Kris Allen Strikes A Chord with homecoming tour

Imagine being half the way around the way and we are watching local FOX 16 station coverage by the hour on American Idol Top 3 Kris Allen's homecoming tour to Little Rock and Conway, Arkansas. This is really weird, too. He's been considered the underdog in the line up and "dark horse" by the judges, who notice his technical perfection in his music. But for some reason, Simon Cowell has been particularly pointed, insinuating (actually explicitly saying so) that Allen did not deserve to be among the Top Four. At the results show, host Ryan Seacrest seemed to have been cued to let Simon Cowell revise his position (albeit too late) before the bottom three were to be identified, and Simon said, "Kris, you deserve to be right there." I don't know if folks watching notice that the "humble" boy-next-door and hero of Arkansas does not hide his feelings well, and he was clearly demoralised from the moment Simon Cowell bluntly praised Danny Gokey's singing ability as being the better of the two in the Rock duet performed this week. Whether it affected his subsequent performance is moot. Cowell evaluates the performers much from their potential to haul in sales. As a result, his comments in the past have been brutally honest to a fault: consider how he revised his personal remarks towards David Cook at the Finals, etc. The thing which Cowell does ignore - even as a businessmen - is that it is not just the singing ability that will sell, but the sort of album that will eventually get produced. Adam Lambert has the punters all rooting he will win; I think "so what". He may cut a Rock Fusion album that is part Broadway and part Klingon for that matter, but on the Pop charts you are not likely to want to hear his tunes over and over again. Are his songs going to be very listenable for high repeat play? Danny Gokey's got terrific singing ability, except for those really high notes that trip off the scale. He does the lower register much better and if anything, when it comes to pop tunes, he is rather boring. What makes Kris Allen so different - part from all the hype online among his fans about this humility and so forth? Well, honestly, it is his approach to his songs and the arrangement/interpretation. Soulful, personal and with a story to tell. That makes for good listening ability and popular appeal. I cannot imagine Cowell being ignorant of how many albums this guy will sell, whether he drops out the next round or not. Besides, he's 23 and very accessible as a young pop star with gut-renching versatility. How accessible will Adam be? And Gokey doesn't have that popular sex appeal at all. It will be a real stunner if Adam get's booted off next round and shock the heck of the whole world with a showdown between Danny and Kris, the two Christian "worship leaders" so to speak and I can't imagine if it will be a pop-Gospel soul hit that will be belted out at the Finals! But I think if America is going to be judging these three singers as to whom they want to believe in, based on the whole "new America" milieu, it will be really anyone's guess. Indeed, all three have proved to be the most talented as of the past eight seasons to make the Finals. But in the end, the ones who do the best after Idol are the ones who have been versatile and very hardworking. So, the money will be in not just the talent but whom will prove to have that matchless ability to develop their musicality into a substantive expression - I think what many of the Finalists, not necessarily the Winner per se, have been successful achieving - whether we look at Michael Johns or Jennifer Hudson, and so forth. Kris Allen deserves the win not for being humble; he deserves it because he has grown through the season very significantly. Now, he needs some really good, professional PR advice to polish up what he says in his interviews and how he says it, and work on enhancing his overall image to drop that "college-boy drop-out" look. He needs to surprise the Gokey and Lambert supporters to give them a chance to consider him worthy of their attention, too. Sure, his career as a music artist (maybe even producer/actor?) may be a done deal, but this has first to be about winning. Someone with professional know-how really needs to give him some solid advice to boost his confidence so that he does that"Ain't No Sunshine" magic again, and again, and not repeat his "Kick. Awesome!" (blooper which sweetly became an adopted motto among his fans).