American Idol kicks off its 11th season later this month. According to spoilers over at TheIdolPad, singer and musician Reed Grimm has made the top 42. With just one or two more cuts, Reed will make the live voting rounds.
Reed is both a musician with instrument skills and a singer. Viewing his videos, he is a rather lively stage character and enjoys performing music. Grimm appears to be proficient at playing instruments, but his vocal skills do not seem to match the same level as his playing skills. While he certainly gets points for showmanship, there is nothing special that jumps out about his vocal tone or anything else about his voice.
Reed is drawing parallels to many past Idol contestants, including Taylor Hicks, Blake Lewis and Season 10’s Casey Abrams. However, with the possible exception of Blake, he does not even appear to be close to those contestants in vocal skills. If anything, his musician skills put him in that company.
If Reed makes the voting rounds, it will likely be more for his personality and ability to make a song unique than his actual singing. Only Blake Lewis has made the Top 2 based largely on overall musicianship. Note that there was no instrument playing allowed in Season 5 when Hicks won. Although there were no instruments in Season 6, Blake did use beatboxing to help his cause and was successful in rearranging songs to make them more unique.
Having made the Top 42, it is easy to predict that Reed will probably make the voting rounds unless there is another musician type in the group that the producers prefer. Nonetheless, it is also easy to predict that Reed Grimm will not win American Idol 11 unless he shows a wider range of vocal skills than what he has displayed on his YouTube videos.
Sources:
TheIdolPad: AI11 Contestant Listing
YouTube: Shoeless Revolution LIVE – “Dance”