NBC’s ‘The Voice’: Blake Shelton shades ‘American Idol’ somewhat, talks Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson

Is it sometimes better to be lucky than good? Well, “American Idol” may take a little bit of offense to the word “lucky” at all in reference to Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson making a name for themselves.

Blake Shelton made some interesting comments yesterday before “The Voice’s” live performance show in a BuzzFeed interview, and he gave so much more credit to the two ladies (easily the most-successful alumni to come out of the show so far) for their success than the institution that launched them:

“I think mostly because people like that are one in a million … “The odds of American Idol having done that are astronomical. I don’t think it’s … because of that show — it was just luck of the draw that those two girls came strolling through those auditions. If it was just the result of a show, then there would be 30 superstars right now that have come out of all these shows. But it’s not. It’s just people, whether it’s on one of these shows, or YouTube, or somebody who got a record deal and got on the radio. You never know where they’re going to come from, and it just so happens that they had a couple.”

This is ultimately a pretty tricky subject to really figure out and tackle, mostly because we don’t fully agree or disagree with Blake’s comments. What we feel was the main contributor to the success of Clarkson and Underwood in the early days was timing. “American Idol” was still relatively knew even when Carrie auditioned, and its ratings were astronomical. Is was easier in that climate to launch stars, and without the show, it’s hard to say if Carrie or Kelly would have the career that they do now. You could argue that “The Voice” would have given them similar opportunities were it around in “Idol’s” place at the time … but it wasn’t.

The part of Blake’s statement that is easy to disagree with dates back to the fact that “The Voice” obviously wants to do whatever it can right now to make itself feel better about its lack of major hit artists. Their show is not set up as well for them, but in fairness, if Phillip Phillips didn’t have the success he did with “Home,” would we be saying the same thing about the past few years of “American Idol”?

This is a complicated issue, but a fascinating issue to keep watch on in the months ahead. We feel like if you want to be a major star now coming off of a singing show, you have to be more than just good; you have to be so exceptional that no one can even compare you to someone else.

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