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White Guy With Guitar Wins American Idol, Again

At the end of the day, Idol is gonna Idol. The 19th American Idol winner was crowned last night — and as fate would have it, it was the White Guy With Guitar, Chayce Beckham. Idol had a reputation for awarding so-called WGWGs, especially back when the show had more cultural clout in the late 2000s and early ’10s and awarded a streak of five WGWG winners: David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, and Phillip Phillips. The show was overdue for another WGWG winner; the last, Trent Harmon, won on the show’s final Fox season in 2016, before it was revived by ABC. This year’s WGWG winner, Chayce Beckham, is a husky-voiced 24-year-old countryish singer-songwriter from Apple Valley, California, who already found a No. 1 on the iTunes country chart with his original song “23.” But he won against two huge-voiced singers who brought some of the season’s most transcendent moments: Grace Kinstler, who came in third place, and Willie Spence, the runner-up. Well, American Idol is back to its old tricks. Nature is healing.

White Guy With Guitar Wins American Idol, Again