If there’s one thing I’ve realized from watching Rock Star: Supernova, it is just how great of a band Radiohead is. The Supernovices have played three of my favorite Radiohead songs– My Iron Lung, Creep and Karma Police– in front of the House Band. My Iron Lung was Patrice’s best performance by far. Lukas and Magni both sang well on Creep. Toby’s version of Karma Police was solid. The House Band is generally excellent. In particular, they kicked ass on Magni’s Deep Purple cover and on Toby’s original tonight.
But Radiohead manages to put so much nuance, contrast and volume into each song, that any cover version has trouble capturing that much dynamic range. The difference between the high and low intensity moments in each Radiohead song is so great that any covering artist may have difficulty covering both ends of that spectrum.
Otherwise, tonight’s show seemed pretty unnecessary. It feels like the members of Supernova have decided who will front the band a few weeks ago and these shows are somewhat redundant except for the product placement.
How much did Ryan spend on texting his own votes in for the encore? I skipped ahead to the next act break. I also fast forwarded through Lukas’s performances. It’s hard enough listening to Lukas sing or listening to a Coldplay song. But Lukas singing a Coldplay song? That’s not just unwatchable, I think it’s outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. His original was boring and flat with the House Band and somehow even less compelling without them. Lukas seems to be the frontrunner. Which kind of makes sense. Since I have no interest in seeing either Lukas or Supernova perform, that does make them a good fit for each other.
How many references to other reality shows can we have in one segment? During the post-Lukas talking, Navarro called out Paula Abdul in the audience and ended the bit referencing the Survivor script.
Magni seemed to have a lot of fun performing tonight– with the House Band, Toby and Dilana. He’ll probably have much more fun fronting the House Band on the Supernova tour than he would be fronting Supernova.
Dilana brought her best performance in weeks. It may be too little, far too late. Toby seems to be the perfect fit for the band– he’s a fun performer without much substance. Evs. Let’s finish this up and move on to Amazing Race 10.