Hollywood bound

Tyler Grady surprised the judges with his voice, but does he have what it takes to make American Idol’s top 24?

As soon as Tyler Grady stood before the judges on American Idol, the jokes stopped. Both his look and sound earned him high praise from the judges. His rendition of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” even led Simon Cowell to comment that it was “an audition he would remember.”

Grady, a sophomore psychology major, auditioned for a spot in Season 9 of the show. His audition aired Jan. 12, and he appeared to be a contestant simply for comic relief. He was set up for ridicule with clips of him dancing and explaining his fall out of a tree that resulted in the casts on his wrists.

“He is incredibly talented across the board,” said Ruth Ost, director of Temple’s Honors Program. “He sang ‘Let It Be’ for [the Honors office]. I’m an old Beatles fan, and his [rendition] broke my heart. He’s so real. He just puts it all out there.”

There are rumors and speculations across the Internet pegging Grady as one of Idol’s top 24 finalists. Grady is unable to comment, and he, along with his band mates in Wailing Waters, are under confidentiality agreements until the top 24 are revealed tomorrow.

Grady has been passionate about music since he was young. The members of Wailing Waters have known each other since they were students at Lower Nazareth Elementary School. They first began playing music together in eighth grade.

“It all started in health class,” said Travis Hobbie, lead guitarist and vocalist for Wailing Waters. “The five of us wrote a song about drug effects.”

“The talent show that year was our first real show,” Hobbie said. “Grady had always been big into hockey. We handed him sticks and told him to play the drums.”

The band’s MySpace describes the group as “a dynamic rock pentasome steeped in old timey rock n’ roll.” Hobbie said that the band’s style changed since they first started out as a folk band.

“We’ll cover anything from Kings of Leon to Marvin Gaye to The Killers,” Hobbie said.

As Wailing Waters became more serious, Grady took on the role as lead singer. The band has featured heavily in the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia region and has won several competitions, including the Mayfair Festival Band Battle, the Croc Rock Band Battlefest and the Nazareth Day Battle.

“Back in the day, people thought we were weird,” Hobbie said. “But we didn’t change. We were always true to [who we were]. If Tyler had deviated, if he had changed to what people wanted [him to be], maybe [guest judge] Victoria Beckham and the others wouldn’t have liked him as much.

“That’s one thing I can say about Grady. He knows himself and he was always true to himself,” Hobbie added.

Ost said she never watched American Idol regularly until now.

“He’s as sincere as he came across on TV,” Ost said. “He’s an absolutely terrific student and person. We’ve had a lot of good conversations. He came to school interested in neuroscience. I think having a backup plan as a clinical psychologist if you don’t make it on American Idol is pretty good.”

“He’s just genuinely nice,” Amanda Neuber, associate director of the Honors Program, said. “He has a positive way of looking at the world.”

Grady’s friends and classmates are excited to see him on TV.

“This is crazy,” Grady’s former classmate Meredith Randall said. “I never really watch American Idol, but I guess I need to now.”

“I have watched every episode of every season,” Neuber said. “I’m crawling out of my skin, I’m so excited. I screamed when his face popped up on TV.”

Other people are getting excited too. Since the day his audition aired, Grady has been gaining a growing fan base. His Facebook page has accumulated almost 5,000 fans. He has more than 400 followers on his new Twitter page, as well as fan groups like “Team_Tyler,” “Gradys_Ladies” and others.
Grady’s population is helping Wailing Waters grab attention as well.

“We’ve definitely seen our hits on MySpace go up,” Hobbie said. “We just got on iTunes and people have been buying our stuff. We all feel good. We’ve been working at this since eighth grade … Now we’re getting some real notice.”

But his bandmates are trying not to get ahead of themselves.

“We don’t like to think about what might happen,” Hobbie said. “There’s a song we like called ‘Let’s Live For Today.’ That’s our mindset.”

No matter how far Grady gets on American Idol, his life has already been changed by the exposure he’s received, Ost said.

“He’s passionate about music,” Ost said. “There’s no stopping him.”

Summer Beckley can be reached at summer.beckley@temple.edu.

TV judges get judged by the ultimate critic

What do American Idol, America’s Got Talent and Dancing with the Stars all have in common?

OK, well, besides the incredible ability to indefinitely kill your brain cells typically used to hold the quadratic formula. In case you were wondering, that’s why you can never remember it.

The real answer – they all have judges. But not just your everyday, stern-faced, invisible personality judges. Nope – only the strong survive in the hamster-eat-hamster world of judging.

It’s time for the judges to get judged. Will they survive the scrutiny in this final edition of Cut to the Chase? Only Nostradamus would know. (Pity that he died in 1566, no?)

Let’s be honest. It doesn’t take much talent to be a judge. To prove this, we just take a random sampling of judges on popular reality competition shows.
Simon Cowell. Sharon Osbourne. Paula Abdul. See?

Talent aside, there are certain characteristics each judge must possess. First is a dislikeable likeability.

The meanest judge on every panel is the Brit. There’s no denying it. Yet, everyone seems to love the one everyone seems to hate. If only this carried over to American politics, we’d live in a utopia.

The rude, selfish, conceited, demeaning, arrogant jerk of a Brit will say you’re horrible when you probably weren’t.

Although, if you were horrible, you might as well change into a diaper and crawl into the fetal position with a bottle. It’d be less embarrassing that way.

To counterbalance the evilness of the Brit, we need to have the “all-American.” Let me be clear – the all-American does not necessarily need to be American. They just need to want to be American, like the Italian DWTS judge, Bruno Tonioli. Or David Hasselhoff.

A sense of empathy is required to be a judge, and since the Brits typically lack it (wouldn’t you love to see Simon perform a ballad?), the all-American must be brutally honest in a gentle, calm way.

Example: “Yo, dawg, that was hott. Totally killer, totally off da hook. You’re bringin’ down the house tonight!” or “Yo, man, I wasn’t feelin’ that one. Not feelin’ it at all. Tonight’s not your night, man.”

By incorporating clichés and early ‘90s language, Randy Jackson epitomizes honesty in a performance. Tonioli carries this over to ABC as so-called celebrities prance around a wooden floor. Over at NBC, the Hoff just proves to be an incredibly confusing human.

Alas, we need the female. Every judges’ table that has three seats must include one female. None would be sexist. Two would be over-bearing. Three would be apocalyptic.

A strong knowledge of the English language and an A+ in freshman composition should be required for the female judge. But why hold FOX up to such high standards when they can hire a semi-retired ex-Laker Girl?

Occasional unintelligibility aside, the female judge fills the role of the morale booster. At times, she can be harsh. But most of the time, the female must be able to find a glimmering light in an empty mineshaft 300 feet below ground.

Through careful analysis of judge placement, we can learn that reality television is slowly dying. When we put the future of mostly semi-talented individuals in the hands of grumpy, bitter judges, do we truly expect magic? Will we become a better society through the guidance of these figureheads? Is Paula Abdul sober?
Nah.

Over the course of this year, I’ve discussed numerous topics in entertainment and pop culture. Most of the time, particularly now, you probably haven’t cared. But you read, and for that, I’m grateful.

Perhaps you disagreed with my top 10 game show hosts. Maybe you researched some of my notable deaths of 2007. It’s even possible I’ve energized your undying fear of Oprah – her world takeover is looming.

It’s been an honor to cut to the chase, and I thank you for welcoming my undeniable charm and arrogance, column after column.

By the way, the quadratic formula is the opposite of b, plus or minus the square root of the difference of b squared minus four times a times c all over two times a.
Just in case you were wondering.

Chris Stover can be reached at stover@temple.edu.