I have a hunch that “American Idol” is outside the wheelhouses of most people reading this — can you name two hosts? Do you know how to vote in this post\-800\-number world in which we live?
As much as we may normally avoid it, opening up the Disney\+ app on a Monday hits you with a giant banner for it\. This week was “Disney Songs” week, and curiosity got the best of me\.
It’s still an annoyingly saccharine experience, with finely\-crafted “looks” and whitened teeth belying the “aw shucks I’m just a substitute teacher” facade of a backstory — for most of them\.
And it feels like they’ve all been tasked with “making the songs your own” but in a bad way — especially on the 90s night, where the contestants, by and large, didn’t know any of the songs they were assigned\. There’s a game\-within\-a\-game to be had there, playing back the three songs from which they could choose and seeing if they said “yes, I know Boyz II Men\!” or “I’ve never head of ‘I’ll Make Love To You’ before ever\. How does it go?”
Regardless, they sang the songs\. Terribly\. With their own “twists” on them\. And this isn’t like Kris Allen “Heartless” or David Cook “Hello” kind of stuff\.
It’s more like “sing most of the song slightly off\-key and belt out a couple notes at weird times\.” Bad karaoke\.
SIDE NOTE: 90’s night did feature a very cool series of live performances from Jesse Frederick, who wrote and sang three iconic theme songs — probably his best\-known was “Everywhere You Look” from Full House" \(which we posted to our YouTube page because nobody anywhere on the internet seemed to have it outside of one annoying TikTok guy who we didn’t want to give views to\)\.
“Thank you, cranky writer, for saying American Idol was better 10 years ago”
You’re welcome\. But also I didn’t come here to just crap all over the singers\. Some of them are good\! One in particular I like a lot \(more on him in a moment\)\. But things have changed — the talent is diluted because of so many singing competitions, there’s an increased chance of stardom being a path right from social media or YouTube, and the ease of putting your own stuff all over the place has never seen so few barriers\. So naturally “American Idol” will suffer\.
And the voting is different now, too — you can vote on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, so performers with giant social media followings should have an advantage\. Instagram alone had 784,000 comments/votes this week\. And voting opens at the start of each show, so if your favorite contestant hasn’t started singing yet… it doesn’t matter\. Just write HANNAH in the comments 10 times and she gets 10 votes while Keyla is stinging\.
Yes, it is foolhardy\. But the algorithm probably loves it\!
So let’s set the current table\. There are currently seven contestants left and three shows to go \(April 27 which will whittle it down to 5, May 4 which will whittle it down to two or three, and May 11, which will crown a winner\)\. Right now, the favorite is Hannah Harper:
… but she’s still only at 51%\. Also, in an interesting twist, this is just a $614k market \(and it’s even smaller on Polymarket\)\. For comparison’s sake, “Who Will Win Survivor” is at about $18 million
A quick glance at Instagram follower counts suggests Hannah will steamroll everyone else:
- Hannah Harper \(@hannahharper\): 375,000
- Keyla Richardson \(@iamkeylarichardson\): 96,000
- Brooks Rosser \(@thebrooksrosser\): 94,000
- Daniel Stallworth \(@danielstallworthofficial\): 71,000
- Jordan McCullough \(@jordanmmusic\): 30,000
- Braden Rumfelt \(@bradenrumfelt\): 28,000
- Chris Tungseth \(@christungseth\): 21,000
But still\.\. upsets happen\. Judges sometimes go too overboard with their love for contestants and they get booted\. Things can get “too cute\.”
And there may be some value here in this market — even if you like Hannah\. It can come from several directions\.
- Hannah, the favorite, can double your money if she wins\.
- Brandon Rumfelt, who is getting a lot of love on Reddit, is at 9%\.
- And then there is my favorite, Daniel Stallworth, who is at 1¢\.
Why Daniel?
He has a fairly large following on Instagram, he’s talented, he doesn’t overdo it, he’s likable, he has a good backstory, he doesn’t feel rehearsed or overly coached, and he’s made some smart song selections\. He may ultimately fall into the non\-winner pantheon who make some noise as artists after, but that remains to be seen\.
For now, Daniel’s market is just 1¢ to win\. And if he can make it to the Top 5 next week, that number could shoot up — it briefly went to 2¢ after he made it to the Top 7 on Monday night — which essentially doubles your money\. So putting $10 on him, and Daniel advancing and going to 10%? That will make you $100, my friends\!
Granted, the markets have been rife with insider information and someone with insight into the American Idol voting totals so far \(outside of the public social media votes everyone can see but even AI engines cannot tally for us, no matter how many ways we try to phrase it\) could probably dump a bunch of money into a contestant in a smaller market like this and run away with a win\. However, as contestants are eliminated, it’s possible the voters for a singer will coalesce around another contenstant\. I can proudly say I’ve never voted for American Idol\. I don’t know what I would do if I loved Chris Tungseth and had to face a world where he was eliminated\. Would I comment “BROOKS” 10 times on a Facebook post the next week? Would I move on to another show after DMing Chris “great work, I voted for you 38,000 times since February?” It’s all a giant unknown\. I like to think the voters will just move over to another contestant — you want to see this to the end, you might as well type a name into social media, right?
Anyway, all of this leads me to my play of Daniel Stallworth to Win American Idol at 1¢\.
I did not expect to write that sentence this morning, but here we are\. Good luck everyone\! And be sure to check out The7Oracles\.com for some cool improvements we’ve made to tools and content\!