Every American Idol Finalist, Ranked From Worst to Best

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http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/every...t-ranked.html#

Only 168 people in the world can currently claim to be American Idol finalists; at the end of February, that number will rise to 178. (Thanks to the variance of talent pools and Fox’s faith in Idol’s ability to pump up its ratings, the number of finalists has varied from season to season; the final run’s finalist-tally of ten matches that of its first year.) As a warm-up for this final run through the Idol choreography, we’ve decided to rank those singers who have reached the almost-winner’s circle.

Idol’s finalist slate, and the songs they sang to rising-then-falling ratings, doubles as a vague map of how “pop” shifted its boundaries in the early 21st century. In its early years, Idol stridently looked back, with only the occasional sop to present-day music and a laser focus on vocals above all. Carrie Underwood’s season-four victory allowed Idol to mark some territory in Nashville, while Chris Daughtry’s fifth-season deployment of Shinedown and Live helped nudge open the door to performers bearing instruments, who were finally allowed inside the Idol sanctum in season seven. As time went on, leading ladies with voices that could cut through Top 40 radio’s clutter gave way to easygoing strummers operating in the vein of Jason Mraz and Gavin DeGraw. R&B became more of a way to spice up folk-pop than a genre with its own solid footing in pop, or at least in the Idol top two. During the series’ second half, the hegemony of white guys with guitars — WGWGs — held on to the top, with one key exception; those artists who played a little more fast and loose with the show’s themes were dispatched after adding sizzle to the finals’ early weeks.

But even with the vagaries of genre and style, certain aspects of being a pop star — an idol — remain intact and heavily informed our rankings, which only focuses on the work these singers offered up during their Idol runs. Charm. Song-choice savvy. Stage presence. The willingness to stand up for artistic choices, even if doing so results in some British acidity being flung back. And, of course, vocals. “It’s a singing competition,” Simon Cowell would drone again and again when he found someone’s performance not quite up to par. He was lying, but he meant well, and anyway, the audience knew what he meant: “You can’t win if you sound like that.”

(An important note: As in the Idol world, sometimes the terrible can actually be the best for the purposes of each individual season’s dramatic arc. Think of the contestants near the list’s very bottom as the most likely contestants for an All-Idol rebirth of Vote for the Worst, the now-mothballed site that encouraged chicanery through democracy and buoyed the Idol stays of more than a few less-than-deserving individuals. Being, say, No. 87 is much more damning than landing at No. 165. (Sorry, [REDACTED].)