Daughtry

American Idol's 2006 hard-rock experiment has certainly paid off from a sales standpoint: Daughtry, the debut disc by Chris Daughtry, last season's designated metal man, has already reached platinum status, and it continues to sell steadily (at least by current standards). Not that its success is surprising. Indeed, the disc is such an utterly generic product that its title might as well be a bar code. Every chord on the album is overly familiar, every arrangement sounds hackneyed, and lyrics like "Broken homes from separation/Don't you know it's violation" (from "All These Lives") constitute feigned angst at its most meaningless. Sure, Daughtry can sing, but compared to authentic rockers, he's the equivalent of Justin Guarini, albeit with a better physique and enough sense not to grin all the time. He's earning top dollar now, but sooner or later he'll be playing low-rent bars in far-flung suburbs, which is precisely where he would have wound up had not Simon, Paula and Randy taken a shine to his bald head. Talk about false Idolatry.