Both Jay Wadhwa and I wrote about American Idol, and its influence on today’s music scene. Although I agree with many of his points, I think his focus was far too narrow, and omitted the show’s impact on the music industry as a whole. While he makes many fair points, I think he needed to shift his thesis to center more on the music itself.
Jay spends most of the essay focusing on the charitable work that the show has done. He mentions Simon Cowell helping to donate over $200 million to homelessness and poverty. Jay makes note of how powerful and influential Cowell and the show’s creator, Sam Fuller, have become. He even mentions how American Idol as a show helped aid New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. These points are all accurate, and indeed important. However, the only thing Jay says regarding the music industry is that its reputation is boosted when its celebrities do charitable things. He neglects to include how the music scene and the musicians themselves are affected, and how the way we view music has been affected.
In the first body paragraph, I feel that he spends far too much time describing Sam Fuller. While certainly relevant to American Idol, Fuller’s influence is more relevant to the entertainment industry and comes more from his wealth than his musical background. Facts such as which celebrities he manages are mostly irrelevant. Instead, he should have spent more time on describing how Simon (as well as Randy and Paula, the other two judges) have influenced musicians and the way we view music.
The other body paragraph is very vague. It is somewhat clear what point he is trying to make about Idol serving as a public forum, but not specifically how that has influenced anything. Once again, there is no mention of how the music scene was affected, only how public society was affected. His point about the Katrina relief efforts were