Seventeen year old Jordin Sparks edged out beat boxing Justin Timberlake wannabe Blake Lewis to the American Idol top spot last night. A whopping 74 million votes were cast last night to determine Jordin the winner (AT&T and Idol are probably laughing their way to the bank as I type this).

American Idol is a good show to watch — but is it just me who thinks the show went way off tangent this year?

Here’s the recap from US Weekly:

After five months, seven cities and more than 100,000 competing singers, America has chosen its new Idol – and her name is Jordin Sparks!

Capping off the sixth season of Fox’s reality smash hit, the 17-year-old Arizona native beat out Seattle-area beatboxer Blake Lewis, 25, for the coveted title Wednesday night at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre. A record 74 million finale votes were cast to determine this season’s champ.

This year’s finale song, to be released as Sparks’ first single, is “This Is My Now,” written by Scott Krippayne and Jeff Peabody, and selected from among more than 200,000 entries from amateur songwriters nationwide. Sparks first performed the tune to close the finale broadcast.

Consistently praised by Idol judges for her vocal maturity and showmanship, Sparks’ performances grew stronger each week – impressing celebrity mentors like Jennifer Lopez, Martina McBride and Tony Bennett – to advance to the final two.

I’m not usually a fan of the singing reality shows as they are a dime a dozen in the UK, but American Idol holds a special place in my heart because it’s just such a phenomenon here in the States. Celebrities and advertisers alike battle each other to get a spot on a program that is just basically a hopped up version of a high school talent show.

I doubt Idol is going to be cancelled anytime soon — it’s such a huge cash cow for FOX that they probably have a commemorative Simon Cowel wing (next to the Simpsons cafeteria) in their HQ dedicated to his help in restoring the broadcasters fortunes. I feel, however (and I know I am going to get lambasted for this) that this year’s American Idol was lame compared to previous years. Idol is supposed to be a singing competition (well as serious as a competition can get with Randy and his stupid ass Dog Pound and an overmedicated Paula Abdul drooling into her Coca-Cola glass al the time). It turned into a farce right about the time Sanjaya stayed in the Top Ten and tried to bring the pony hawk into fashion, and I pretty much stopped caring who would win at that point because none of the singers really did it for me.

(BTW — I actually tried doing a pony hawk on my daughter’s hair for fun and to this day everytime I bring a hairbrush around her she shoots me a dirty look.)

American Idol this year was all about Antonella’s soft porn pics, Sanjayamania, and what celebs they could pull in to grab the ratings. If everyone strips all the fodder away from this year’s show, you would find there weren’t any out of this world talent in this year’s broadcast. Producers are going to have to try harder to stick to the formula before Idol fans suss out that the program is running out of subtsance.

Meanwhile, being an AI winner means that Jordin gets a brand new Mustang and a lucrative record deal with music label RCA. Not bad going for a girl who probably has just finished high school. Considering the fortunes of last year’s winner, Taylor Hicks, I’d try to keep that car in pristine order in case she has to sell it for cash.

Note by Celebitchy: I know we already covered this, but this is Jessie’s take on it.