American Idol Season 6

1st day of Hollywood Auditions, February 13th

The first day of Hollywood week is used for the girl’s auditions, with the boys following the next day. Ryan Seacrest explains to viewers that six girls will be taken back stage at a time. They will each perform for about 30 seconds, and based on that performance, they will be sent home, or sent through. The day began extremely rough as the first six singers were immediately sent home. This came with a warning from Simon saying that the girls had to be original and creative. This made the girls extra nervous, as they waited for their turn to sing.

Throughout this week, they always follow-up on some of the people they showed in the prelims. I was surprised to see that a lot of people I liked were cut in the first round of Hollywood week. The day ended on an annoying note as a contestant, Nicole Turner, was cut from the competition. Before she took the stage, she had been telling the camera about her debate on song choice. She wanted to sing a song she liked, but her mother and aunt wanted her to sing another one. To make this short, she chose the wrong song, and blamed the whole thing on her mother, causing her mother to then go on stage and beg the judges to let her daughter through. Needless to say, her plea did not work, and Nicole was sent home. 56 out of 114 girls were sent home just on the very first day.

On the second day Randy said that “The boys are starting way ahead of the girls.” There was one guy from the prelims who had parents that didn’t support him. However, after he made it through the first round, he cried because his mother was finally proud of him. I was happy to see him make it through the first day of Hollywood so that he could make another happy phone call to his mother. 34 guys made it through to the next round out of 54, a significantly smaller amount than the girls

Immediately after the guys finished, the group collaborations began. This year, the groups were given a lot of freedom, in that anyone could go with anyone. For the most part, genders stayed with their same genders, but occasionally there were some co-ed groups. For the remainder of the night, the contestants dedicated their time to making their group performances impeccable. Some groups didn’t get off to the best start and were up late into the night practicing for what seemed like a hopeless cause. Other groups were in bed at a reasonable hour, confident with tomorrow’s performance.

Once again, Simon makes the contestants more nervous by reminding them how important it is for them not to forget their words. I felt so bad when the boy, who made his parents proud, got cut, because he called his mom who then hung up on him. That is completely terrible. Some groups shined more than others such as a group of four guys who harmonized with a beat boxer.

The final stage of this show was the separation of contestants into rooms. The judges take some time to themselves, and using Polaroid’s of the contestants, decide who will be cut, and who won’t. From there, they separate the winners from the losers into separate rooms, and visit each room. In all, 40 people made it through to the next round, with another 16 being cut the next day.