JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum American Idol 2009

OK, the weekly recap...of the top seven doing songs from movies.

Overall, MUCH better than last week. Quentin Tarantino was the vocal coach. Yeah, I thought the same thing: "He's a movie producer, what's he know about singing", but honestly, he did more for the contestents than Randy Travis did during country week. He actually gave them some direction and probably saved a couple from dreadful (or at least mediocre) performances.

There were a couple of surprises, too. The main one was that they split the judging into pairs: Simon and Paula would judge one contestant, then Randy and Kara would judge the next one. I could see Simon squirming a bit when he couldn't comment - just itching to make some nasty remark. This new judging method was supposedly because they've been running overtime and needed to cut back. That doesn't make sense to me. They can simply play the "Idol" music as a cue when each judge has reached their 15-20 second time limit and keep everything under control that way. I also don't buy it because once they eliminate one more contestant, they'll have an extra 3-4 minutes of time.

Anyways...in order of appearance:

1. Allison Iraheta, 9 - "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing" - best opening performance of the season. Not perfect, but very solid. She gave it her all.

2. Anoop Desai, 9 - "Everything I Do, I Do For You" - I think this was Anoop's best performance of the season. He actually did a nice job on this.

3. Adam Lambert, 9 - "Born To Be Wild" - Well, appropo to the title, it was wild. Personally, I think it was a bit pitchy at times and he screamed more than usual: not his best performance. However, the man is simply mesmerizing on stage and I would pay money to see him perform.

4. Matt Giraud, 7 - "Have You Really Loved A Woman". The first clunker of the evening. He tried to make the melody too fancy. It's a tough song NOT to do copy-cat, but he took it way too far and it lost the power. He could be in danger this week.

5. Danny Gokey, 9 - "Endless Love". Nice job. My wife actually got teared up right at the end. It was really heartfelt and possibly his best performance of the season. He's definitely safe this week.

6. Kris Allen, 7 - "Falling Slowly". This song is pretty obscure and didn't really do much for me. Randy agreed with me. Kara and my wife felt a connection though. Maybe it's a "guy" thing, but I didn't get it and I think he'll be in the bottom three this week.

7. Lil Round, 6 - "The Rose". Ooh bad, bad performance. Pitchy all over the place. The producers gave her the coveted "last song" spot and she still blew it. Not only did she give a performance that didn't move me at all, but she then argued with Simon, who quipped "no excuses anymore", and she copped an attitude that was a combination of defiant and stupid ("...but I MADE it more R&B!"), so I think she's a goner this week.

I don't think anyone knocked it out of the park, but Allison, Anoop, Adam and Danny all had good solid performances that should keep them out of the bottom two or three.

Matt, Kris, and Lil are the bottom three. Lil will probably go home. After tonight's performance, I'm convinced that she deserves to go home. She hasn't had a good performance for at least 3 weeks, maybe longer.