Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Did something seem missing from American Idol’s Season 13 premiere Wednesday night?

It certainly wasn’t a lack of harmony at the judges’ table. Let’s just say a good time was had by all.

American idol judges Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick Jr. during a lighter moment at the show’s Boston auditions. (FOX Photo)

The trio of Jennifer, Keith and Harry probably laughed more and cracked more jokes in one episode than the judges did in all last year’s audition shows combined.

The highlight came when Harry cradled one singer like a baby because a Harry Connick Jr. fan finally showed up in the audition room.

It certainly wasn’t a lack of guitars. It seemed like at least half the auditioners had an instrument strapped around their necks.

We had guys with guitars. With had girls with guitars. We had a girl with a ukulele.

There were so many guitars, Malcolm Allen felt naked without one. So he played air guitar while singing “Superstition.”

It wasn’t even a lack of bad auditions.

OK, there weren’t any contestants who dressed so outrageously that it was clear from the word go that their audition was just a stunt to get on national TV.

But on a night when we were introduced to more than two dozen Hollywood bound contestants, Sam Atherton and Earl James proved not everyone was quite ready for prime-time Idol.

Stephanie Hanvey was one of the contestants we met on American idol’s Season 13 premiere. (FOX Photo)

Contestant background pieces. You know, those segments where we get to know more about the person behind the singer.

Now look, I’m not a fan of Idol’s sometimes seemingly endless stream of sob stories. There have been times in the past where I wondered if you could get airtime on the show if you hadn’t survived a tragedy of some sort.

But telling us more about contestants doesn’t need to translate into sob stories. The show could have told us about Patriot cheerleader Stephanie Petronelli’s trip overseas to entertain troops in Afghanistan. It could have told us about how Sam Woolf disappeared from the restaurant where he sang regularly, saying he was going on vacation, leaving the owners to wonder where he disappeared to when he didn’t return … until they got a call from Idol and realized that was the vacation. The show could have interviewed Jillian Jensen about why she decided to try another singing show after her X Factor disappointment.

The show didn’t do any of that. It showed off a new gimmick called the holding cell, or the pressure chamber or some such nonsense, then seldom used it. It showcased a promising new judge in Harry. It paraded two dozen potentially decent singers in front of us in such rapid-fire fashion that only two stuck out for me — the aforementioned Malcolm Allen and Savion Wright and his original song.

The result: I turned off the TV after two hours feeling like a part of the show was missing, a key part that actually helps me relate to a contestant.

And I’m not so sure that’s a positive change. After all, making us feel a connection to the contestants is sorta the whole goal.