The commercials for American Idol have been talking about a big change for this year, and I immediately hoped they were going to start including instruments, something that Australian Idol has done for the last two years to great success. And I was right! I’m really excited now. Incidentally, I hadn’t meant to stop posting Australian Idol highlights, but I got so far behind watching them that I just haven’t done much with it. They’re done with the season now (and I’ve managed to stay unspoiled, which I didn’t last year), but I’m still about eight weeks from the end in my watching–hopefully I’ll finish it in the next few weeks and give y’all a few of the best performances.

Let’s hope the addition of instruments on our Idol brings on some singer-songwriters who do well, because that would be AWESOME.

Dude, Australian Idol rocks. It has more varied performers, many of whom are songwriters, they get to use their guitars for auditions and later in the competition, the judges actually give helpful advice, and after the semi-finals, Australia and the judges together have chosen an absolutely stellar Top Twelve–lots of different styles, good voices, good performers, and they have a very good sense of who they are as artists, which translates into better song choices and everything else. Everyone I loved got in, and nobody I hated did. It’s an even better top twelve on average than last year, I think. And now, as if they weren’t already awesomer than American Idol, they’ve gone and put all the performance videos (including those from earlier seasons) up on their website, freely viewable from anywhere. So instead of uploading everything myself, which takes time and is also of questionable legality (who am I kidding, it’s illegal), I’m going to post a highlight or two as they come up and then direct anybody who’s interested to go watch the rest of the videos at australianidol.com.au/video.

Australian Idol does their semi-final round differently than we do (though I think we did it more this way the first season or two); they split the top 24 into four groups of six each (two sets of boys, two sets of girls), and each group performs on a separate night. After each set of performances, the public votes and the top two go straight into the Top Twelve. So by the time they’re done with that, there are eight in the Top Twelve and sixteen who aren’t. The judges choose eight singers who didn’t get voted through immediately to come back and perform again as Wild Cards. So then those eight perform, and the public votes, and the top two from the public vote go into the Top Twelve, and the judges pick the final two to go into the finals. All this is done in one week, which is nice and speedy. Anyway, I give all that because I’m posting a couple of performances from the first round and a couple from the Wild Card round, and I refer to the Wild Card round as such, so I didn’t want to confuse anyone.

After the jump are videos of some of my favorite semi-final performances, and links to the others.

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It’s probably something of an exercise in futility to post about Australian Idol, considering everyone I know is in the United States and it isn’t shown in the United States (and I get it via downloads of questionable legality), but I want to really badly. And then I think, well, if I don’t, no one I know will find out how great a show it is. So I will. Probably not as often or as regularly as I have American Idol and SYTYCD, but still. I seriously think that last fall’s Australian Idol spoiled me for Season Six of American Idol, because it’s a better show overall. I gave some reasons for that back here. The top twenty-four they’ve picked this year includes rockers (like you’d expect to see fronting Creed or something), pop singers (nailing Whitney Houston), folksy singers (who could headline Lilith Fair), Broadway babies (straight off regional casts of Les Mis), crooners (bringing Big Band back), and everything in between. It’s beautiful.

Here’s an edited video of all the singers shown in the audition shows who were brought back to Sydney for Hell Week. I’ve edited them some so that it would all fit under ten minutes, but they’re all represented here. I put a title saying “Top Twenty-Four” over the ones who, yep, made it in the Top Twenty-Four. To my mind, the best thing Aussie Idol does and the thing that American Idol most needs to pick up from them is the use of instruments and original songs. Now, if they follow last year’s model, they won’t be using original songs for the competition (they had a special showcase episode where the singers could perform originals if they wanted to), and they won’t get to use their own guitars/keyboards until about halfway through. Still. It adds SO MUCH. Tell me you don’t agree.

Selected full audition videos after the jump.

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I’m fully beyond caring any more whether or not I’m supposed to like American Idol. I’m nearly beyond even hiding behind the phrase “guilty pleasure.” I’m incredibly excited about the upcoming premiere on Tuesday (BTW, I’m planning on live-blogging the show this year, so stop back by and watch it “with” me!) Anyway. The point right now is that while waiting for the new season of American Idol to start, I came across torrents of Australian Idol, and watched that throughout last fall and winter. And I’m going to share it with you, because it was just that good. (In case it comes up, New Zealand Idol? Not as good…even my friend from NZ agrees.)

A few things that Australian Idol does better than American Idol, or at least did better this year.

• As the contestants get fewer and fewer in number, the time limit on the songs goes up. So the first few weeks, when they’ve got to get through 10 or 12 contestants per show, they have the same 1:40 time limit that American Idol does, but when they get down to four or five people, the songs are up to 2:30 or even 3:00 sometimes. That makes for a) fuller songs giving a better idea of the singer’s talent and b) less stupid filler.
• They let the contestants use instruments! Okay, that was a new step this season, but Australian Idol is the first Idol show worldwide to do that. Hopefully our Idol will do it soon, because it really added a whole new dimension.
• Going along with the instruments, they encouraged singer-songwriters to try out as well as just singers, which brought a lot of depth of interpretation even to the cover songs.
• Marcia Hines, the female judge, is really nice like Paula Abdul, but she’s not HIGH half the time.

Video and audio of the top eleven Australian Idol 2006 contestants after the jump.

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