The mentors are back! The mentors are back! And with that, the Beatles may soon be gone.
Yeah, last night Ryan Seacrest gave a fuller list of this season's mentors - Mariah Carey, Dolly Parton, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Neil Diamond - and you can be reasonably certain that they're not coming aboard to help the final ten with the Lennon/McCartney canon. I'm pretty certain Parton - BTW - was already expected, and probably MC too. Mentors - you'll recall - have been a key part of the show over the years, though producers cooled to 'em this season because they decided to focus more on the kids' back-stories as opposed to the back-stories of the rich-and-famous coaching them.
But...obviously a bad decision in retrospect. They were (or at least were sometimes) viewer faves, and the contestants got a kick out of them as well. And - arguably - they made the songs and performances better, or at least as good as they could be. Certainly Diana Ross knows a little bit more about how to sing one of her own hits than one of the "Idol" resident musical pros, right?
The absence of mentors has also been a possible, or probable, reason why the last two Beatles weeks have been such a considerable disappointment. The singers, half the age of the songs, in some instances didn't know the songs, and certainly weren't plugged into their rich, mythic lore. Result - a lotta bad performances.
Last year, in fact, "Idol" DID get permission from Sony/Micheal Jackson to dip into the Beatles songbook (they could choose a few songs - this season, the whole book was open to them.) But they canned the idea when they couldn't get a Beatles "mentor." They wanted legendary Beatles producer/frontman George Martin, and here's what "Idol" bossman Ken Warwick said at the time:
"The problem we found - or the problem we've had, obviously - is that we need a mentor who's up to the job. We were after George Martin, and his schedule unfortunately... we tried every which way. We had permission from the record company, we just couldn't get George."
Ummm, what about Sir Paul? He did write the songs that people sing, so...
Said Ken: He "took exception" to Simon's comments about the contestants."
"[McCartney's] a nice guy. He doesn't like Simon saying, 'You're horrible. You're the worst I ever heard. You shouldn't be singing.' So the chances of Paul coming on the show were pretty slim."
Oh, Simon...
(Of course, Paul has had his hands full of a few other problems the last few months, so can't put all the blame on our favorite judge...)