One of the things I like about American Idol is how it helps me discover old songs. It's 70s week on Idol, and the other day, bland blonde semifinalist Brooke White covered Carly Simon's "You're So Vain."
I had no idea know who Carly Simon is, but I liked the song. I particularly loved the "clouds in my coffee" line. Songwriters back then really knew how to come up with beautiful metaphors. Nowadays, all we get is crap like "under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh."
So I searched the Web for more information, and I soon landed on Carly Simon's Wikipedia page. I wish I didn't. I almost threw up when I read the first sentence.
Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1945 in New York City) is an American musician who emerged as one of the leading lights of the early 1970s singer-songwriter movement, and whose song "You're So Vain" was famously covered by American Idol's Brooke White.
Famously covered my ass. We all know that Wikipedia works by allowing itself to be edited by random morons, and on this night, one moron decided that the crowning achievement of Ms Simon's long and illustrious career is having one of her songs sang on a karaoke show. It took a little over four hours before a smarter moron removed the offending line, which is the right thing to do because Brooke White doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Carly Simon. She doesn't even have her own Wikipedia page for heaven's sake. She's a nobody!
I just don't quite understand Brooke White's appeal. Sure, she has a pleasant voice and is cute enough, but I find her very annoying for some reason. Maybe it's her phony rainbows-and-sunshine nice girl persona. Or maybe it's how her face reminds me of sock puppets. I hate sock puppets.
Fine, so you probably can't see the resemblance there, but that's only because I was too lazy to find the right pictures. Trust me, she really looks a lot like a sock puppet from certain angles, especially when she opens her mouth wide while singing. Also, she has about as much personality as a sock.
And oh, her performance of "You're So Vain" was "aight" but nowhere near as good as the way Carly Simon did it. Compare.
