What does it mean, this influx of American Idol-spawned pop acts? First Taylor Hicks plays the Orange Peel on Sunday, Mar. 12, and then Chris Daughtry follows suits with an April 16 show.
I’m not against this, mind you. I happen to love most things pop culture; the more kitschy the better. And Idol is about as kitschy as it gets while still maintaining mainstream marketability. What I don’t quite understand, though, is how these two major-label fabrications manage to find fan bases in staunchly indie-loving Asheville.
Hicks, the prematurely gray-haired blues crooner danced like a drunk uncle at a wedding reception and somehow ousted Katherine McPhee in last years’ Idol finals. (No biggie for her, she still released an album and managed to find time to pose suggestively in various magazines. Blender comes to mind.) Hicks, meanwhile, landed that horrific Ford commercial and then blundered his way into the Warren Haynes Christmas Jam. Not that any of that stopped music fans from buying tickets to the Orange Peel show—it’s been sold out for weeks.
Michael Franti is no doubt crying in his organic acai juice—I mean the guy has been working in his conscious hip-hop for decades, not to mention fighting the system in his cruelty-free flip-flops and traveling to Iraq on his own dollar to make an indie film of himself playing folky hip-hop for the real people of the warn-torn country—and there are still tickets available to his show. What did Taylor Hicks do to earn anyone’s love?
And then there’s Chris Daughtry. Not that I’m admitting to having watched Idol last season, but I think the guy should’ve won, despite singing a Creed cover. He’s just more believable as a major label-backed stadium-performing rock star. Plus, he gets all kinds of mentions on Queerty – The Gay Blog. Gotta love it.
But even with that as a selling point, I’m still not sure who makes up Daughtry’s local audience. High school girls? Guys who still rock that wallet chain look? People who didn’t get enough of that a cappella version of “Whipping Post”? It really was pretty good.
All these queries aside, the biggest question to my mind is who’s next to play Asheville? The new leaner, meaner Ruben Studdard? Chicken Little? William Hung?
— Alli Marshall, A&E reporter
