Jacob Lusk, The First Extrasexual Soul Singer

by Jay Caspian Kang

A few quick notes on Jacob Lusk’s “American Idol” performance last night: I think we can collectively agree that what happens at 1’22” needn’t be discussed. He’s air-humping the lady who wrote “Man in the Mirror.” But 1’34”-1’44”!

He starts with the classic Etta James move — close your eyes, lift your hand up near your head as the note fucks up the audience, and then get straight into the next move because fucking up the audience doesn’t mean shit to you. X-Tina also does this pretty well, but the only young gun who really knows how to pull that move off right now is Adele. (Being overweight helps with this move. I don’t know why, but it does. If you’re skeptical, go to YouTube and watch 5 skinny Aretha videos and 5 fat Aretha videos. Then report back to me.) Rihanna has too many “Hey, aren’t I the cutest puppy, EVER?” moments to pull off the move. Katy Perry is too busy burning down barns and taking out teenager’s eyes or whatever the hell she’s doing with those chestal pyrotechnics. Charlotte Church has the pipes for it, but whenever she scrunches up her face, everyone laughs.

Lusk then goes into the craziest strut to ever be strutted on the Idol stage, a list of struts that includes John Stevens’ Crocodile Rock strut, which, as as my redheaded brothers and sisters know, was a strut that put back the Ginger Assimilation Movement about fifty years.

Strutting has always been part of the soul singer’s repertoire, but it’s generally approached with small steps. For example…

and…

(Two notes on this video before I get back to Lusk and strutting. Please to go to 2’09” and see what Michael does in that alleyway. I think that might have been the moment when he became the King of Pop. I mean, who but the King gets away with that? Also: the girl in this video is impossibly hot.)

The big-step strut is usually done by female soul singers, none better than Tina Turner, who turned the big-step strut into a marketing campaign. (The worst big step-strutter, of course, is Celine Dion. T-Boz from TLC and all of Salt-N-Peppa are notable standouts in this category.)

I mean, if you’re busy and don’t feel like watching the whole thing, skip to 2’10”. But you’d be a fool.

Lusk is not afraid of breaking out of the entrenched gender categories that have created a rigid dichotomy between — uh, hmm, line between? How do I do that thing where you ironically write in academic speech mode? My major in college was drunken fishing with a minor in shooting TVs with shotguns — anyway. What I mean is that Jacob’s distribution of male to female moves is probably somewhere around 50–50, which, in my humble opinion, is why he is so goddamn entertaining. Throw in the fact that he has gender-blow-upping vocal range, and no body hair, and you have the first, genuinely extrasexual soul singer. Lusk is somehow every sex at the same time. He’s the opposite of KD Lang.

Speaking of “River Deep, Mountain High,” I have no words for contestant Pia Toscano. Except these: when the 666 Beast comes out of the ground, flanked by hordes of demons, Pia will summit a mountain, eyes ablaze, where she will meet the son of Satan. She will smile her last smile, unhinge her jaw and hand it over to the Beast. That chin will be the cornerstone of the First United Temple of the Fucking Devil.

Jay Caspian Kang’s debut novel, The Dead Do Not Improve, will be published by Crown in 2012.