The joke in American Idol though is almost always on the 'winner'. Of all the people who've gone through that how many real 'stars' did we get? One?
I'll put this in IT terms first. I know a lot of people who can write code, some of them can write perfect code, a few of them even make it to elegant code. Yet they are total failures in most IT jobs. Because they get hosed on the fact that the company does not only want it prefect, they don't only want it elegant - they also want it Tuesday. That pressure folds a lot of them like a house of cards.
So, being able to do one killer song to what amounts to an audience of four does not translate into doing 90 minutes to 2,000 people. Yeah, almost everyone knows some kid who can sit on the bed and shred like a MoFo. But playing some riff on your bed - no matter how good it is - is not being able to stand and deliver for 90 minutes on demand, every night.
So like old Rodger was trying to say, I could put you in the EMI Abbey Road studios, with all the Pink Floyd instruments, electronics and toys - but the odds of you walking out with the next DSotM are pretty slim. Nah, they are absolutely non-existent unless you're as good as Rodger, and are walking in with Dave, Nick and Rich, right?
Same thing with auto-tune. Yeah, it worked for Cher, killer effect in that song. But that's all it was, an effect. Cher (who has spent more time in a recording studio than a lot of people have in bed) is pretty much pitch perfect, and so you're starting with gold, not trying to end there.
