Idol auditions in Philadelphia. / FOX
The devil won. Strike or no strike, though, even I don’t have much stamina for the American Idol audition rounds week in and week out, so I probably won’t rejoin Idol in earnest until the Hollywood round. After seven seasons, we may have wiped the country clean of Idols, but we haven’t run out of Americans, and our fellow countrymen now have a finely honed sense of how badly and weirdly to sing and dress to get in television. I was amused, by the way, to hear Simon tell one auditioner that she had learned some bad, overdramatic singing habits by performing in a wedding band. Uh, maybe–or maybe by watching American Idol.