Luke Menard –Luke again underwhelmed the audience with his girly, reedy,
castrato-like voice. To make things worse, Luke rushed the first part of the song and changed some of the words and phrasings so that it frequently sounded like he was forgetting the lyrics. Wanting to “have fun” or “have a good time out there” basically guarantees a karaoke style performance. Picking a song because it’s “fun” just means that the contestant doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing and should be going packing their bags as soon as they get back to the hotel. Besides, he was so stiff it didn’t look like he was having any fun at all – probably because he knew he was embarrassing himself on national television. Now, I don’t know what Simon is drinking, but it must be mean juice or something because he has had the most scathing comments this season, comments that are not so much critiques as they are vicious body blows. Telling Luke he wouldn’t make the top 12 much less have any shot at winning the competition actually made me wince a little. This was Luke’s second, “I wanna punch Simon in the face”
expression of the season.
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David Archuleta – Compared to last week, David’s rendition of
Another Day in Paradise was a letdown. I was expecting more of what he brought last week, but the vocal clarity and pure tone were missing. Instead, it was a bit washed out sounding, which is actually how he sounded in week one. At first, I thought it was the distance from the mic to the piano bench that was causing it, but when he stood and took the mic in hand, it was clear that it was his voice and not a proximity issue. It was not bad by any stretch, but I don’t think David connected with this song like he did with
Imagine. Also, I am starting to notice more and more David’s habit of
licking his lips during the performance. It reminds me of a frog licking itself clean, and at some point it may get annoying to watch.
Danny Noriega – Danny has a good voice, but only really showed it off last week, having decided to have “fun” with
Jailhouse Rock in week 1. This week, he decided to go for “fun” again, and as per usual, it backfired.
Tainted Love is just too monotone to show off Danny’s voice, and to make matters worse, it seemed to veer more into Marylin Manson’s amelodic cover version than the Soft Cell original. To counteract the monotony, Danny decided to vamp it and camp it up as much a sistah could, and the result was a collection of spastic vogueing and random vamping that was hard to watch. RuPaul he ain’t. Danny also struck a pose that was straight from the
Jessica Alba portfolio. By the way, I found
this shot of Danny that made me think he looked just like… well, I couldn’t figure it out. But he looks like some 70’s singer or actress. Any suggestions? Email me at
hanson.yoo@gmail.com.
David Hernandez – For the third week in a row, my take on David is that his vocals are really good, but his performance is overly theatrical and cheesy, what with the
arched eyebrow, plaintive gazes into the camera, and overly emoted lyrics. It’s like he thinks he’s in a touring production of Rent, and the artifice leaves me cold. By the way, right after the song ended, Simon was overheard (inadvertently, I assume) commenting “Say, I like the way you strip to that”, followed by a chuckle from Randy. This was, no doubt, in reference to
David’s stripper past. Note that David isn’t the first stripper on American Idol (Nikki McKibbin broke that barrier in season 1). As long as there aren’t any nude pictures, supposed he won’t get
Frenchied.
Michael Johns – I will say one nice thing about Michael Johns – he definitely has the kind of charisma and stage presence that, say, Chikezie would kill for. But the compliments end there. Johns started of shouty and off key, and then proceeded to deliver quite substandard karaoke. When he sang a Doors song in week one, I mentioned that he was cribbing Jim Morrison’s stage movements by way of Val Kilmer. It turns out that it wasn’t just because of that song – johns does the
two handed mike grasp plus intense stare into the camera, the hop-jump thing, and all of the mic stand flourishes no matter what he sings. He even
cribbed a move from David Byrne. The vocal performance got better when he went up higher in the second half of the song, but he strained for lot of the notes and pretty much yelled the ending. And I can’t understand how Randy had most of his comments ready since dress rehearsal and no one pointed out to him that
Don’t You Forget About Me was a hit for Jim Kerr and Simple Minds, who are Scottish, and not for INXS. And I don’t know how you compare Johns to Michael Hutchence based off of that or any other performance. What, just because they’re both Australian? Weird moment of musical ignorance for Randy tonight.
David Cook – The theme for this week’s intros is “your most embarrassing moment”. I suspect David’s actual most embarrassing moment was when the wind outside blew his comb over back to reveal how bald he was during the first take. Take two
involved a hat. After last week’s rock and roll blip, David is back to singing the cheesiest of imaginable songs like Gina Glocksen, and contrary to the judges opinions, I think that the whole thing just didn’t work. For one thing,
Hello is such a cheesy song that the only way you can cover it without cheesiness is to do it with irony. But instead, David takes the whole thing all too seriously, making a sappy ballad into a pretentious mess that bored me more than anything else. Vocally, it started out rough, moved to just alright, and culminated with
bowel straining screams. It looked like he was passing a kidney stone.
Jason Castro – It is interesting to step back from the whole Idol machine, which is populated almost to a one by overachieving vocalists who mimic other singers’ styles and have learned all sorts of pre-programmed vocal and facial tics to convey emotion that it mostly artifice. We know that most of the wunderkind 16 year olds smile throughout their sad breakup songs and the like, but this is Idol, and we’re used to it. Which is why I was quite surprised at Jason’s performance of
Hallelujah, which is probably the most emotionally authentic performance I’ve ever seen on the show. The only thing that marred the performance was the
visible spit the flew towards the camera. And Jason, don’t get too baked before the show, or you’ll forget that you’re IDOLS 07 and
not 01. You don’t want people voting for Luke by mistake. No one wants people voting for Luke period.
Chikezie – It seemed like Chikezie just couldn’t get on track with
All the Woman I Need. The performance lacked cohesion, and while he wasn’t off-key, he wasn’t able to get into that sweet spot of the note like he did last week. It was boring and lacked the rich tone that Chikezie can deliver when it’s all working. If you wanted to hear what it would have been like if he was hitting all cylinders, listen to the clip from dress rehearsal during the voting recap. The falsetto is just killer, and I imagine the whole thing could have been the performance of the night. Too bad he couldn’t deliver it live. As it is, Chikezie stands a
Ghost Dog of a chance of making it to the top 12. Ah crap – that was pretty lame – what am I, Gene Shalit? I couldn’t figure out any other way to work that in.
