Did a CD Predict Vonzell Solomon’s Elimination?
Realitytvmagazine

It was prophesized in the great big book of American Idol Conspiracy that Vonzell Solomon would finish third on American Idol 4. How do we know? Because a CD told us so.

Several weeks ago rumors circulated around the Internet that a track list had been sent out by Sony for the American Idol Season 4 The Showstoppers CD that exactly matched the elimination order on American Idol. However, when major online retailers started listing the CD for sale, the track list appeared different than in the rumored original Sony emails.Reality TV Magazine was recently contacted by one of our readers named Sharyn Shannon who has been studying the listings for the CD on the Barnes & Noble website and offered us an explanation for the fluctuating track listings.

Sharyn tells us, “There is a curiosity on the Barnes & Noble Music page where they offer a sampling playlist from the Season 4 American Idol CD. A few days ago, people (me included) noticed a series of "mistakes" on the Barnes & Noble site--discrepancies between the playlist and what displayed on the media player when tracks were selected.

The original configuration was: Six of the tracks had no discrepancy. Those tracks were Carrie, Bo and Vonzell in the #1, #2 and #3 positions. Nadia at #5 was correct. The #11 and #12 positions, Lindsay & Mikalah were also correct, but, also, simply a reverse of their order of elimination. Tracks #4, #6 and #9 would play the correct song, but the artist name displayed would be respectively, Anthony, Constantine and Nikko, those numbers matching their exact order of elimination. The relationship between the other three "mistakes" seemed hazier. Anwar, Scott and Jessica were out of order

Then I noticed that they, and Nadia, shared something: Nadia eliminated at #8 track at #5, Scott eliminated at #5 track at #8, Jessica eliminated at #10 track at #7, Anwar track at #10 eliminated at #7. Every single one of the twelve were either occupying the position they would finish in, or, like Lindsay & Mikalah, who were simply flipped at 11 & 12, had just been reversed with another contestant.”

Sharyn also tells us that Barnes & Noble has tried to fix their mistakes and over the last 24 hours there have been several changes. For one thing, the media player has been changed to say “Various Artists” for every song track selected. There are also now a couple errors on the page that show Jessica named as an artist twice, at tracks 7 and 8, and Scott's song title is named twice at tracks 8 and 10.

So how does the fluctuating track listing lead to an American Idol conspiracy? Well, it goes something like this. The track listing on the CD was originally done to match the predetermined order of the contestant’s elimination. Someone at American Idol caught this and realized that it would create controversy, and all the CDS had to be reburned with a new track listing. But some emails got mistakenly sent out to various websites with the original track listing that matched the order of elimination. This created mass confusion and resulted in inconsistencies on some websites.

One thing is for sure. On all the various track listings, Vonzell Solomon appears in the third position, so in Vonzell's case the prophecy of The Showstoppers CD did hold true.

http://www.realitytvmagazine.com/blog/2005/05/did_a_cd_predic.html