Editorials and Articles Archive

This is normally the place where you'd expect to find our regular weekend editorial here at WhatNotToSing.com.  This time, however, we drew a blank.  There's nothing particularly pressing on the American Idol agenda at the moment.  To wit:

• The Final 12 show was pretty decent, if nothing to write home about.
• The contestants seem to be getting more comfortable on stage and slowly improving.
• The producers have done a remarkably good job of freshening up the music this season, which has been our pet peeve for years.
• The judges are still inconsistent, inscrutable, and insufferable at times, but overall they've been a little more lucid and helpful this year.  Progress.
• We like Ellen.  We don't miss Paula one bit.  If you disagree, no problem – to each their own.
• There are no ridiculous, overhyped American Idol controversies lighting up the boards and blogs of the Idolsphere.  More progress.
• No sentient being on earth outside of 19E believes that the Judges' Save is a good idea, so why bother writing about it?

...and so on.  Actually, our plan this weekend was to unveil a proposal for the long-promised seasonally adjusted performance ratings – that is, the Great Ratings Recalculation as we discussed in last season's wrap-up editorial.  This would correct for the bias that has seeped into our 0-100 rating scale over the years as the show's audience has become more musically diverse.  And, in fact, we're almost there, but we couldn't finish coding the new display page in time for this weekend's deadline.

Still, we wanted to do something for our readers, if only to keep in practice.  Thus, we hit upon the idea of providing a little torture and R&R for you, all wrapped up in one neat package.

Your editorial staff enjoys the quizzes and games at Sporcle.com, one of the more addictive websites out there if you're into trivia.  We decided to contribute a quiz of our own, and it's a very simple one.  Without peeking at the Artists page in the database, can you name the 25 artists whose songs have been covered most often on American Idol?

The public link to the quiz is below, but here are some ground rules to get you started.  First, we are counting only competition-night performances – no auditions, no Hollywood Week numbers, no group-sings, no result show sing-outs, etc.  Second, we are counting both 'primary' and 'secondary' artists for a song; see our FAQs page for an explanation of these designations.  Third, it's a timed quiz (eight minutes), but there's no penalty for incorrect answers so feel free to guess away.  Finally, as with most quizzes at Sporcle, you need only enter the last name of an artist to get credit, and you may omit a leading "The" from a band's name.  But otherwise, spelling counts!

Here's the URL:   http://www.sporcle.com/games/wnts/idol_artists

When you're done, be sure to click on the "See The Most Missed" link that will appear above the fully-revealed answers.  That will let you see where you stand in relation to others who've taken the quiz, plus it will show you which answers were the easiest and the toughest.

If you like the quiz, let us know, either by sending us an email or adding a comment to the Sporcle page; we'll be happy to make more of these the next time writer's block strikes us.  And of course, feel free to share it with other AI fans.

Incidentally, a few of the answers are really, really tough.  We'd never have guessed all 25.  If you score 100% without cheating, you, uh, might not want to brag about it too loudly to your friends.  They might organize an intervention.

Enjoy this week's show, the theme of which is "Teen Idols".  Something tells us that we're going to have a lot to write about next weekend.

- The WNTS.com Team