American Idol: It's All Over But the... Wait, It's All Over

One year before American Idol debuted, a documentary called Tribute made the festival rounds. The movie, directed by Kris Curry and Rich Fox, followed the travails of a host of tribute bands, those acts that try to faithfully reproduce the music of their idols in the hopes of escaping their day-to-day lives. In a lot of ways it resembles Idol, with the stardom achieved by former Judas Priest tributer and eventual real-thing lead singer Ripper Owens portrayed as the Holy Grail akin to what Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood have achieved in the years since their victories.

But I kept thinking about one scene when I was watching this week's final two episodes of Idol's 13th season. The Kiss tribute band, a California outfit called Louder Than Hell, is auditioning for a new person to take the Gene Simmons role, and one guy is attacking "Deuce" with aplomb, jumping around and causing enough distraction for the rehearsal to stop dead. "Just play as a bass player. Just play. You don't gotta jump around… I'm listening to you musically, and I'm trying to hear you musically," the increasingly perturbed Paul says to the Gene, who's wagging his tongue in between bouts of defending himself.

It doesn't end there, nor does it end well. But it does offer a lesson: You need to have the fundamentals—the lower-register vocals, the in-time playing, the ability to connect with your band—before you can add bells and whistles to your performance. Tuesday night's finale, during which Caleb Johnson and Jena Irene faced off over three rounds, revealed cracks in the seams of this season's mentoring—why wouldn't you teach these kids how to sing better live if that's what they're allegedly being judged on in the end? Gestures toward the audience are earned by solid performances, because when they're used to bump up lackluster outings they seem more than a little desperate.

Jena had this problem a bit more openly than Caleb; she opened with "Dog Days Are Over," Florence + The Machine's full-throated ode to joy, and her running around the stage to high-five audience members and screamed "WHAT'S GOING ON, AMERICA!" didn't detract from the fact that her lower register isn't all that great. (It's telling that she hit the middle of the stage, where she could concentrate, just in time for her biggest note.) The performance of her coronation song "We Are One" (a recreation of Kelly Clarkson's eh "Mr. Know It All") was stronger, although her full-voiced THANKING of AMERICA was a bit much. Her reprise performance of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling In Love With You" was fine, if not as gloppy in the way that it was two weeks ago.

Caleb, too, had a little too much rock-and-roller gesturing going on during his performances—I could hear the withering "Karaoke." of Simon Cowell as he sang his coronation song, the Justin Hawkins-penned "As Long As You Love Me." One of Idol's other essential problems comes from the way the material is all compressed down to its essence—a verse, a chorus, a bridge, a final chorus—and thus not given as much time to emotionally breathe as it might normally be. This proved true on both his "Maybe I'm Amazed," which I personally love (and adored in the moment) but which could have used a bit more of the build of the original in order to make its point, and his "Dream On," which seemed designed to get the entire Idol audience past the five-years-gone Gokey scream once and for all. That part, at the very least, worked.

In the end, Caleb proved victorious, and while I had been rooting for him, I was oddly disappointed by the outcome. Another white rocker guy from the South, hooray—although not too surprising, since Idol's ratings during Tuesday night's finale (which attracted 6.6 million viewers) were the lowest in the show's history. Not among finales, not among season 13, but, like, ever. That's the power of clip shows from both Dancing With The Stars and The Voice, both of which also wrapped up their seasons this week.

I kind of wanted Jena to win, if I'm being honest (and surprising myself in the process)—her winning would have been good for the show, since she's young and operating in a contemporary mode and a woman. Yes, as documented on this site, Jena made me bristle, but part of that was because she was both green and highly ambitious; she's a self-taught musician and this Idol season, which seemed to put filmed group dinners ahead of professional development, probably didn't help much on the skills-honing front. Once she joined Hayley Williams onstage for the rousing "Ain't It Fun" on Wednesday night you could see her learning almost instantly. If she ramps down the dramatics and learns how to just sing, she could probably take a run as The Only Woman Allowed On Alt-Rock Radio (it's a rule, surely you're familiar with it) in a couple of years.

Who knows where Caleb will wind up, demo-wise? Balls-out hard rock that has melody instead of simmering teenage angst doesn't really have a place in the pop world right now, even if it does have the muscle of 19 Entertainment behind it. (Last year's winner, Candice Glover, was operating in a similarly out-of-vogue genre—R&B—and that resulted in her album being pushed far back from its original summer release date.) Caleb did outsing Paul Stanley of Kiss during their duet of "Love Gun" and "Shout It Out Loud," and Gene Simmons has talked about keeping the band alive forever through the power of makeup and merchandising, so perhaps that'll be the path he walks. At the very least, the story would make for a pretty good movie.

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Compared to the compact nature of the final competition show—six songs delievered in an hour, the judges gasping to get their last words heard—the Idol finale is a testament to the show's ability to create lots of somethings out of a 30-second announcement. Past contestants return; pop acts with new singles to flog stop by; they pair off, to mixed results. Also there are lots of jokes, and the judges get even more of a chance to be in the spotlight. A few of the highlights:

Hey! It's Malaya! Malaya Watson was my favorite of all the finalists, a loose-limbed brace-faced teen with a voice that could move mountains. Since her elimination she's gotten her braces off and glammed herself up a bit, and her being paired with John Legend for the heartstring-tugging chart-topper "All Of Me" was much lovelier than it should have been. She is the one contestant from this season whose music I'd buy, no questions asked.

Old Friends. Did you know that third-place finisher Alex Preston is old buds with Jason Mraz? Well, in case you forgot, the two of them paired off for a run through "Love Someone," Mraz's gently peppy new single. Alex, as I've said previously, is going to be better than fine, and this smoothly confident performance—the best of the duets, really—was evidence of that. Keep your ears peeled for his velvety voice on your next Walgreen's run.

Wre-e-eck Jess. The surly pink-haired belter Jess Meuse was paired with Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles for… a duet of "Wrecking Ball"? Okay. I mean, I don't get it either, but it sounded fine, so okay.

Chaos! Disorder! Both group numbers—during which the guys shambled around Aloe Blacc, while the ladies (minus MK Nobilette, who bowed out due to "illness") bellowed alongside Demi Lovato—were testaments to, uh, the varying styles of this year's contestant pool. Also their varying relationships to the concept of "staying in key." Anyway!

Jenny From The Block. Jennifer Lopez, being as she is the center of the show (what, you thought it was Seacrest?), got two chances to perform! Her new single "First Love" is a bit of a callback to freestyle, and will probably sound better on crappy boom box speakers than in the live setting. Props to the Art Stone-worthy sequins-n-fringe getup, too.

Ryan Sings! Richard Marx stopped by to accompany Ryan Seacrest on "Right Here Waiting," proving once again that he has one of the best senses of humor about the music business in the business.

The Real Lesson Of Idol? "Get a good manager." Artists like Lady Antebellum, who performed their new single on Wednesday night, or Legend, or even Kiss don't just happen to get on these high-profile shows out of nowhere—negotiations and handshake deals and favor-trading goes on all over the place. (Did you know that J. Lo was on the Idol finale last year, too?) Find a manager who will get you in front of lots of people a lot of the time and that will at least help you with half the battle.

And that's a wrap on Season 13 of Idol, which started off with a lot of promise and maintained some of it for at least as long as Malaya was on the show. Next season will have a more compact format but a lot of the same people, including, probably, me.

Maura Johnston lives in Boston and is an American Idol in the general sense that she is awesome and also an American. She's on Twitter - @maura