American Idol & Queen: A Special Guest Blogger Report!

Commenting on American Idol and reality TV in general is usually Brad's territory. But this week's American Idol prompted me to make an exception. Why? Because an entire show was dedicated to the music of Queen, one of my all-time favorite bands. Like most fans of Queen, I was very sceptical when I heard this week's theme. After all, most of the contestants are too young to know more than the band's biggest hits and would almost certainly be completely unfamiliar with their ground-breaking albums of the 1970's (A Night at the Opera, Queen II, etc.) But I figured it would at least be fun to watch the amateur singers butcher some great songs.

In the end, I thought the show wasn't as painful as I expected and a few of the singers did an admirable job. I could go into great detail about the performances, but instead I'm going to do something new here at The Shapiro Files and feature a special guest blogger, Michael L. Pease. Besides being an exceptionally talented actor, singer, songwriter, and poker night host, Michael is also an expert on the music of Queen. He prepared some excellent commentary on American Idol's Queen night that summarizes the performances far better than I ever could.

Click here to read Michael's guest blog entry.