Season 9 Preview: Maddy Curtis and Savannah Low

This is our continuation of our preview of possible Season 9 contestants. Remember, that the Hollywood round doesn’t occur until January 9th this year. We don’t know how far any of these contestants might go. And since we never see some of the competition round contestants until the competition starts, we might never see some of these people. We might have even found the wrong person with the same name.

Number 13 : Maddy Curtis
Hometown: Loudoun County, Virginia
Age: 16 or 17
Style: Theatre?/Jazz?

Number 14 : Savannah Low
Style: Theatre?

Pictures/Myspace/Links after the jump

Maddy Curtis:
On My Own (youtube)
How Beautiful (youtube)
Mom’s Blog Another Blog Third Blog

Savannah Low:
Maybe This Time (youtube)

Idol has often had contestants with theatre background (and then one or more of the judges complain that they are too theatrical) or who eventually ended up on Broadway. This list is far from complete, but Season 2 had Frenchie (Rent) and Ruben (travelling version of Ain’t Misbehavin’). Season 3 had Fantasia (The Colour Purple), Diana (Hair and others) and Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls movie). Season 4 had Constantine (Rock of Ages). Season 5 had Katharine (various local productions) and Ace (Grease. Taylor also performed in Grease). Season 6 had Lakisha (The Colour People). Season 7 had Syesha (several musicals over the years). And S8 had Adam (Wicked and others). They have even had show tunes as a theme night a couple of times (S4 and S7) with mixed results (Bo just jabbing at a song list to pick Pippin and Lord ALW ending up going on a bit of a jihad against Jason who sang “Memories”)

So, will they have another contestant with experience with show tunes? Likely. It may be one of these two. Neither really seems to set the world on fire with their singing, but they have pretty voices. Mandy tackle that ever-popular defeated young girl song, “On My Own” from Les Miz. Given that Susan Boyle had SO MUCH success with singing the “older, defeated woman” song from Les Miz (“I Dreamed a Dream”) earlier this year, Idol may be eager to see if they can replicate the success. Maddy does have a bit of a backstory. She comes from a family of 12 with 4 sibblings with Down Syndrome (3 adopted). Idol will probably work the backstories like crazy this year, again, because Susan Boyle used hers so successfully. They have to have a gentler touch, though, because they clearly turned people off with Danny’s backstory last year.

I don’t know a lot about Savannah, but based on the youtubes we have, I think that she has the stronger voice than Maddy. She sings the “won’t be defeated” woman song from “Chicago” (that Rachel and April sung as a disconnected duet on Glee this year. Rachel also sang “On My Own” for her Glee addition as did the actress that played her to get the role).

What do you think? Will either of these girls get a shot at the confetti shower? I don’t think they can win, but they could be cast for diversity.

Thanks itsalleternal for tracking down these two.

About Kirsten 3060 Articles
Kirsten has had a long love affair with numbers. Marry that with her love of cheese and the Numbers Threads at MJs were born.