Taylor not exactly ‘TRL’ material

Taylor Hicks winning “American Idol” was not the most suspenseful reality-show conclusion in history. It had been widely agreed upon that he was the presumptive winner, and his tenacious fan base did not disappoint. From the standpoint of the show, this is the end. The money train is the television spectacle itself. The future careers of the contestants are like the couplings on “The Bachelor”: it feeds the mythology if they work out, but it isn’t critical.

Kelly Clarkson is, after all, the show’s only participant who has genuinely become more than “the one who was on ‘American Idol.’” Clay Aiken has a band of admirably impassioned followers and makes a load of money touring, but he hasn’t released a non-Christmas album in almost three years, since shortly after “Idol” launched him. Fantasia Barrino and Ruben Studdard have largely faded from the radar for the moment, and Carrie Underwood was, until last night, still living off being the most recent winner.

Kelly, though, got hold of an insanely catchy single (“Since U Been Gone”), persevered in the face of the flak she took for coming from reality television, and is now just about finished proving she isn’t just a made-for-TV phenomenon like The Monkees.

The unfortunate fact, from a contestant’s perspective, is that for the purposes of anything beyond the “Idol” finale itself, the show does a ridiculously poor job of equipping its graduates to have wide commercial appeal. The mature, energetic, thoroughly modern Kelly Clarkson of “Since U Been Gone” would not have looked at home on stage with Carrie, Katharine and Taylor singing “I Made It Through The Rain” dressed all in white. Because really, “I Made It Through The Rain” is only slightly hipper than “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” would have been, and does not exactly position a person to cozy up to the youth market where the intense record sales are concentrated.

Taylor Hicks in new ‘American Idol’ Berman: Hicks kept fans entertained Highlights, lowlights from the finale Finale now a Hollywood spectacular Idols' first singles destined for oblivion   Slideshow: Images from season finale To dye or not to dye: Pick Taylor's hair color   Message board: Sound off on show

The set of awful songs the contestants have been forced to present as their first singles reads like a line of inspirational birth announcements: “A Moment Like This,” “Flying Without Wings,” “I Believe,” and now “Do I Make You Proud?” OK, Carrie’s song was an outlier — the icky-sounding “Inside Your Heaven” got by both musicians and censors who should have known better. But none of these songs set anyone up for a career in anything other than providing mood music for high-school graduations. In something of a reversal from the usual pattern, in order to get a career going, these people have to wait for their wretched first singles to fade from memory. Carrie began to build her post-“Idol” career with “Jesus, Take The Wheel,” and “Inside Your Heaven” is all but forgotten. Certainly, “Jesus, Take The Wheel” is also an enormously stupid song (saluting, as it does, rather unconventional strategies for motor-vehicle safety), but it’s not stupid in the same “I am a song written for an ‘American Idol’ finale” kind of way.

In short, there is a lot working against any winner, and it’s not Taylor’s fault that it’s going to be an uphill battle to get back the harmonica-playing, soul-singing, glorified bar-band guy that he was born to be. Unlike several smooth, inoffensive singers who have come before him, Taylor will never sell himself as a fresh-faced upstart rendered wide-eyed and baffled by the great big world of fame. He will have to be presented as something different, more like what Bo Bice would have had to become if he’d beaten Carrie: a guy grabbing onto his last shot, rather than his first.

It seems like Taylor should have the easiest path to success, given the fact that he never dipped low in the standings as most even strong contestants do at least once. Taylor is clearly beloved, and the enthusiasm for him is resilient, unconcerned with either variations in the quality of his singing or the increasingly unsettling tics that pervade his performances. Supporting him combines a subversive stick-it-to-Simon-Cowell vibe, because he looks old and unglamorous, with an aw-shucks warmth that’s squarely aimed at the same “family” demographic that has supported most of “Idol’s” strongest performers. He should be all set.

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