It's too early to know yet whether Season 8 of American Idol introduced the world to a lasting musical superstar.
Maybe winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert are destined to go platinum and win Grammys. Or maybe they'll tank while Allison Iraheta and Lil Rounds, who were cast off in earlier rounds, turn out to have the big careers.
This much is clear, though: Unless it's Alexis Grace, who had the bad luck of being eliminated one week shy of reaching the top 10, 2009's star in the making will be in the building when the American Idols Live! Tour comes to American Airlines Center in Dallas on Thursday.
The overstuffed three-hour show gives each of the season's 10 finalists a chance to shine – opening with two songs each for the singers who finished 10, 9 and 8, building to a five-song showcase for Allen and closing with a group performance of Journey's fittingly idealistic "Don't Stop Believing."
Several of the tour's songs – such as Allen's cover of Kanye West's "Heartless," Lambert's redo of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love," Danny Gokey's version of Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T." and a Lambert-Iraheta duet of Foghat's "Slow Ride" – will be familiar to Idol viewers. They are numbers that were standout moments when performed on TV.
But there's also plenty of new material, such as Lambert's medley of David Bowie tunes and Allen's cover of the Beatles' "Hey Jude."
What's more, they'll be doing full renditions of these songs, not abbreviated-for-TV versions.
The whirlwind 50-city tour began July 5 in Portland, Ore. So if there were any snags in the early shows, they've most likely been smoothed over by now.
And tour producers promise that even fans in the nosebleed seats won't feel left out, thanks to a 42-by-18-foot video screen and four smaller screens that will display other images.
It wouldn't feel like Idol, after all, without it playing on a big-screen TV.
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