American Idol - Season 9 - Page 8

There were monitors???

DiDi is SO channeling Megan Joy. . .

Except Didi can sing well.

I love Didi's tone and style.

My wife and I were laughing hysterically when that Garcia guy did Genie in a Bottle....It's just so lyrically stupid. At least it was memorable in a very very bad way.

The only two I liked were Alex and Michael, though I have no idea why the judges liked Michael so much. All in all, another snoozefest of a show with far too many slow, boring songs.

Tim Dewyze - same ol' same ol' from Lee, but might be too forgettable in the opening anti-pimp spot this week.

Alex Lambert - same ol' lack of performing confidence from Alex, but his X factor is an instantly recognizable voice.

Tim Urban - needs to ditch the guitar because he looks like he has problems chewing gum and walking a straight line, though he provided an earnest performance.

Andrew Garcia - one trick pony, might be in trouble this week.

Casey James - goat boy did little to impress me, not a recording artist at all.

Aaron Kelly - makes singing look so hard to do, kinda all over the map vocally.  He might sound better after puberty.

Toddrick Hall - also has a revival-esque voice, not a record artist's voice.

Michael Lynche - couldn't wait for this song to end, didn't get the love the judges fluffed up Michael's way, his falsetto isn't all that great, and he's the biggest guy who sings with so little vocal presence with that particular song.

I'm really starting to hope this is the last year for the show.  Randy seems uninterested.  His comments are limited to 'Not feeling it, Dog.'   Ellen seems a out of place and doesn't seem to know what to say.  Kara seems to think she's the star of the show (behind Simon) and she prattles on, flirts with Simon, then sits there annoyingly pouting her lips (and was her wardrobe this bad last year?  her girls night clothes are a completely different style to her boys night clothes i've noticed).  And Simon seems distracted.

This weeks performances were much more enjoyable to the last two weeks.  I still don't have a favorite yet.

Other than Crystal.... I don't really enjoy anyone. I'm bored this season. The judges are boring me, the contestants are boring and I find myself just fastforwarding through the whole show.

Have to start off with a fare thee well to Haeley Vaughn, the most dissonant Idol ever.  I know many people were clamoring for her exit -- but what last week showed me was this: while Haeley was awful, she was at least memorably awful.  And yes, she tuneless, but she was memorably tuneless.  Her epic sing off on Thursday night will go down in Idol lore as the singularly worst Idol performance ever, as she took on the challenge of singing worse than she did the night before and then ran with it like Usain Bolt, shattering the previous mark into millions of tiny, quivering pieces.  I will also miss Haeley for her bizarro fashion sense and Gollum-like features.  I had looked forward to doing a Gollum chop a week, and now I have to figure out something interesting about whatever boring ass contestants that are left.  Damn you, Idol for picking off my low hanging fruit!  At least I still have Siobhan.  And even though she may have prematurely lost the Idol crown, I'm glad that Haeley has finally found what she most desired.  Enjoy the ring, baby!

 

And let’s not forget about the return of Danny Gokey!  Not content with having exploited the memory of his dead wife, Danny came on the show to sing his new song, a song that, get this – was written by a guy whose wife died!  So now Danny can exploit his dead wife and the dead wife of the songwriter!  This was all explained to Ryan in a motormouthed maelstrom of words and ideas, the kind of incessant and rapid chatter you hear from schizophrenics and drug abusers.  Perhaps Hollywood has turned Danny Gokey into Danny Cokey.  Oh yeah, the song sucked.

 

On with the show!

 

Katie – Here’s the problem with Katie – she takes advice from the judges.  All of it.  Now, I know that the judges take great pride in dispensing advice, but it’s almost all complete shit anyway.  To listen to the judges and take up their song suggestions literally is complete folly, because, hey – they’re stupid.  Katie not only followed the advice on song choice, she also picked her clothes in accordance to their wishes, and as bad as it is taking song advice from the judges, taking fashion tips from them is instant death.  I mean, have you seen they way the judges dress?  It’s like taking diet tips from Mo’nique.  What all this means is she just does not know what the frick she’s doing at all.  In fact, she’s so bad that the judges are hoping that their advice might help her find her way, but the problem is… well, she just does not know what the frick she’s doing AT ALL.

 

When you combine the mechanical gesturing and swaying, the acceptance of programming from the judges, and the almost complete lack of emotion in her performances, there’s only one conclusion to draw – Katie is a robot.  But a defective robot, since she can’t even produce an on-key performance to save her circuitry.  Starting off Breakaway on the wrong foot with pitchy “da-da-dums”, Katie moved into a shaky lower register that in parts sounded like Helen Keller saying “water”.  It got better up top, which is where the sweet spot of her range is, but she still would lapse into the Yoda-like throat singing.  Simon said, “you kind of sucked… the energy out of it”, with a pause in the middle that wasn’t just pregnant, it was Octomom pregnant.  And the message was very, very clear.

 

Katie was pummeled a bit by the judges, although being a minor and all, it was more of a paddling than a pummeling.  At one point talking to Ryan, she sounded like she caught a lump in her throat.  Don’t cry, Katie.  Please don’t cry.  The water wreaks havoc on your circuits.  Remember the last time you cried, little robot?  I don’t mind reformatting your memories, but programming “give me a kiss” in six different languages is much more time-consuming than you’d imagine.

 

Siobhan – While there was a simple elegance to singing the beginning of House of the Rising Sun a cappella, I frankly don’t think Siobhan’s voice is as good as people think it is.  It may potentially be as good, but I wasn’t really that wowed last week either, and this week’s arrangement sounded like too much like she snagged a solo in the glee club concert – it was overall quite vanilla sounding and didn’t have any rock ‘n’ roll ballsiness to it.  I also thought she was building into something big, but other than a muted glory note at the end, it didn’t really go anywhere.

 

Siobhan’s outfit was a vintage red cocktail dress that would have been a total knockout if it weren’t for the black shrug that made it a bit frumpy.  Another frumpy element was the Shirley Feeney hairdo, although having recently shaved her head, there’s not a whole lot she can do with hair that short.  But when it gets longer, she’ll look even more like Anna Paquin than she does now.

 

Lacey – I don’t know if it’s Idol specifically as much as it’s life in general, but just when you think you’ve got it figured out, Idol throws a curveball at you and upsets the very assumptions that govern the way to comprehend things.  Case in point – Lacey is terrible and needs to GO...  or so the conventional wisdom goes.  And then she goes out there and... and… and… does a… competent job with The Story, showing off some vocal agility and staying pretty much on key.  That last concept is mind-blowing when you consider she had the worst performance in week one and the second worst in week two (I will always remember The Climb, Haeley-Gollum, your position is safe).  I thought it was going to be typically Lacey when she honked the first line through her nose like a goose, but then she settled down and had some nice sounding moments in the middle.  It lost some steam at the end, getting a little pitchy and losing the nice tone she had displayed, but all in all, a surprisingly pleasant performance from Landslide Lacey.  Lacey also did a much better job singing from a sitting position this week by not dry humping the air like she did in week one.  I’m not sure, however, if this will save her since the voters are notorious for being a week late with the right call, so the fact that she should have been booted last week may carry over to this week even with the pretty good performance.

 

Katelyn – As soon as Katelyn opened her mouth and sang, “I feel…” my wife immediately yelled out, “BORING!”  And that’s what you’re going to run into when you pick a song like I Feel The Earth Move, a song that’s a little too easy to sing, is a bit repetitive, and always reminds me of Mary Roach.  It didn’t help that stood behind her Wurlitzer and absent-mindedly shimmied while playing the keyboard, and all I could make out was barely audible noodling.  Both the vocals and the keyboard playing were low energy and limp, and I cannot for the life of me understand why she didn’t go the Carole King route and sit behind a baby grand and just bang around the keys with wild abandon.  But I get the feeling that the producers really discourage you from doing the same thing twice in a row, so Katelyn has to use a Wurlitzer instead of a piano and Crystal had to go electric after two acoustic guitar performances.  I don’t get why.

 

As uninspiring as the song was, what may ultimately do Katelyn is was her facial reactions to the judges.  Not quite a bitchface, but more like a smugface, one that said, “nah, I think you’re wrong”.  Disagreeing with the judges, even non-verbally, are the kinds of things that turn off voters.  Her unfettered mop of curls reminded me of Isaac Newton as much as it did Carole King, and I wasn’t a fan of the outfit – the dress looked like dingy bib overalls from afar, and the high waist gave the illusion that her boobs fell out of her dress.  My wife loved the necklace, however.  When she was asked if really wanted to be in the competition, Katelyn discombobulated momentarily and made a full-on Geri Jewell face in response.

 

Didi – I have to say, I really like Didi’s voice, and what others consider “off- key” I consider as “coloration”.  Whatever it is, I find it jazzy and pretty, and it makes a song like The Way I Feel totally memorable.  The same cannot be said for Rhiannon – she sang it well enough, perhaps not as well as the judges thought, but the real problem is that there was nothing memorable about the performance – a few hours later, I don’t actually remember anything she did with the song that stood out.  Also, I only just found out that the song is about a witch.  I guess that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people think Stevie Nicks is a witch herself.

 

Star Trek Fashion alert: only real Star Trek nerds would know this, but the kind of one piece dress the women would wear in The Original Series was called a skant.  This was redesigned a bit for The Next Generation as a unisex uniform.  The AI Fashion team redesigned it for Didi by removing one sleeve and making the skirt part a bit longer.  Then they combined it with black stockings and boots just like in the Original Series.  But instead of a phaser, she packs a guitar.  Maybe next time, she can bring a Vulcan Lute on stage.  I bet Lilly can play the Vulcan Lute.

 

Paige – I really thought I’d heard it all when it came to sob stories, and I had assumed that Katelyn’s, “my mom and dad divorced” one was about as scraping the bottom of the barrel as you can get.  But then along comes Paige and hits us with a new one, a sob story that scrapes so far down the barrel that eventually your arm ends up tunneling through the planet and ending up in China – a sob story so jaw droppingly inane that it makes me wonder if she’s batshit crazy – Paige’s excuse for singing poorly was… get this… that Smile reminded her of Michael Jackson because he once recorded it, and that got her too verklempt to sing it well.  Seriously.  What.  The.  F*ck.  I mean, if she were Janet Jackson I’d understand, but she’s Paige Miles, and unless Google is failing me right now, she has about as much connection to MJ as I do.  For her to be overcome with emotions because of that is just bizarre.  And the performance was indeed awful.  Breathy, pitchy, plodding and boring, this was a terrible arrangement that didn’t show off her voice and didn’t give her any glory notes to hit.  Well, maybe it did and she just never got around to them because of, you know… the whole Michael thing.  Oh, and ironically, she never once smiled during the performance, appearing melancholy throughout.  I imagine Paige threw a party when MJ was acquitted of child molestation charges.  I bet she was smiling then!

 

Paige’s dowdy black cardigan looked like something she got from her grandma’s closet.  She just needs cat-eye glasses on a chain, a pillbox hot with a veil, and white gloves, then it’s off to church in the 60’s!  This is the second week in a row that Simon rubbed and squeezed his nipples during Paige’s adjudication.  It’s just bizarre that a person on national TV with an audience of 25 million viewers can’t keep his hands away from his nipples.  I dunno… maybe he was thinking about Micheal?  Maybe there’s Jesus Juice in his Coke cup?

 

Crystal – Listening to Crystal perform is like watching The Hurt Locker.  I can appreciate how good it is, and it’s better than most of the stuff out there.  But it doesn’t do anything for me – I don’t feel like it one of the best things ever.  The problem is that so many of the contestants are so uncomfortable with performing that they aren’t able to rise to their potential.  I can list all of the things Crystal does well, but the one thing she doesn’t do is blow me away with her performance.  I want a singer to blow me away, and while Crystal is an upper echelon contestant, she doesn’t come close to doing that.  To me, she’s like a hippie version of Melinda Dolittle – always spot on, always polished, but doesn’t do anything for me.  She certainly does it for the judges, who fell over themselves to overpraise her performance of Give Me One Reason, which had a nice moment when she went up in the last chorus, but was more notable for being in key than exciting to listen to.  There was one lyric that sounded like, “you fah honkin’ love you”.  One group of people not thrilled with the pimping are Katie, Katelyn, and Lilly.  Hey, I’m just going by their bitchfaces during the performance.  Katelyn was practically doing sarcastic clapping from the balcony.

 

For whatever reason, Crystal has lost both of her canines, which is one of the reasons she kind of looks like a homeless person.  I doubt it’s from meth abuse (meth mouth is waaay more jacked and unsightly than just the loss of canines), and she doesn’t seem to have decay in the other teeth, which leads me to suspect she had her canines pulled to hide her true nature.  We’ll know for sure if she does a song from the Twilight soundtrack.  Anyone know why she dressed like a ninja?  Are there vampire ninjas?

 

Lilly – Again, I really believe the AI producers strong arm the contestants into changing up their performances every week, which is why Lilly performed I Fall To Pieces strumming a mandolin instead of her usual guitar.  I’ve said before that I like her voice – a lot – but as much as the judges compare everything Andrew Garcia does to his Straight Up rendition in Hollywood Week, I keep going back to Lilly’s Lullaby of Birdland in Hollywood week as that level of potential she still hasn’t reached.  Although I liked some parts of the performance, it left me underwhelmed as a whole.

 

Lilly in profile looks like the pre-plastic surgery version of Ashlee Simpson.  But it doesn’t look like Lilly will be lip-synching anytime soon, so I guess the similarity ends there.  But there’s still a chance that the off-beat Lilly could go for something close to “Bronx Mowgli” as the name for her firstborn like Ashlee did.  I’m not kidding.

 

Lee – I just can’t stand to listen to such bland karaoke piffle and then hear the judges act like Lee is some superstar waiting to happen.  Boring and frequently off-key, Fireflies displayed Lee’s washed out, nondescript voice and mumbly enunciation.  Randy said there were a “couple of pitch problems”.  Couple!?!  Separated at birth time:  Lee looks like my mechanic.  And a guy I saw at Home Depot.  The Pizza Guy.  And my UPS guy at work.  Lee is everywhere around you.

 

Alex – I dreaded listening to this once Ryan announced the song, because Trouble is one of those overused songs on idol, and for the most part, the performances have not been very good.  But Alex pulled it off reasonably well, better than I expected, and the performance was solid if unspectacular.  As much as the judges hound him on his awkward stage presence, I think his awkwardness is becoming endearing.  And try as I might, I cannot figure out what the hell he was wearing – it looks like an ultra skinny plaid tie, but then there’s no knot anywhere and it ends way too high above his belt.  It’s weird and awkward looking.  Like Alex.

 

Tim – My wife found the entire performance boring, and while I wouldn’t argue about that, I have to say that Tim had a real Lacey moment here – just as you were expecting a total trainwreck, Tim actually eked out a solid performance with a bare minimum of pitch problems, and a song that took advantage of his wispy voice by evoking the Jeff Buckley version of Hallelujah.  Of course, Tim could only fake the emotion needed to really make this a compelling version, but even with the affected voice cracking and face pulling, Tim actually performed a minor miracle and legitimized his place in the competition by outperforming at least two of the other contestants.  By God, this kid needs a haircut desperately.

 

Andrew – The thing about Andrew is that it takes some talent to rearrange a song like Genie in a Bottle into an acoustic version, but it doesn’t take a special talent.  This was a trivial rendition that served no real purpose and didn’t add anything to an already trivial song.  But the alarming thing for Andrew is that his voice just doesn’t sound all that great, and if all he can do is go to the same well over and again, there isn’t much of a reason for him to stay in the competition.  BTW, we finally have confirmation that his neck tattoo reads, “Caeland”, which is his son’s name.  But the question still remains – why on earth did he do that?  My wife can’t even look at Randy any more due to his two-toned teeth.  The top row is pearly white, but the bottom row is practically orange.  It drives her insane.

 

Casey – Either Casey needs to turn up the volume on the guitar amp or he needs to strum harder – in either case, I could barely hear him playing, and the faint strumming you could make out sounded off rhythm.  I personally didn’t like You’ll Think of Me, as it sounded like a very generic and boring song, and Casey’s goaty vibrato was distracting as always.  My wife thought he was trying to sound like Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows.  But he looks like Beau Bridges.

 

Aaron – Pretty much all of the first verse was off-key, and the chorus was chalk full of bum notes.  But even when he was hitting the right notes, his voice is grating to listen to, sprinkled with goaty vibrato and a nasally whining.  When he tries to open up and go big, his voice sounds strained, and it sounds like he’s taking a dump when he sings like that.  The little hesitation right before the last note made me think Aaron chickened out of a planned glory note.  And after all that, the judges still threw as many compliments as they could to that crap version of You’ll Think of Me.  And jeez, can he look more like a gay Vulcan?  Note: that picture is 100% not photoshopped or altered.  The good news for Aaron – gay marriage is legal in the Federation!  Oh, and what a strange and awkward attempt at gesturing the number 6.  The proper way to do it would be to hold the mic perpendicularly and use the index finger.  Using the thumb is awkward because we don’t count on our fingers like that in this country.  It looks like he’s gesturing that something is this big with his right thumb and forefinger.  I’m thinking it’s a measure of how close he is to hitting puberty.

 

Todrick – Geez Todrick – you look all suave and cool there with your fingerless gloves and camel toe pants.  I expected a total trainwreck when Todrick opened up Somebody to Love with a nasty sounding falsetto.  And while it wasn’t really good, it wasn’t quite a massacre.  While Todrick does display some high level vocal agility, his voice has no power or oomph behind it, and it sounds thin and slightly washed out.  While he hit most of the notes, he didn’t hit them well – at no point did his vocals ring or sound remotely interesting.  Todrick also has a habit of overperforming, and while that style may be valid in a stage setting, it comes off as frantic on TV.  Not only did it pale in comparison to Queen, it paled in comparison to the cast of Glee.

 

Mike – There is a tendency on Idol to put way too much stock into a single note, especially if the singer really nails it.  It happened last week with Siobhan, and it happened this week with Mike.  While that note was impressive, the rest of the song was an utter mess – unintelligible lyrics, no discernable melody, and soooo much mugging that I had to check my pockets to make sure my wallet was still there.  I’ve grown weary of Mike’s incessant Keenan Thompson-esque mugging, and his constant attention seeking borders on clinical.  Mike swallowed most of the consonants in the words and sang mainly the vowels, making it impossible to follow the lyrics of This Woman’s Work.  I think he might have sang, “baby” at one point.

 

And I call bullshit on Kara’s shameless crocodile tears.  For one thing, she had already heard Mike sing in dress rehearsal, so for her to cry after hearing it a second time is far-fetched.  I didn’t see any actual streams of tears, just some moisture in spots around the eyes (which can be attributed a little splash of water from the drinking cups).  She made all sorts of ugly weepy faces, but they didn’t look genuine to me (one of her pathetic “crying” faces made her look like Brittany Murphy).  And if she did truly cry, that’s pathetic in and of itself – his wife wasn’t even crying over it, so why are you?  It smells like an attention seeking stunt and nothing more.  What a jackass. 

 

Hate to say it, but the best 2.5 minutes on AI last night was the new Iron Man 2 trailer in 720p HD.

Not just last night, but perhaps the entire season.  Well, expect for Haeley singing The Climb, that is.  That's unbeatable.

If Danny's dead wife was exploited, it was the show doing it, not him. I don't remember him bringing up the subject much. He said he didn't know about the songwriter's wife until after he chose to record the song.

Paula teared up at various songs, too. I don't buy the idea that just because Kara had already heard the song, she couldn't have had an emotional reaction to hearing it again. People who cry at sad movies don't just cry the first time they see the movie.

Virtually every close-up he did this little "I miss you dead wife.  Oh, and please vote for me and my dead wife.  Dead wife."  Also, he mentioned it a LOT in the little interview packages.  Usually he would skirt around the issue, which is almost worse in my opinion ("This song means so much to me, because of, well, because of what's happened in my life recently...")

He even had a little cadre of friends at the show, one of whom would hold up a picture of the wife to camera.

It was him doing the exploiting, sorry.

I'm happy Didi's in.

I was shocked that Lilly went home.  It should have been Paige.

I'm genuinely shocked as well by 3 of the 4 sent home tonight, especially since now there are worst voices in the final 12, and we are stuck with some fodder for the next 3-4 weeks.

How Paige slipped through is amazing, and had it been up to me, she would have gone home, along with Katie, though Lily didn't do herself any favors with an overly affected vocal stylings in her last song. Katelyn going home is minor surprise, as Lacey pulled out a better performance, though we will see just how limited Lacey's versatility really is as the weeks roll on. Crystal just seems really cold tonight.

It was heartbreaking to watch Alex try to muster the energy and life to sing his final song, truly one of the saddest spectacles I've seen in 9 seasons of AI. I hope he gets his crap together and becomes a bigger success than the eventual winner this season because his voice was the most memorable one in the bunch. It was tough watching Siobhan's reaction to the bad news, too. We'll find out that Andrew is one-n-done, but slipped through due to all the previous pimpage, and basically rode Paula all the way into the final 12. I've go no problems with Todrick going home, though the group of guys this season are pretty weak.

I haven't seen ther results show yet, but I did read Patrick's previous post. I've just finished watching the guys' show and I have to say that for this person who likes old school R&B, Mike's performance was the truth. It's the first time his voice didn't sound weak to me. I wasn't familiar with the song, but it made me hit youtube to listen to the Kate Bush and Maxwell versions of the song. I don't think falsetto is Big Mike's thing, but I really liked the rest of the performance. Big Mike moved into my favorites.

I still like Casey.

Aaron has a really big voice. I don't really enjoy watching him perform, but he came on while I wasn't paying attention and I had to look at the screen and see who it was with that resonant voice.

My current Favorites (who I want to hear, not who I think will win).: Crystal Bowersox, Big Mike, Casey. I'm disappointed Siobahn is gone, just for entertainment purposes. She's so... well, you hesitate to call people weird, but... ok, different. (But I'm telling you, everytime the judges said unique or different in regards to Siobahn, they meant weird).

The whole boys' show felt a bit unprofessional as far as the judges are concerned. I hope Kara doesn't feel like she has to play the Paula role so people forget Paula. She's doing all the flirting, etc. It's nauseating. She's married. He's engaged. On with the show.

I guess we go to the big stage now, which I traditionally like a little less than what we're leaving, so at least I have Big Mike's performance to leave off on.

I can't believe Alex has gone home. Of course, I'm 3 days behind all of you but I thought Alex had the most potential and the best sounding voice of all the contestants. This is really shocking indeed.

Still not as bad as Jason (our Idols winner) singing a Bryan Adams song.

Also, for me, (or as Randy puts it, 'dude, for me to you') I think Andrew has an incredibly irritating voice. He is trying to sound like Gokey, but, and I know some disliked Gokey, he was a much, much, much better singer than Andrew. His voice is just very weak.

I don't know if anyone here agrees with that.

Regards,

I understand why Lilly didn't get enough votes -- she was lost in the wash with the other guitar strumming singers like Crystal and Didi but didn't sing as well as the former and was less appealing than the latter (ie, she was weird).  And Katelyn's faces at the judges' remarks made it look like she disagreed with them, and that is not popular with the voters.  But the Alex boot is surprising -- I had thought he was a lock for the top 12.  Perhaps he got lost in the wash of guitar playing singers -- the first five male performances (Lee, Alex, Tim, Casey, Andrew) all played guitar and sang.  In any case, that was the most disappointing boot since Janell was dumped simply because she was pretty.

Speaking of which, this has got to be the homeliest collection of women to reach the finals.  The only one left you could call pretty would be Didi, but she makes ugly faces when she gets emotional (which is like, all the time) and Siobhan has, at best, offbeat good looks (that is to say, her teeth are jagged and the nose ring is unappealing).  This just proves that most of the votes are cast by females.  If guys actually voted, Janell, Katelyn, and Ashley would be in the top 12.

The only one that really surprised me was Alex. I think he has a terrific voice, and I thought he was such an underdog type that he'd get the votes to stay on for a while. It would have been cool to see him progress or at least try had he not been voted off.

I didn't think that Lily or Katelyn should have gone home, but I'm not surprised by it. Lily is a one trick pony where every song sounds exactly the same vocally and Katelyn was boring. Todrick doing that Queen song was just bizarre....But nothing was as silly as Andrew doing the Christina song except for the fact that he managed to stay on the show.

Michael annoys me with his constant camera mugging, all the gesturing and attention seeking. Even during the group numbers (which are awful) he's doing stuff to draw attention to himself. Maybe it's smart strategy, but I find it annoying.

Anyone else get the feeling that Crystal either doesn't want to be there, or as my wife suggests isn't holding up well physically even after the recent health scare?

Possibly.  The thing about Crystal is that if you close your eyes, she sounds great, but when you open them, you can see that she is making no connection whatsoever with the audience.  It's like she's in another world.

The best judge moment of the week (and possibly the season) was when Simon called out Kara on her BS criticism of Aaron's song choice.  (For those who missed it, it was along the lines of "that song's about a grown man; you can't sing that!"  Simon responded that she was just going to confuse the contestants with such extraneous comments.)

I thought the guys, generally speaking, had their best week by far this week.  Still not that impressive, though.

It's almost as if she's stoned.  lol

As a person who really liked Big Mike's performance of This Woman's Work, and also liked his performance of Waiting On The World To Change, I have to say I agree. Keep your hands to yourself, cut down on the gesturing and smug facial expressions, and please, stop lifting other men in bear hugs. Oh, and it wouldn't bother me if you stopped putting your arm around the shoulders of fellow contestants like you're their big brother.

On the other hand, I thought Big Mike gave the only high-energy believable performance of the night. I felt like I was watching one of those old style R&B singers that always have a tinge of gospel flavor to their singing.



I see the health scare as a reason why she wouldn't be holding up well. The way you word it, it seems that you think her health scare should result in her holding up better. I've said here before I think she doesn't see herself as someone who should be on AI, but that she feels compelled to do it to make a better life for her and her child. I think she's already done that, and it will just get better from here.
 
I still don't think she into the competition aspect of it. I do, however, think she enjoys having an attentive audience for her performances. Perhaps she is drugged up, but it doesn't have to be illegal drugs (dreadlocks not withstanding). She's sick, and the high pressure environment she's in (fish out of water, all eyes on you) isn't helping. I do nothing but wish her the strength to continue to pursue her dreams.

I think this has got to be one of the worst seasons of Idol. From Simon "Ho-Hum I am just doing this until I get X-Factor over here" to Randy none of the judges are that much into it and this group of singers are some the weakest performers they have had since they started. I am in the same boat where I think it would be good thing if this was the last season of Idol. When the Winter Olympics beat you not only once but twice in viewing audience you have real problems.

Other than Crystal there really isn't a contestant that I care that much for. I am just hoping her health allow her to stay in the competition.

Well, I 100% disagree about what some say about Danny Gokey. I like this guy a lot and don't see anything not genuine about him. The fact the song was written by a guy whose wife died also made it feel all the more real and almost destined for him to be connected to. There was nothing I saw that made me think this guy had changed and he felt sincere and like life was returning to him after a long troubled time as most people would be in his situation. He is one nice guy that I think is right on track in his life.

Also, I REALLY like what "Big Mike" did with that song. Everyone I know at work and personally thought it was one of the most emotionally felt songs ever done on Idol. He really nailed it for most and it showed by the reaction he got. The guy is really nice too and he has a deep spiritual side which is in the vocals. I have to say I thought it was one of the best performances I have seen on Idol in a LONG time.

The other person I think it will come down to for the girls is Crystal. She is another great example of a very original and unique talent to see someone perform like her. I would say that she is the equal to Big Mike and will be in the top 3 along with him.

Most of the top 12 though, with the exception of maybe 2-3 others are a dime a dozen and nothing that would really sell me on anything they would ever do as an artist.

Ah, I can see why you got that from what I wrote. All I intended to say is that perhaps she still is not feeling well.  I do agree that she may not see herself as someone who should be on AI, and I can understand that given the type of show AI is. AI is a platform, and I hope good things come her way from appearing on the show.

My faves:

Siobhan
Didi
Crystal

My thoughts exactly.

My wife, who can't bear to listen to Katie said "oh great, we're going to see Katie sing Wild Horses" tonight and sure enough, that's exactly what she did. First she's was boring, now she's predictable and boring. She, Lacey, Tim and Andrew were my least favorite with the rest somewhere in the middle.....I'm finding this season generally dull and am at this point just tuning in to watch your three faves.