The early front-runner in Season 9 of “American Idol” was Andrew Garcia, an amiable pop-R&B singer with a smooth voice, a neck tattoo and a relaxed mien. He was also, by some measures, already something of a star.
This was 2010, and the YouTube revolution was underway: Mr. Garcia’s cover-song videos on the site were widely liked, which meant that, unlike prior contestants who had come to the show more or less cold, he had a built-in fan base.
That was also the first year that “Idol” producers allowed contestants to supervise their own Twitter and Facebook accounts, but a few weeks into the experiment, it was cut short: Mr. Garcia reportedly had such a clear lead in Twitter followers that it threatened to pierce the secrecy preferred by “Idol,” which holds its vote totals close, better to prioritize televised drama.
That was a re-entrenchment maneuver by a superpower dipping a toe into uncharted waters and then recoiling. But it also reflected the new reality of the entertainment business — alternate starmaking apparatuses were on the rise.
That “Idol” didn’t embrace social media more aggressively when it first had the chance was a surprise, because in many ways, it trained the generation of young people who would go on to crown not just “Idol” winners but also untold luminaries of YouTube, Vine, YouNow, Periscope and many more. “Idol” was a monolith and a prime-time network television phenomenon, but one in which fans made the stars, not the other way around.
Now, with the show coming to an end Thursday night at the conclusion of its 15th season, it hasn’t been replaced by other televised singing contests (sorry, “The Voice”) but rather by the grand democracy of the Internet, where to vote with clicks is to breathe.
In 2002, when “Idol” debuted, empowering the public to vote on musical talent was a quietly radical act, possible solely because “Idol” was a show about discovering singers that was largely divorced from the music industry. The show was shunned by the old guard for its populism, its reliance on young singers gaming their way through decades-old chestnuts, its unrelenting cheese. And also for its mechanism, in which experts offered advice (and also insults), but actual people made decisions. Fan voting was a gimmick for TV designed to engage viewers, not an accepted A&R technique for record labels.
But it undeniably worked. From the beginning, “Idol” drew millions of votes each week, so many that some fans were accused of finding ways to vote thousands of times for their favorites. In a largely hagiographic documentary aired on Tuesday night, “Idol” suggested that it effectively taught America how to send text messages, so that they might vote.
By simply inverting and laying bare the usual process — working bottom up instead of top down — “Idol” presented a genuine alternative to familiar music business practices. Sometimes it had the same results: Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, “Idol” winners and fantastically gifted singers, were absorbed into the major label system and went on to long careers, but they’ve been the exceptions. Other alumni have found less direct paths to success, like Jennifer Hudson, Chris Daughtry and Adam Lambert. And there is a whole ecosystem of midlevel fame occupied by several of the show’s many semi- and almost-celebs, like the Broadway careers of Justin Guarini, Diana DeGarmo or Frenchie Davis. (I was recently in the Nashville International Airport, where the disembodied voice of Bucky Covington welcomed me.)
But “Idol” should be better remembered for how it set the table for the online fan communities that are now the norm. Those fascinated by — or terrified of — Beyoncé’s Beyhive or Rihanna’s Navy might not remember the Claymates of Season 2, who pledged allegiance to the runner-up, Clay Aiken, or the Soul Patrol, supporters of the Season 5 winner, Taylor Hicks. (It should be said that some of the most virulent negative feedback I’ve received online over the years has been from “Idol” loyalists, particularly those enamored of the tepid Season 8 winner, Kris Allen.)
By the time “Idol” began to understand the power of social media, though — say, allowing fans to use Twitter to vote to save contestants in danger of elimination last year — it was already facing declining ratings. It also had become home to a very specific strain of popular taste: Seven of the last eight winners were young, guitar-music-inclined white men who went from awkward and unpolished at the beginning of the season to reasonably smooth at the end. “Idol” began to resemble a combination day-care and elder-care facility, nurturing young singers and outmoded music.
A recurring tension in early seasons of “Idol” was whether the true stars of the show were the singers, unknowns pleading for a chance at fame, or the judges, who were the anchors from season to season. (Later seasons of “Idol,” and also “The Voice,” reoriented that discussion for good, by choosing actual stars for judges.) But the real stars of “Idol” turned out to be neither of those groups — it was the fans, who didn’t need to be on camera to have the loudest voice in the room.
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