American Idol Says Goodbye: Alaina, Alexandrea, Jason, Robbie
In one of the most shocking early exits in American Idol history, we said goodbye to Alaina Whitaker tonight, along with Alexandrea Lushington, Jason Yeager, and Robbie Carrico. Losing Alaina this early was truly a shock, as she was the top performer in week one, and was in the upper half of performers this week as well.
While Alaina was a few months of dental work with Invisiline away from being really pretty with her Carrie Underwood hair, she had an energy and excitement about her that was truly infectious. Her videos were entertaining, especially this most recent one where it showed her eating Panda Express and not being able to have any of the food touch each other. More importantly, her singing was above average comparatively to the rest of the Top 24 girls.
If nothing else, Alaina was Top 12 material. Maybe she wasn’t destined to be the American Idol Season 7 winner, but she deserved to make it on the tour based on her talent and personality alone.
What was truly endearing about Alaina was the fact that she was only 17 and grew up watching American Idol.
This was not some professional talent that ended up on Idol, but a fan of the show that was living a dream. The Oklahoma-native compared herself to Carrie Underwood, which was a stretch, but Alaina was only 14 when Carrie was on American Idol and it must have been a dream come true for her to not only make it to the judges, but make it on the Top 24 to the same stage that made Carrie Underwood Country music’s biggest superstar.
When Kady and Alaina were left as the bottom two girls left, after Alexandrea Lushington’s departure (who I still believe lost by singing the Pets.com song with the cargo shorts and high heels on), I knew that Alaina was out and that I wasn’t going to be happy about it.
I experienced a buttload of dissonance because I have long declared Kady my favorite girl, though I don’t think she’s brought “it” once through these first two performances in Hollywood. Alaina was easily my #2 girl, if not my secret #1, though pride would never let me admit that I liked someone more than Kady. I have never switched a favorite girl this late in the competition.
I told my friend Marnie that it actually might have hurt less for me as a fan to see Kady go, simply because Alaina made more of the opportunities that she had on stage. It just felt like Alaina deserved to stay. She wanted it so bad and was truly living a dream.
What we got was one of the most emotional reactions in the history of American Idol to the point that it looked like Alaina wasn’t going to be able to take the stage to sing one last time. Kady looked genuinely shocked that she will continue on as the lowest vote getter of what is now the Top 8 girls. Alaina was just crushed that her dream was really ending.
What sucks is that I didn’t vote for Alaina last night. Since I didn’t vote for Alaina, I have no right to complain. I thought she was safe, I got complacent, and now Alaina Whitaker has left the Idol stage before making it to the new set that Seacrest was pumping up during the show.
I’m really bummed about Alaina leaving, but when I heard about how shocking this results show was going to be, I had a feeling it’d be her. An unknown turned front-runner, then unofficial dark horse, went down well, well before it was her real turn to go.
Alexandrea sang the Pets.com song. Her leaving makes sense.
Jason Yeager has reverse Jay Leno hair. He’s a grown ass man and he has a blonde streak in the front of his hair. Is he 13 and buying Chunking hair bleach from CVS? Come on, dude.
Most Idol fans are cognizant of Robbie Carrico’s lack of true rocker authenticity because of his boy band roots from a group called Boyz N Girlz United (sounds pretty straight…).
Most Idol fans also know that Robbie Carrico wears a wig.
Some Idol fans that that Robbie Carrico’s wig is made of hair from Kristy Lee Cook’s horse that she sold to get to her American Idol audition - a horse that a handful of fans have affectionately named “Sticky,” because some believe he may now be part of the contents of a glue bottle.
But I think the question is really, how do you go from this boy band guy who has a fansite on freakin Angelfire (who the hell uses Angelfire anymore?? Are we in the early 2000’s using 56K modems on Netzero?) to thinking that you are going to get away with playing a rocker on American Idol in this age of the Internetz.
Really, I just don’t get it.
What I like about Idol is that other than Corey Clark and Mario Vasquez, American Idol doesn’t hide from controversy as much as people think it would.
Idol acknowledged that Carly Smithson had a record deal ON THE AIR, after all these people on Yahoo! started getting their panties all in a bunch about it.
Last year, the judges acknowledged the scandal that was the Antonella Barba nudie pictures.
For Robbie, the judges gave him crap about his authenticity, simply because there was all this talk going around about his boy band roots. Yet Robbie continued to defend his sound, authenticity, and kept pretending that his hair was real.
People saw through it. Honestly, I don’t think the judges liked it either. What I don’t really understand is that the guys would have really been well served to have a good pop artist in there. Apart from Danny Noriega, the guys are really lacking in the pop department.
There are some potential soul/adult contemporary guys in Chikezie and David Archuleta, folk is covered by Jason Castro, and rock is David Cook and Michael Johns to an extent. If Castro went back to the boy band, back to his real hair, I think he might have had a decent shot at the Top 12!
Just come on dawg. This picture is the first picture that comes up when people Google your full name. It’s not something that you can hide from. Your name is ROBBIE CARRICO, not “John Kim,” “Ben Miller,” or “Mike Jones” (WHO?? MIKE JONES!!!). That is definitely not someone else.
Jason and Alexandrea unfortunately will go the way of the forgotten ones on Idol.
Robbie will forever be known as “that boy band guy.”
And Alaina Whitaker? Well, she’ll always be known the girl who looked like Carrie Underwood who went way too soon.
Kady, please find “it” and bring lots of it next week!
I died laughing at your Angelfire comment because last weekend I was working on a “Growing Up With 90s TV” canvas, and Geocities and Angelfire fansites were where I found the majority of the promo photos I needed from those oh-so-cheesetastic hits (like “California Dreams,” “Wings,” “Jesse”).
PS Did you hear Mariah is going to be on the “Idol Gives Back” show on April 9? I’m desperately trying to get tickets now (just when I thought I was done with the show and would only be reading your recaps, they pull me back in!)