Actually I'm abit surprised (& a teeny weeny bit disappointed) that neither Glenn Ong nor Najip Ali are amongst the judges for our first ever Singapore Idol, although it has been rumoured as such for the last couple of months. Just goes to show that not all rumours can be trusted... LOL
Anywayz, Singapore Idol has not three, as is the usual standard, but FOUR regular judges, which I suppose, makes it a first in Idol history worldwide. This is of course, a blatant display of a pervasive singaporean characteristic i.e. kiasuism. As was announced last Monday on channel 5's primetime news (no less), our eminent judges are:
1. Dick Lee - Our very own Mad Chinaman who has a string of successful local-flavored musicals under his belt and thus makes him more than eligible to judge a singing competition.
2. Ken Lim - Director of Hype Records who has discovered and developed such regional celebrities as Phyllis Quek, Michelle Saram & Rui En. But then, these aforesaid artistes are considered pretty small-fry... more known for their sweet looks than outright talent.
3. Florence Lian - major honcho residing at Mediacorp Radio. Been around in the industry since 1989... Probably will be playing Paula's "role" i.e. mumbling redundant comments and the like.
4. Douglas Oliveiro - a veteran in the local music industry. I suppose he'll be the one dishing out all the performance-related critiques. Has the greatest potential to be our "Simon Cowell", judging from his vocal & gruff personality.
As it is, I think all the names above, with the exception of Dick Lee, would only evoke a "huh" and a sotong expression from our local youngsters; as respected and experienced as they are, they're not familiar household names. And knowing how conservative and narrow-minded singaporeans can be, I'm really not sure if the bold and upfront critism style of Simon Cowell would go down well with either local contestants or audiences. Still, I'm kind of looking forward to the show's debut telecast (which wont be until a couple of months later, I think). However, from what I've heard, the auditions held last Saturday at Suntec City didnt go as smoothly as expected; apparently, the number of registrants was waaaaayy beyond what the organisers anticipated. My opinion?? Well, with the amount of publicity and advertising that Singapore Idol had been getting in recent weeks, how can they (i.e. the organisers) NOT expect a massive turn-out??? How ridiculous...
Nevertheless, the four-judge thing aside, I must laud the move to cast relative "unknowns" as judges rather than to pigeonhole famous local celebs or media players into Simon-Paula-Randy categories. Contrary to popular belief, I dont think Singapore is the first country in Asia to adopt the Idol format officially; Malaysia had announced the judges (only three of them!) of their Malaysian Idol a good couple of weeks before we made ours known to the public...
There's one thing which has been bothering me for quite awhile though. Why is it Singapore Idol and not Singaporean Idol (which is the standard)? Is it because Singaporean Idol would be too much of a mouthful for our Singlish-trained tongues? Or maybe "Singaporean" is just too long a word to fit into the oval-shaped Idol logo? Then again, perhaps it's a fail-safe in case the winner is NOT Singaporean... (For instance, the winner of Idol-inspired Anugerah on Suria last year was not Singaporean by birth and was hardly a Permanent Resident when she won the competition... thus drawing alot of backlash from the public)
Whatever the case, let's just hope that this talent competition wont be such a flop as its predecessors... eg. Fame Awards, Talentime. I mean, we all know what happened to Cherry Chocolate Candy and Darren Seah right?? BUt of course, there had been one or two exceptions...
