America Gets it Wrong: Kris Allen wins American Idol Season 8

Once again we underestimated Kris Allen who crossed the finish line as this season's dark horse winner of American Idol 2008.

We congratulate Kris on his victory, but even as he admitted, Adam Lambert deserved the crown. Normally, Ryan tells us how many votes separated the winner from the runner up, but this season all we were told was that almost 100 million votes were cast for the finale.

Unfortunately for Kris, most of the Internet chatter will surely focus on discussion as to why Adam Lambert lost rather than celebrating Kris's victory. Was Adam too flamboyant? Did he not appeal to middle America the way that Kris did? Was Kris simply the "safer" choice? Let the speculation begin.

We truly believe that, once album sales are tallied, Adam will outsell Kris by a considerable margin, and Kris will join the likes of Taylor Hicks as an Idol winner that was overshadowed by those who finished lower than he did. It will be interesting to see what happens when both release the Idol single, "No Boundaries." That may be the first indication of what is to follow.

For us, while Kris gave some good, and even great, performances, he's just not the superstar-in-the-making that Adam Lambert is. Adam's bring-the-house-down duet with KISS was ample proof of that. Kris's pairing with Keith Urban was forgotten by us about ten minutes after it happened. We honestly had to strain ourselves to remember exactly what Kris did tonight when we sat down to write this article.

Right now, it's only a few minutes after the show ended, so we're still taking everything in, but the feeling we're left with is one of anticlimax. It would have been great to see a contestant who is so left-of-center like Adam, but also so deserving, achieve that final victory of being the winner. Kris is as solid and dependable as meat and potatoes, and in any other season, we would be rooting for him, but when matched up against Adam, we feel that America really got it wrong and chose someone who will fade into obscurity within a year.

And that ends our trip down memory lane in looking back at Season 8.  As we, and pretty much every other music critic on the face of the earth predicted, Adam did steal the limelight from Kris and quickly landed himself the coveted cover spot on Rolling Stone magazine and loads of television appearances from David Letterman to Oprah in spite of his ill-received performance at the American Music Awards in November.

So who will be this year's American Idol?  Have you already picked out your favorites?  There are still more audtiions to come and then we move on to Hollywood week where new host Ellen DeGeneres finally joins Simon, Randy, and Kara at the judging table.  We wonder how a non-industry person will fare in this format, but Ellen is immensely likeable and has charisma to spare so we're rooting for her.  We'll miss Paula Abdul, but can't feel too sorry for her because, if the rumors are true, she'll be joining Simon as a judge on his own series, The X-Factor, when it premieres in the US next season.

In the meantime, join us here each week as we run down the heroes and the zeroes from each episode of American Idol Season 9.