Jordin becomes first ‘Duplicate Idol’

Over the years, “American Idol” has been fairly successful at producing winners who staked their own claim within the spectrum of popular music. Kelly Clarkson was a straight-up pop singer. Ruben Studdard and Fantasia were both R&B, but the gender split (and the latter’s more pronounced gospel influence) let them each carve out their own territory. Carrie Underwood was the show’s envoy into the country charts, while Taylor Hicks carried the torch for Adult Contemporary.

But the days of minimal market overlap could be over. With Wednesday night’s thoroughly predictable victory of teenaged belter Jordin Sparks, the show’s one-of-everything approach finally ran out of steam. Sparks’s win forces “Idol” to face a problem it has never had to deal with in its previous five seasons: an Idol we’ve already had.

It was probably inevitable, the crowning of a Duplicate Idol, though stronger showings by Melinda Doolittle, Lakisha Jones and especially runner-up Blake Lewis might have staved it off for at least one more year. But Sparks’s coronation strikes a note remarkably similar to Clarkson’s original “Idol” win all the way back in aught-two.

That’s not to say that Sparks is as strong a singer as Clarkson. For one thing, Sparks was inconsistent throughout the competition, capable of moments as sublime as her chill-inducing performance of “I Who Have Nothing” on British Invasion Night and as painful as her (admittedly disastrous) take on Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer.” While some viewers nicknamed Clarkson “Yelly” for her occasional tendency to equate “volume” with “greatness,” she was far less hit-or-miss.

Slide show   ‘Idol’ finale Smokey Robinson and four of the five former winners took the stage during the season ender.

But if Clarkson was a better singer (and performer) than Sparks on the show, the centers of their comfort zones were nearly identical. Both singers eventually came to favor big Celine Dion/Christina Aguilera-style power ballads, each adding a down-to-earth quality that kept them from becoming simple technical exercises. Listening to Sparks’s fine version of “You Don’t Know What It’s Like,” it was easy to imagine Clarkson choosing the same song on Bee Gees Night.

From there, it seems like a short walk to marketing Sparks as Clarkson redux. And the marketing question is an important one. One of the recurring themes of this past season, amongst both the judges and the viewers, has been the question of how to package the contestants so that they would sell. It was one of the reasons Chris Richardson got tagged with patently false Justin Timberlake comparisons early and often. Contestants who resisted such things ran the risk of ending up like Gina Glocksen, whose downfall was arguably set in motion when she defied the judges’ “rocker” tag by singing songs like “All By Myself” and “Alone.” If “Idol” is going to sell the singer, it has to know exactly what it’s selling.

In that respect, Sparks was a cipher for a very long time. She started the voting rounds with Tracy Chapman’s bluesy “Give Me One Reason” and followed it up with Pat Benatar and two themes from cartoon movies. One week she was an intense melodrama queen, the next she was stomping around the stage singing No Doubt. By settling into a Clarksonian groove of showstopping ballads, she gave her future management team not only something concrete but something it knows how to sell.

For a show seemingly concerned with dominating the widest swath of the charts it can get, covering the same ground all over again with Sparks could be a problem. But the fact is, there may not be anywhere else Sparks could be marketed. “Idol” is nothing if not interested in mass popularity, and the only major genres that remain untouched by the show’s winners are rock and hip hop. (Chris Daughtry's success in the former notwithstanding, he didn’t win, though try telling “Idol” that.)

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