With Paul McDonald's elimination last night on American Idol, we can at least rest safely that not another female went home. One thing I did realize, however, is that all the older contestants are getting picked off one by one. During the "songs from the year you were born" episode I made a bar graph of the birth dates of the 12 contestants and I have since added Ashthon as well who was born in 1986 (turned 25 this year.) During the Top 13 there were 8 contestants born before 1990 and 5 born after 1990. Now six contestants have been eliminated (including the 3 oldest, Paul, Naima and Ashthon) and now in the Top 7 we have 3 born before 1990 and 4 born after 1990. Thia was the only "young" contestant to be eliminated and Jacob at 23 is now the only contestant left over 22. If Jacob and Stefano (22) are the next two to go, that would make James (22) the oldest with everyone else 20 or younger.
If we look back over the past three years of Idol all the winners have been 23 or older when they won (Lee DeWyze was 24, Kris Allen was 23 and David Cook was 25) and the runners up were all in their mid 20's except for David Archuleta who was 17 (Crystal Bowersox was 24, Adam Lambert was 27.) So this looks to be one of the youngest group of contestants in the Top 5 with the two strongest candidates for winning currently being teenagers (Lauren and Scotty.)
