'Idol' judge Kara DioGuardi slips into Atlantic City for own star turn
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Kara DioGuardi, shown performing at last year's 26th annual ASCAP Pop Music Awards in Los Angeles, is an impressive singer whose versatility allows her to switch easily between rock, blues, country and R&B.
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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Last year Kara DioGuardi joined "American Idol" as its fourth judge, a thankless and chaotic job that placed her in tabloid cross hairs and on the receiving end of Simon Cowell's arched eyebrow and found her stripping down to a bikini for the show's finale (and to be fair, for charity).
Somehow the current season, her second, has been just as tumultuous. As a judge she's found surer footing and is often the only reliable dispenser of sound musical advice on the panel. At the same time she's been thrust into the role of Mr. Cowell's flirtatious moll. In previous years that task fell on Paula Abdul, who left the show after last season, and for which Ms. Abdul's replacement, Ellen DeGeneres, for reasons of fame, power and sexual orientation, is ill-suited.
In other words, even as Ms. DioGuardi is finding her footing, she's still on uncertain ground. So last weekend at the Music Box at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, she took what amounted to a low-profile getaway from the most popular show on television for a pair of cabaretlike concerts that were billed as her solo performing debuts. It was a safe space: many devoted fans, an out-of-the-way city and a conceit -- "an evening of songs and stories" -- that allowed Ms. DioGuardi to put her personality to work alongside her voice.
There was no need to hedge: Ms. DioGuardi is an impressive, sometimes phenomenal singer, versatile enough to slip easily among rock, blues, country and R&B. During her Saturday night show, her second of the weekend, Ms. DioGuardi sang eight songs that she helped write, largely tracing a decade of angry young women in pop. (The exceptions were "Escape" by Enrique Iglesias, not a woman, and "Taking Chances" by Celine Dion, not angry, or at the time of the recording, young.)
Before "Idol," she said, "I was probably more like a contestant than a judge." For much of the past decade she's been one of the most reliable songwriters in pop, a history that's been obscured by the "Idol" juggernaut but was clear during this show. On "Pieces of Me," the Ashlee Simpson hit, she started out sounding like Ms. Simpson's needling staccato but closed it out like a full-blown R&B number. On Pink's "Sober" she was ferocious, crouching down to her knees and shouting the song. Afterward, she joked, "I feel like I could win a million dollars at the craps table tonight."
First Published April 18, 2010 12:00 am
