I hang my head in shame and confess (as I've confessed before):

I watch American Idol.

Every week.

Now I can't be bothered with Pop Idol and its lame British corporate equivalents. But there's something about The American Dream thing that's quite captivating from the outside. And a little more maverick and emotionally compelling than is possible here.

I watch "Idol" in the considered knowledge that it's pretty much the antithesis of everything my own wee corner of the music world represents, with its global sponsors and its skilful manipulation of musical tastes, and its beautiful people and staged controversies. It's not a folk festival open mic is it?

In distinguishing between most popular music and the trad end of folk, Bellowhead frontman Jon Boden talks of the difference between "me songs" and "we songs" (and check out his recent album "Songs From The Floodplain" for some of the most moving new "we" songs you'll hear all year). Of course, the pop and rock mainstream, and what most folks understand as the musical world of "singer-songwriters", has a lot to say about "me". And it's a not wholly unjustified tarnish. The "me" factor has never specially turned this "me" on. I've always preferred the storytellers, the creepers inside of other people's lives, to the emoters.

But sometimes that line is awful blurry.

Anyway it was down to the last three in American Idol. Three lads.

There's a clean cut, humble and undeniably likeable lad from Arkansas called Kris. Normally I'd know just by the look of him that he's not my cup of tea. You'd guess he was a wee bit wet. But he turns out to be a very fine musician and has balls enough to sing a Kanye West song in the last three face-off accompanied only by his own very able acoustic guitar. He's musically astute and totally level. I dare say I wouldn't buy his records but I have to give the guy credit for being his own man.

Then there's the flamboyant and dramatic Adam, a bit like a flashback to the fellow that used to front The Human League. Remember them? From a Scottish living room it seems remarkable to me (and cheering) that a pretty, stylised and obviously gay young man has been getting so much support from middle America. Til my Canadian husband points out that most of the screaming women, young and old, probably have no idea that he is. I hope this isn't true. Still he's very clever and musically crafty and chameolon-like. But a bit of a starlet. Technically proficient, an actor. Shouts and poses a bit much for my tastes. And is rather too much laying on the line the emotion I'm supposed to be feeling when he sings, rather than just feeling it in him and so making me feel it too. It's like musical semaphore.

And then there's Danny. Lovely Danny Gokey. Och I've had a wee crush on this one the whole while. Man he can sing. And when he does it right I believe every word of it. It's added to by a weighty back story, certainly, in that he lost his young wife last summer to a chronic heart condition. His prime motivation for singing, he says, is to raise money for a trust in her name and to rebuild his own life. But without this knowledge I think I would still have sensed something emotionally honest and more than just a little raw in his own performances. With the right song, truly he sings his own heart out.

Of course, the human story is so much part of it all now. Not just the song, for its own sake, as the folkies would prefer it, but the singer and his tale too.  I've done enough interviews at my own modest level to know this is true and to sort of wish it wasn't. But then where would that leave me with blogging? Who would care? Indeed, who does?

I confess to my Idol indulgence because in the multi-billion dollar world of corporate music making and taste shaping I'm chuffed that it's still possible for people like me to respond to real human emotion in song. And when we do what might otherwise be considered "me" music becomes "we" music. 

Dick Gaughan said to me once: You have to decide if you're the kind of singer and writer who wants people just to listen to you OR if you have something to say that demands folks listen to it. I know where I stand on this. I think lovely Danny does too.

Still they kicked him out this week. Idiots!

But whilst handsome Adam might have the "wow" factor and cute Kris the teenage "whoa" factor, it's the smiley, beardy, good guy old Danny that has the "we" factor.