Smash! Hit!

A couple of people asked me if I've watched American Idol while it's still wallowing in its audition stage. Apparently there was a guy who sang several songs, spanning diverse genres, in the classical style of one, Brett Scallion. I'm sure it was painful and embarrassing for all parties involved, but no more so than your mom insisting on telling your friends that one joke about
the rabbi and the parakeet that she can't ever really remember. But that's at least a private shame. The point-and-look fascination that people have with this spectacle of the untalented year after year is a little beyond me.

Do they not have a karaoke bar in your town where you can witness this kind of thing first hand? Because let me tell you, after a few red devils at Tracy J's, coercing someone with an outrageously bad voice into singing isn't all that difficult. Not only will the previously reluctant decide that belting out "Sweet Child O' Mine" in that time-honored tuneless, shouty fashion is an excellent idea, but they "will totally kill it, dude." Certain people approach karaoke (often stumbling) with the unwavering confidence of the musically ignorant. More often than not, you have no idea how hard certain songs, not matter how hackneyed, are to sing until you try to do it even passably well - it took 12 takes and an act of God for me to even hit the correct notes on the first line of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Maybe I'm in an uniquely qualified position to appreciate this, but there's a lot of untalented people out there. Music is harder than it looks, my friends. Even thunderously average music requires a certain level of Neanderthal brilliance. (So easy even Chad Kroeger can do it!) It's not like just anyone can sit down and bang out a trite, derivative yet commercially viable radio hook. That kind of highly-valued mediocrity is created in labs from call-out research and survey groups and probably some kind of ancient voodoo ritual. Nevertheless there's a lot of average floating around - some halfway decent average, some bad average, some boring average. Some average that sells millions, some average that couldn't get its mom to come to a gig.

However.

When the needle slips below the very generous purgatory of the average or even of "not horrible," we enter the murky water of things that are bad. Lots of things are bad, but certain things are so overwhelming, spectacularly terrible that they take on a certain aura that can best be described as "Oh my fucking God - seriously?"

It takes a magical blend of sheer ineptitude and lack of shame to create what's I've come to be term The Smash Hit. Let's be clear: there's a razor thin line of difference between bad and awesomely bad. Often what sets the awesomely bad apart is the pure, clear-eyed belief in their talent. Come to think of it, this is probably the ultimate appeal of the American Idol train wrecks: being truly, blissfully unaware of how terrible you are really is a thing of beauty. Even in the face of cold hard reality, they persist. Even to the point of putting themselves on national television. Or, in my particular experience, asking to be signed to a major record label. My friends Rob, Kodi and Nick took it upon themselves, toiling mightily in the A&R department and slogging through the dirge known as "unsolicited submissions," to put together several compilations of Smash Hits. It became legendary in our office. We even held release parties of sorts, each one more eagerly anticipated than the last. Each Smash Hit had that sublime quality of not only being unequivocally bad but also hilariously unaware of how bad it really was. It was beautiful.

So if nothing else, maybe we should celebrate the American Idol auditions for keeping the well of potential Smash Hits deep and dark and full of fresh horrors. Because as long as there is someone out there willing to record an off-key cover of "The Rose" or actually pen the lyrics "Evelyn / You are very small / You hold the ball," there will always be a little bit of magic in this world.