Thursday, May 29, 2008

What's Blake's Problem?

If you read Jim’s comments on my post about Sanjaya’s Nationwide ad, then you know he’s pretty angry at Blake Lewis for dissing Sanjaya and Taylor Hicks.

So, I decided to go in search of the interview that Jim alludes to, and I found it.

You can hear this snippet of Blake’s interview with Mark Kaye back in March here.



Now, let me start by saying I completely understand why Jim would be upset. I would be too if someone had just dissed my favorite contestants. However, I think we should also look at the big picture…

What I hear in this interview is a frustrated young man who’s just trying to promote his CD—since his record company won’t—and all any of these DJs want to talk about is Sanjaya. Does that excuse what he said? No. But the frustration is understandable—especially if what Blake says about Nigel putting Sanjaya on the show after he was eliminated is true.

And how do we know that Blake’s not just saying this stuff to get attention?...

In an interview with another radio station (that was not identified on the blog with the interview), Blake said that Sanjaya was “a nice kid” but he did get into it with him once during the tour because he was trying to sleep and Sanjaya kept waking him up. Blake told the DJ that Sanjaya had trouble respecting peoples’ boundaries and that he was a “disrespectful kid.”

However, at the end of the tour, Sanjaya thanked Blake for the way he treated him. Blake said Sanjaya had never had a father figure and so he just needed someone to set him straight.

As for Taylor Hicks, Mark Kaye says on his website that Blake said about Taylor, “America voted …for a d-bag!”

That one I can’t really defend, except for the fact that since there is no audio, we have no idea what the context of the conversation was. And we know that Taylor was considered difficult by his label, so maybe that’s where that comes from.

Either way, I just wish that someone would keep Blake from digging these big holes for himself. He’s an extremely talented guy who should be above this stuff.

And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he has always felt like he is above “American Idol.”

Now I don’t feel so guilty for moving him aside for David Cook on my top five Idols list…