Bogus Gold

Lil Rounds - “The Way You Make Me Feel” Lil gets the leadoff spot on the first night, which is usually a challenge. Someone forgot to inform Lil because she performed as if already in mid-season stride. The song choice seemed a bit odd at first, but within the first few beats she had convincingly styled the thing to suit her. She showed a bit of her power and range, but as the song didn't call for much showing off she kept it pretty tight - but in the good, controlled sense. Very strong lead off. Despite my previous commments, she's not exactly a Fantasia clone. I can't quite put my finger on the distinction yet. I'll get it in the coming weeks. The judges once again love, love, love them some Lil and their comments continued to reinforce this.

Scott MacIntyre - "Keep the Faith" Seeing Scott behind the baby grand felt more comfortable to all of us. No more awkward posing the blind guy and aiming him in the general direction of a camera. Now he could be a bit more free. It helped. This was only the second song of the night, but already Michael Jackson was feeling like less and less of a constraint, as Scott in his own very different way bent this song to suit his style. The fact that it was a lesser known MJ song definitely helped, contrary to what Simon later contended. This was rock solid, and about as good as I expect Scott to sound. The judges all loved it save for Simon feeling the need to hate the song itself though not Scott's performance.

Danny Gokey - "P.Y.T." This one seemed like a pretty weird choice. Danny Gokey? P.Y.T? The Thriller era? But for the third time in a row, which has to be a record for the lead off of a Top 12 (or 13), the adaptation of song to singer seemed effortless. Suddenly this wasn't a crotch-grabbing, squeaky MJ song, but instead became Gokey-style power-soul (I'm officially calling "power-soul" Gokey's niche until proven otherwise). Danny had vocal confidence, and his stage presense was almost giddy in places as he seemed to be getting worked up by the emotion of his own performance. The judges again all loved this one, with Paula going so far into her happy place that she named him a shoo-in for the finals, which is a bit ridiculously premature even for a known hallucinator. Simon made fun of his dancing, which Danny agreed with, but Randy came to his defense on it anyway. I'm kind of on Randy's side here. It wasn't so much of a "dance" as just moving with excitement, and it fit.

Michael Sarver - “You Are Not Alone” When Michael started this one seated on the stairs I was worried we were going to head too deeply into some kind of slow ballad. Thankfully it picked up quickly, carrying Michael to his feet along with it. I would like to note, after reading a lot of other internet commentary about Michael, that I feel vindicated for having called out that he actually has a very strong voice, because it was displayed nicely tonight. It is NOT the voice you expect from Mr. Blue-collar roughneck. It's smooth and controlled with pretty impressive range. He's not the best male singer left in the competition, but he's not near the bottom either. The judges were, oddly, surprised that he had such a good voice. Who put him through from Hollywood again? How come I spotted that based on nothing more than the edited footage from Hollywood week and they missed it? Is Paula sharing her pills this year? Anyway... that's four really strong performances to open the show. That's a good night by Idol standards any week. It's unprededented at this stage.

Jasmine Murray - "I'll Be There" I thought this one was a clever choice by Jasmine. She's young, and the judges want her to keep that image, so she picks from the Jackson 5 rather than the Michael Jackson songbook. What's more, it's a song written pretty directly in Jasmine's comfort zone when it comes to key and range. She sounded pretty good singing it too. If she hadn't followed four who went so far beyond expectations it would have sounded even better. She only had a couple of off notes, but they stood out more for being among the first off-key notes of the whole night. The judges dinged her for being a little too robotic which is kind of true. They also praised her for her poise and presense, which is also kind of true though how a robot can do that puzzles me. Anyway, a solid if not exciting performance.

Kris Allen - "Remember the Time" Kris hit the stage for this self-accompanying on an accoustic guitar, which I didn't understand at all but was willing to hear him out. And I'm glad I did because it was probably my favorite musical accompaniment of the night. Seriously. No offense to our baby-grand players, but Kris was the only one who did anything terribly innovative with his accompaniment. What's more it worked. And it worked on a song you wouldn't imagine fitting an accoustic guitar into. So props to Kris for that. The vocal was also pretty good. Not enough to blow anyone away. Certainly good though. I thought the total package here was greater than the sum of the parts. The female judges raved about his boy-band teen-idol looks a bit much, but I guess he's the closest they have to that this year. I'm beginning to see some potential to take this guy seriously as a musician.

Allison Iraheta - “Give Into Me”. I have no idea what Allison is going to do with Michael Jackson, and I have no idea what this song is supposed to sound like. For a moment I'm scared. I like Allison and don't want her to screw up so soon. Why did I worry? Hand the girl the mic and just stand back. She knows what she's doing. Idol has been casting about for a legitimate "rocker chic" with the chops to truly contend for a few seasons now. I think they stumbled into it with Allison and the judges are almost giddy over it. It's not just that she has the power and the grit and the attitude... it's that it seems so effortless to her. She's not trying to be "the rocker chic." She's just singing and that's what comes out. Really good. Still loving her. The judges were too.

Anoop Desai - "Beat It" Is there anyone in the audience who didn't cringe when they heard this song choice? I doubt it. Just as I doubt Anoop had any clue how awful this came off... in every sense. Look, if you're going to take one of THE Michael Jackson pop hits AND you're going to do it in basically the same arrangement you had BETTER be able to sing close to as well as Michael Jackson, and Anoop isn't in the same league. He's hardly even in the same sport. No, no, no. If you MUST do this song and you're Anoop you do something really different with the arrangement and make a clean break. Otherwise you just sound like... a bad Michael Jackson impersonator. Which he did. And all the judges pointed out. This was the kind of car-wreck tonight's theme had me dreading.

Jorge Nunez - "Never Can Say Goodbye" When I heard this song choice the two words that came to mind were "smart," and "safe." It's a well known Jackson 5 song, which suited Jorge's range and style to a tee. And as he sang it I felt confirmed in both sentiments. We didn't really learn anything new about Jorge here, but we were reminded what a beautiful tenor voice he posesses. And then the judges spoke after apparently listening to something else. It was too old fashioned. It was a horrible choice. Even Paula didn't like it. Honest to God, it wasn't that bad. Really calling it "too safe" may ve valid, but he'll be back next week.

Megan Corkrey - "Rockin' Robin" I was hesistent when I heard the song choice. But it's Megan. She's got nothing if she's not offbeat, so let's hear it out. Sometimes first impressions are right. This was just... silly. And I know silly can be a good thing. It wasn't in this case. It was... it just didn't belong. You caught flashes of Megan's quirky, unique voice but it was easily overwhelmed by the silly dayglow lights, the Laugh-in type arrangement, and... well everything. Megan had better hope she can float on personality through the next elimination because the judges did not have her back here.

Adam Lambert - “Black or White” I honestly didn't care what song Adam chose, as I knew he would be able to do whatever he wanted with it. I was a little surprised that he went into this song more or less faithful to the MJ original. But pretty soon it became apparent he wasn't going to stay there. He was just setting up the baseline he was intending to improvise upon. With Adam's voice a lot of the time you get the impression he's just playing around with ideas, never quite sure what he's going to do with it until he gets there. But by the end the sum total of his "playing around" leaves so many of the other singers sounding dull and plodding by comparison. The judges loved him (Paula naming him to the finals like she had with Danny earlier, calling for a Gokey/Lambert final I guess). The audience loved him. I'm not sure we have even come close to seeing what he's capable of yet.

Matt Giraud - ""Human Nature" A good, soulful choice for the guy who has been ordered into his soulful box by the judges. He didn't change this one up much from the original but, he self-accompanied on piano and sounded good doing it. Points awarded for difficulty. Unlike a lot of others he avoided adding lots of gratuitous ornamentation of power notes. Points awarded for taste. But in the end this was just another of the solid performances. Partly due to the nature of the song and partly due to the performance it didn't really soar like some of the others tonight. The judges responses sounded like they wanted to award him some kind of "best of the rest" award, while keeping him outside their top tier of praise.

Alexis Grace - "Dirty Diana" Alexis got the mixed blessing of the opening pimp slot AND the burden of getting the only non-sequential phone number (they apparently didn't plan this top 13 thing quite as far ahead as some rumors had it). That said, she came out with the same kind of energy and power that had made her previous performance such a hit, and earned her a top 13 spot. On the downside she did seem to be pressing a bit more here... going from power to POWER and then back to power. Not a lot of room for taking a breath, let alone layering some emotion into the song. That said, it was still a really good performance for keeping her in the grouping of the top talent this year. Perhaps a hint off what we heard last time, but not leaps and bounds away. The judges were kind of mixed, but generally seemed to like it.

So let's get to the summary. It's a lot tougher than I thought it would be for an unexpected reason... we had a LOT of strong performances tonight. What's more so many of them were strong in very different styles rendering comparisons all the more challenging.

I'm going to group the contestants into three tiers... top, middle, and bottom... based on their how I personally think they compare to one another.

The top group is the easiest to name for me, but hardest to differentiate. I'll include Lil Rounds, Danny Gokey, Allison Iraheta, and Adam Lambert as the best of the night, If I had to single out one as the very best it would probably be Adam Lambert, but not by nearly as large a margin as the judges seemed to think.

The "middle of the pack" group is a little tougher. The top of the group nudge against the top tier, but didn't quite make it in my opinion. The bottom of these have a little more separation between themselves and the bottom tier though. I'll put these in order from top to bottom.

Scott MacIntyre, Kris Allen, Michael Sarver, Alexis Grace, Matt Giraud, Jorge Nunez. Guess I disagree with the judges about Matt being "best of the rest."

The bottom group is sadly easy to single out tonight: Anoop Desai, Jasmine Murray, and Megan Corkrey. Among these Anoop is sadly the worst. Megan is next. Jasmine wasn't as bad, but also wasn't quite in the league of the "middle of the pack" listed above.

But that's only my own ranking. That doesn't mean that's how I necessarily think the votes will fall. Remembering that TWO contestants will go home this week, this could get tricky and unnecessarily unfair as some of these singers haven't developed much of a fan base yet. But... my predictions on the two going home are.....

Jasmine Murray and Anoop Desai. Jasmine because she's a little on the dull side and was unlikely to win a lot of new fans tonight. Anoop because he train-wrecked and was easily worst of the night.

Tomorrow we'll see what America has to say about that. All I know is it had better not be Alexis Grace, since they stuck her with the sucky improvised phone number which could unfairly depress her vote total.

UPDATE: The Results

Interesting new twist on the competition this year, but not as much of a big change as had been hinted at. The judges now are allowed to save one and only one eliminated contestant one time this season. And they have to use it or lose it before the final five. Which is a little odd since some of the examples they used - Tamyra & Daughtry to be specific - could not have been saved by this, as we were already into the final five when they went home. Jennifer Hudson and Michael Johns? Sure. But would they have beaten out respectively Fantasia Barrino and David Cook anyway? I don't think so. Eh... it will end up an interesting plot twist for some episode, but it's not likely to change the outcome at all. On to the eliminations...

Props to myself for correctly picking the bottom four (scroll up if you doubt me... my "middle" group was ranked in order with Jorge at the bottom - the rest of those up for elimination tonight were named as my bottom three).

As for who went home... Okay first, in my defense, I thought Puerto Ricans had phones. I mean... I seriously thought Jorge could come out and sit on the stage with a smile and make it through on ethnicity alone for a couple of rounds. Heck, Phillipino Americans were able to sustain Jasmine Trias and Ramiele Malubay far longer than either deserved the past couple of seasons. I thought Puerto Ricans would have something close to that pull.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Jasmine Murray and Megan Corkrey were paired and told one of them was going home. It was Jasmine.

Anoop and Jorge were similarly paired and told one would be going home. It was Jorge.

The judges, surprising no one, did not exercise their one time save to spare either of these. And frankly the overall field is stronger for having lost them.

Which is kind of impressive, as we're usually carrying a couple of lower-talented dead-weights by now, as special interest groups (such as, hypothetically - and apparently only hypothetically, Puerto Rican Americans) preserve their personal favorites to the detriment of overall quality.

Anyway next week will have a subtext they never make much of a big deal out of on the show, but it actually the BIGGEST deal to the contestants short of winning the whole thing. Next week we go from eleven to ten. How many Idols go on the fame-building and money-making Idol tour next summer? Ten. Which ten from the remaining eleven will that be? That's what next week will tell us. They probably won't mention it because they never do, but you know they Idolateers will be feeling the pressure next week.

The theme next week is supposed to be the Grand Ole Opry, apparently. Should we be afraid, or take a lesson from MJ week that these contestants know how to work a challenging theme?