Last night’s episode of AMERICAN IDOL was an embarrassment of riches for any blogging recapper. It was a smorgasborg of discussion topics. It was two hours of painful hand-cramping note-taking. It was everything a humble blogger could ask for, and then some.

I barely know where to begin.

Well, we can start with the awkwardness of celebrating Jennifer Hudson’s Oscar win for DREAMGIRLS and then following it up with an introduction to Diana Ross, who comes off as the real villain in DREAMGIRLS. That made me chuckle.

Diana Ross’ hair made me chuckle, but she wasn’t alone in the Big Hair department. She’s practically a twin for Chris Sligh, and Sanjaya clearly has a hair crush on Diana, doing his best to curl it and let it flow, baby.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Brandon Rogers started off with “Can’t Hurry Love.” Surprisingly enough, that is NOT a Phil Collins original. Who knew? Sorry, that’s a little Child of the 80s humor there. . . It’s a fun upbeat song, but he managed to make it boring, though he did try to act it out a bit. The problem was that he was pitchy from the very first notes, the band overpowered him, and he sounded flat. When he forgot the lyrics after the break in the song near the end, you could begin to hear the nails being pounded into his coffin. He knew it, though, but he recovered nicely. He smiled, listened for the music, and picked up the song right at the next lyric. It was not a complete meltdown.

Shockingly, he was only the first to blow the lyrics.

In any case, he’s in real danger. He was completely forgettable. Others screwed up more. Others had stronger personalities. And others came later in the show when they’d be better remembered.

Melinda Doolittle came next, which is what officially eliminated Brandon from 99% of the memories of the AI viewers. By contrast to Brandon, she was in control of the stage, of her song, and of her pitch. She was pitch perfect again this week. She made a generally blah song — “Home” from The Wiz — into something interesting, as Simon rightfully pointed out. And she made Paula cry, which broke Simon up. That didn’t take long last night. . .

Ryan and Simon continued their delightful on-air fake feud, too. It even went so far as to prompt Simon to tell Ryan to come out of the closet. Ah, there’s no line left to cross on this show, is there? Seacrest (not) out!

Chris Sligh decided to reinterpret “Endless Love.” He rearranged the song, which is always a dangerous proposition on a television show whose title doesn’t being with “ROCKSTAR:”. It was a valiant effort, but he lost the song. First of all, the background music was a dead straight copy of ColdPlay. I don’t even like that song, but I recognized it right away. It was bad. Secondly, he lost the melody. He was so worried about making the song his own that he forgot to keep the original. I was lost for most of the song, and I don’t know how he kept up with it. Sadly, it was a mess. I hope he gets credit from the voters at home for the attempt, but even the studio audience found it tough to boo Simon when he pointed out that the song was a “complete utter drone.” Ouch.

Gina Glocksen went with “Love Child,” which was a perfect choice for her Rawk Chick persona. It was, well, good karaoke. She looked and acted like Ryan Starr at times, which startled me, but did a decent enough job with the song. She isn’t going to wow anyone with the performance, but she should be memorable enough to stick around. She’s the only rocker this season, so she doesn’t have to worry about the Diva vote-splitting. She did smart in getting out of that race. You can’t out-sing them, so do an end-around.

My biggest problem with the song is that she didn’t really go for it. She kept up with the music, but never powered through enough when she should have. It could have been more, but it wasn’t. Still, there were many worse last night.

Speaking of which, Sanjaya was next.

Tons more after the break, starting with the worst finalist in Idol history:

Sanjaya Malakar cracks me up. He’s awful. He’s so bad that he doesn’t know how bad he is. It’s not even willful ignorance. It’s just plain ignorance. But he’s got a strong voting bloc, so he’s not going anywhere for a while. He stymied the judges. Randy couldn’t even find the words for how bad his rendition of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” was. Can you imagine this kid trying to sing that song? Do yourself the favor of imagining it. Do NOT actually listen to it. It’s more painful than you might think. It was tepid, soft, boring, and accompanied by lame attempts to jazz it up and even lamer attempts to dance to the music.

Bad bad bad bad.

I can’t even call it a crash and burn, because it’s Sanjaya. It’s par for the course for this kid, who only further embarrasses himself with each week he isn’t voted out.

It was so bad that Simon attempted to find something nice to say and could only come up with, “You’re very brave.”

That right there is your quote of the night.

Haley Scarnato made America fall in love with her last night. She foolishly chose “Missing You,” and stumbled pretty badly through it. I don’t think it was quite as bad as the judges thought it was, but it wasn’t very good. Diana Ross was right - she’s got more of a studio recording voice than a powerhouse solo performance voice. She can’t project out enough, and when she tries to do so, it just makes you nervous. She blew a lyric near the end of the song and, though she immediately recovered, you could tell it shook her up. When the song was done, all she wanted to do was run screaming and crying backstage. I felt bad for her having to stand up in front of the judges to take the pounding she knew was coming.

But here’s the thing - she came off so beautifully in that moment of personal mortification that you couldn’t help but fall in love with her. She was in tears, knowing that she was in real trouble and that he had screwed up. Who amongst us HASN’T choked in a pressure situation and then had to take the heat for it right away? It’s an awful feeling, and she was up front, honest, and sorry about the whole thing. Ryan let her sit back on her stool to recover, and it just made her seem more vulnerable. Haley Scarnato is the little sister you just want to hug and tell her it’s going to be all right.

And she maintained her sense of humor, saying after the song, “I feel like such a schmuck.” Cracked Ryan up, and probably sent the FOX censors into a tizzy.

Then Simon saved her. He praised her presence on the stage. He didn’t think it was as bad as Paula and Randy made her out to be. He even thought she hit some nice notes. He was a perfect gentlemen and, quite possibly, saved her with his words.

Of course, as I dialed in at 10:30 last night, I had no problems getting through on her phone number. That’s not a good sign.

But I do have to say one thing bad about her performance — she might land on Go Fug Yourself for that dress. What was she thinking? That thing was a bag of horribleness, cinched below the waist and just a little too short for when she bent at the knees to hit the power notes. Yowza.

Phil Stacey had the good luck to follow some weak performances. With the bar set so low, he came off sounding like Pavarotti. He went with “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” and had one of the best vocals for all the guys in some time. Overlook that big doofy smile and awkwardly bald head and you had a performer who sounded confident in hitting the right notes and who was in control of the stage. The only fault to have with him is that he didn’t show enough energy in his performance. He didn’t dance enough. He undersold the song. But just listen to it and you’ll love it, despite a couple of shouty moments.

LaKisha Jones is at the top of the charts for this competition for so many reasons. She’s got a big voice. She fears nothing on stage. She hits her notes. She picked another perfect song last night with “God Bless The Child” and made it her own without rearranging the whole thing. She was amazing, though I thought she veered off the melody once or twice too often in her attempt to individualize it. Doesn’t matter - her voice and her performance was so strong that you can overlook that.

She’s also one of the few contestants whose natural singing voice can overpower the band. As happens every season on IDOL, we’re hearing what happens when you put a LARGE band behind a single singer. The singer, too often, gets lost. Not LaKisha.

Blake Lewis decided to remix “Keep Me Hanging On,” inviting all the comparisons he could take to Chris Sligh. He gets credit from me, first and foremost, for being a Mac Man. In the packaged piece before his song, he was editing his song choice in something other than GarageBand, but still on a Mac. Cool.  And then he destroyed Sligh with his remix.
The good news is that his new version of the song kept the melody. That made the song instantly recognizable, even under all the techno heavy beats and flashing lights on the stage. The bad news is that the remix meant less vocal gymnastics for him. When he practiced the song for Diana Ross, he sounded great. It was a capella, crisp, and clear. The kid has a very nice voice. But when he sang it on stage with the full band and doing the whole slide dancing thing across the stage, the vocals suffered. His voice was lost in service to the beat and the moves. He moved the mic away from his mouth too early far too often. And you could hear the strain on his voice from all the movement, too.

Still, I was glued to the TV for the whole song. While it wasn’t a great IDOL performance, I admired his guts and his performance. I was entertained, and I’m glad he came out fighting with something daring. I think it helped him more than hurt him, but he’ll need to bounce back next week with something more vocally challenging and less techno.

Stephanie Edwards went with “Love Hangover,” which is a song I clearly am not at all familiar with. I recognized bits of it, but when the judges said how disappointed they were that she didn’t arrange the song to get into the grand disco chorus, I just shook my head. I had no idea what they were talking about. I heard a nice jazzy song. Perhaps it was missing a rather large hook, but it showed off her voice well and made her look good. I thought. Randy seemed to imply that she missed a lyric, too, but if she did, I didn’t catch it. Did anyone else?

In the end, I’m still happy that disco is dead.

Diana Ross told her to go sexy with the song opening, but she had another questionable wardrobe choice. She should have swapped outfits with Haley this week. Stephanie’s blousy printed thing was distracting, and not at all in a good way. But, unlike Haley, at least she didn’t look pregnant.

Not too many contestants listened to Ross, though.  Ross told LaKisha to use the mic stand, and LaKisha came out holding the mic in her hand not ten seconds after that piece of video.  Whoops.

Chris Richardson crashed and burned for me. I don’t care what the judges thought, that thing was a mess. Complete and utter mess. He went with “The Boss” and added a modern vibe to it, or so Paula thought. If “suckworthy,” “off-beat,” and “off-pitch” equates to modern, then she’s absolutely right. I don’t listen to much radio these days, but it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that her definition holds up with today’s popular music. He sounded like a cat who had just crawled into the gutter to die after being hit by a car. It was bad, dawg. (Pardon my mixed animal metaphor.)

The song was bigger than him, and he sunk under it. Only Simon and I noticed that, as he called it “dreadful.”

Finally — at long last and 2000 words later — Jordin Sparks closed the show out with “If We Hold On Together,” which caused the judges to compare her to Melinda and LaKisha. High praise, indeed. I thought she screamed it a couple of times and had a couple of pitchy parts, but that she really sold the number with how she emoted throughout it, and had an overall strong performance. Plus, she could switch into and out of the falsetto without missing a note. THAT’S a tough skill.

She made me miss Sabrina, though. Imagine what she might have done with a Diana Ross song this week? Darn shame.

I also like how the judges aren’t hiding the fact that conventional wisdom has Melinda and LaKisha as the front runners. They’re just setting the show up for a BIG fall, though, when one of them (I predict LaKisha) gets voted out in an upset earlier than the finals.

From best to worst, here we go: Melinda, LaKisha, and Jordin are the easy top three. I think Phil belongs just behind them along with Stephanie. Blake falls next, but would have been higher if his remix let his vocals loose a little more. Gina is about even with him, maybe a half notch below. Brandon Rogers and Chris Sligh are next, just ahead of Haley. And the bottom two stinkers are Sanjaya and Chris Richardson.

I think you’ll see a Bottom Three in the votes of Brandon, Haley, and Stephanie, with Brandon going home tonight.

De Blieck OUT!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 8:27 am and is filed under American Idol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.