PureAGT Season 8: The Argument for Tone the Chiefrocca
I’ve made no secret of it that Tone is my favorite act of the season – I think “B-O-O-T-Y” is ridiculously catchy, I am endlessly entertained by Tone & Coley-Cole’s antics onstage, and overall, I think their concept is genius: they only aspire to be a one-hit wonder…nothing more.
I’ve certainly seen my fair share of ridicule for being such a fan – there’s definitely some out that that think their act is “dumb”, “not entertaining/worthy of a Vegas show”, “repetitive”, and just “ridiculous”. I understand that Tone isn’t everyone’s cup of tea – some of you would much rather prefer another opera act, or another country singer, or something a little more high-brow. But before everyone gets uber-upset about him being brought back as a wild card act…why not let me try to make a case for why I think it’s good he got brought back? I promise not to take too much of your time, and at the end of it, you may feel a little bit better about seeing him again. So without further ado, my top 3 reasons why I think Tone coming back is a good thing:
1.) He’s a cannon-fodder act.
Tone’s not gonna make it through the semifinals – of that I’m sure. He doesn’t stand a chance against the likes of Collins, Forte, the Kristef Brothers, or Taylor. But the reality of AGT is that every week, 8 acts must go home in order for 4 to advance…and sometimes, it helps to build in a few acts that you know won’t stand a chance, and that you won’t feel bad about sending home in order to protect your favorites. Tone is the perfect cannon-fodder act: he’s already been sent home once, he doesn’t take himself very seriously, he’s not going to be crushed if he gets eliminated a second time, and he’s just thankful for the chance to perform “B-O-O-T-Y” one more time. Sure, you can argue that “so-and-so deserved a second chance more than Tone!”, but let’s think realistically here: most, if not all, of the acts brought back as wild cards are probably not going to make it through to the top 10. I don’t see them displacing heavy-hitters like Forte, Collins, Catapult, Jimmy, etc. The wild card pick is basically just a stay of execution for them – just a chance to perform one more time, with the chances of them actually making it through being really, really slim. Sure, Mel could have picked someone like Chloe Channell, and we could have listened to her warble her way through another lackluster country song, only to get eliminated AGAIN and start crying; but how entertaining would that have been? Which brings me to my next point…
2.) He’s an entertaining space-filler.
Undoubtedly, there’s going to be talented acts that just kind of fizzle in the semifinals – hell, some of them even fizzled in the quarterfinals *cough*Marty*cough*. And when too many acts in a row fizzle – you end up with situations like we had in quarterfinal #4, when many of us were so bored during the first hour that we contemplated changing the channel. Yes, this is a show about talent – but it’s also still a tv show, and ratings are still important. You don’t want your audience changing the channel mid-show because they’re not entertained. Enter Tone – even if you don’t think he’s worthy of a Vegas show, you have to admit: the dude is an entertainer, and his quarterfinal performance brought the house down. He has a bit of the “trainwreck appeal” that makes people want to watch, even if they don’t particularly like the songs he’s singing. He could be the perfect type of act to wake up a lackluster show, without detracting too much from the truly talented acts. So maybe instead of thinking of Tone as “taking the place of a more talented act” – think of him as a special musical guest, put somewhere in the middle of the show to liven things up 😉
3.) AGT could benefit from the success of “B-O-O-T-Y’.
Someone on Twitter asked me the other day why “B-O-O-T-Y” wasn’t on the radio already. And it brought up an interesting thought to me – does AGT perhaps have a vested interest in the commercial success of “B-O-O-T-Y”? Let me explain. Shows like American Idol, The Voice, and The X-Factor are notorious for keeping their talent under contractual lock and key for a prolonged period of time after the show – even the singers who only made it through the early rounds have ironclad contracts imposed upon them that can prohibit them from “doing anything to advance their career” for up to a YEAR after the show airs, or that may reward “first dibs” on any record deals to studios associated with those shows, or may even go so far as to spell out terms whereby the show itself could potentially collect royalties from any performances the contestants do within a specified period of time. It’s predatory contracts like these that have made me grow to hate Simon Cowell as a human being – they’re basically provisions that allow him to squeeze every last dime of profit out of a contestant before kicking them to the curb. And since Simon’s one of the creators of AGT – what’s to say there aren’t contractual obligations similar to these that are imposed upon AGT contestants? The powers that be may very well see Tone as a potential cash cow – there may already be a record deal in the works to get “B-O-O-T-Y” on the radio, in which case, it’s going to benefit the show to get Tone as much exposure as possible…up to and including bringing him back as a wildcard act.
So there’s my arguments in support of Tone’s return…take ’em or leave ’em. Just wanted to get it off my chest 🙂
UPDATE: Forgot to add this hilarious radio interview that Tone & Cole did a few weeks ago – they of course had me laughing, but it was interesting to hear the back story of “B-O-O-T-Y” and hear them admit that they weren’t expecting to actually make it as far as they had on AGT. Tone also has “mad love” for Angela Hoover 🙂 :
You make many good points here and have given me a new perspective on him. 🙂
I love him (and have the 3 week old comments to prove it) and I was opposed to the decision. What can he add? How can he change it up and be a contender? With Tone you can’t overrating things. He is not a contender, nor does he want to be. I never thought of the angle that you presented, in particular one sentence:”all of the acts brought back as a wild card probably will not make the finals”. With this, I completely agree. That’s also why I voted Milton as a write in. If he does as well as his first round, he could make it. Nobody else really has a shot of beating Collin, Forte, Kristef brothers, etc. etc.
I would agree with you, but given that 6 whole acts will be going through to the finals each night, I could completely see acts like the American Hitmen, Brandon & Savannah, or Sam Johnson getting past the competition this week if they brought their best. American Hitmen or Brandon & Savannah would have no competition for votes in their genre, and Sam Johnson’s danger element doesn’t disgust a large portion of viewers (unlike sword-swallowing) and the intensity of danger never fails to increase as the act progresses, while in escape artisty or juggling the danger remains relatively stagnant. Next week, however, is a different story. Week 2 is filled to the brim with acts that will get immense amount of votes based solely on backstories or personalities, so any act eliminated during the quarterfinals doesn’t stand a chance of facing against acts like that. If Tone was brought back during week 2, it wouldn’t even matter because any other possible wildcard wouldn’t be able to progress either. In week 1 though, the other wildcards would have had a fighting chance, and that chance has pretty much been wasted.
I highly disagree with you, Liam – if acts like Brandon & Savannah and Sam Johnson couldn’t even manage to break into the top 4 or 5 to make the judges choice in their respective quarterfinal rounds (which weren’t NEARLY as competitive as these semifinals are going to be), do you REALLY think they’re going to miraculously blow all these other heavy-hitters out of the water and sail into the top 10? I also think you’re getting a little too hung up on the “competition for votes in their genre” aspect – at this point, people are gonna vote for their favorites, regardless of their “genre”; I think we got past all the genre voting in the quarterfinals, when voters had the luxury of tossing votes to a different group of contestants each week. They don’t have the luxury of trying to vote every singer/every dance act/etc. in now; they’ve gotta pick and chose who they REALLY want to see. And if they couldn’t be bothered to throw votes to Sam and Brandon & Savannah the first go-round…why would they do it now?
The unfortunate reality of the wild card is that it still remains just a stay of execution – the only wild card acts that I can recall actually advancing to the top 10 in the past 4 years are Anna & Patryk & Michael Grasso (season 5) & Landon Swank (season 6). I would argue that all of them were likely stronger than any of the potential wild card acts you mentioned, and none of them managed to actually advance to the finals. Just my opinion, but I just don’t see the point in getting really upset about who does & doesn’t get called back for the wild card – because in the great scheme of things, it’s really not gonna matter much anyway. If an act doesn’t have the judges AND America on their side from the get-go – they’re not gonna win. Period.
The “if it couldn’t go through then, then why now?” notion only really applies when acts perform to the best of their ability and yet are still unable to break the top 5. For example, Deanna Dellacioppia, Aerial Ice, and Alexandria the Great all gave it the best they had during their quarterfinal performance and yet all of them still failed to even make the judge’s choice. Under circumstances like this, your point works. However, I feel it is a different story when acts make mistakes in their quarterfinal performances that wouldn’t otherwise happen during their best performances. As for the acts I listed in my other post, the American Hitmen didn’t bring the hard rock they needed to advance, as Howard said, Sam Johnson looked like he was having more fun than being in danger, and the judges might not have gotten this, but anybody who listens to Imagine Dragons knows that Brandon & Savannah drained every bit of the solid cringy feel that makes that song, probably because they added too much of their own personal touch. If they did bring the best they could in the semifinals, however, I’m sure at least one of them could make it into the top 12. And just to clarify, if there was a top 10 for season 7, then Todd Oliver would have made it because he came in either third of fourth semifinal vote, both of which would surpass the judge’s choice is the top 5 were to go through for a top 10 round. So out of 12 acts that have gotten through as wildcards since season 5, the season that introduced wildcards, 4 of them were in the top ten. That’s a third of all the wildcard acts in AGT history, and if you count Andrew De Leon, who would have probably made it into the top 10 of season 7 if there was one, then that increases the count to 5, which would mean nearly half of all of AGT’s wildcard acts made the top 10. I should also mention that both Landon Swank and Todd Oliver were only a hair away from the finals, with Todd losing the judge’s choice, and Landon losing by the smallest vote percentage in all of AGT history. I wouldn’t really call any of that a stay of execution. And yeah, in the whole scheme of things, you’re right, it doesn’t really matter because there probably will never be a wildcard act that wins the whole show, but on the basis of who does and doesn’t deserve to go through, I feel it matters, because to be honest, Tone won’t get through, and I feel the entertainment value of his act has ran its course for this show, regardless if his song becomes successful. Sorry if I sounded too upset in my last post, I just wanted to make a point.
PS: Catapult is the last unannounced act of the semifinals, I checked the wiki.
Brandon and Savannah pulled off a suicide mission. You don’t just go into Radio City with your career on the line and choose to sing a techno song. It doesn’t really work like that. Radioactive isnt. Good song because of the singing, be it Brandon and Savnnah or Imagine Dragons. The beat and overall feel made that song. They took both away and tried to sing it, which didnt work. Sam Johnson couldn’t crack the judges choice because his act was a flop, plain and simple. It wasn’t nearly dangerous enough. To call them just as deserving as Ladon Swank would be somewhere between wrong and ignorant. The funny thing is you compared them directly to Alexandria and Deanna, who both had better performances AND are in the same category as the 2 you want back.
My point is that acts that did not perform to the best of their ability during the quarterfinals deserve another shot, especially if their earlier performances had been semifinal worthy. I feel Sam Johnson, the American Hitmen, and Brandon & Savannah all fall under this category. As was the same with Landon Swank and Todd Oliver. Both were criticized and eliminated during the quarterfinals, but then proceeded to improve their acts after the wildcard and both nearly made the finals. If the three acts I listed before provided performances on par with their Vegas and audition performances, then I think they would do well in the semifinals. This can not be said for either Alexandria or Deanna because even though they performed to the best of their known ability in the quarterfinals, they still did not even make the Judge’s choice. This means that even if they provide their best in the semifinals like they did in the quarterfinals, they still will not be voted for because America has already proved they do not care enough for both of the acts.