I can't say I blamed Good Morning America for immediately axing Adam Lambert's appearance in the wake of his misguided American Music Awards performance the evening before. The program felt Adam's act wouldn't play well with its morning audience and advertisers. I could see the logic in that.

But the banning is now getting ludicrous. ABC has now nixed Adam's previously scheduled appearances on The Jimmy Kimmel Show (Dec. 17) and supposedly the New Year's Rockin' Eve show. Both of those programs are aired in the wee hours of late night. What is ABC protecting us from?

We've seen and heard much worse. We've had to endure the noxious likes of Chris Brown, for instance or R. Kelly's grade-z, tiresome locker room lyrics on his new CD.

Adam's been slapped enough. It's now getting to the point where ABC's knee-kerk ongoing banning smacks of a witchhunt and says more about them than it does the fallen Idol. (Adam exonerates ABC on his Twitter feed, blaming, instead, the FCC and he says he will appear on NBC's Jay Leno Show on Dec. 21 -- which is hungry for whatever name guests it can get.)

I was turned off by Adam's performance on the AMAs, too, and it initially made me less than hot to hear his full album the next day -- and a large factor in that was the song itself was lousy and he didn't even sing it well.

 I got over it. But the ongoing punishment is pushing me firmly back onto Team Adam's side.

It's only rock and roll, censors, we'll survive it.

Photos: Billboard.Com/Getty/ABC

Follow Howard Cohen on Twitter @HowardCohen

 

Susan Boyle blasts chart record; bests Adam Lambert

Guyliner was no match for the feel-good story of the season as British singer Susan Boyle's album of ballad covers, I Dreamed a Dream, exploded onto the Billboard 200 at No. 1 with the year's largest sales figure, 701,000.

 Boyle now has the best sales week since AC/DC's Black Ice bowed with 784,000 in October 2008. She also has the best debut for a female artist since Soundscan started keeping track of such things in 1991 and the only other newcomer to have a higher first week was Snoop Dogg when he was Snoop Doggy Dogg in 1993 with Doggstyle's 803,000.

Adam Lambert handily beats the guy who beat him for the title on American Idol as his For Your Entertainment opens with 198,000 compared to Kris Allen's paltry 90,000 last week. But that controversial AMA performance apparently hindered Adam's ability to move serious copies as he fell well short of the expected 225,000 predictions earlier that week -- and even that figure was not special for a guy who has received as much attention as he has all year.

 RCA should start picking the right singles as the lackluster title track and the whiney and ordinary Whattaya Want From Me are hardly incentives to lure customers into the stores. Adam has a handful of killer tracks on his album (Music Again, Soaked, Fever, a track cowritten by Lady Gaga) and hopefully he, and the label, start concentrating on those songs instead. Music Again, for instance, sounds like Mika fronting a great, lost Cars track from the mid-80s Heartbeat City-era. Total blast. And Soaked is sublime balladry.

But all of that won't help a young man who hasn't learned the essentials of stardom. Now, he's back pedaling, first unwisely blasting people for daring diss his act and trotting out the "discrimination" word; next, he's admitting his AMA performance wasn't the best it could have been vocally and that he'll now concentrate on the music.

Adam talks too much. Instead of letting his music do the talking he's so open that there's no mystery. He's leaving nothing to the imagination so there's no intrigue. By the time FYE got here, it had nothing fresh to say about this artist and landed with a ho-hum greeting from a tired populace. Shame, because in Adam, Idol seemed to really have something special.

Follow Howard Cohen on Twitter @HowardCohen