Amanda drawls out Back in the U.S.S.R. / F Micelotta / Getty Images for Fox
My reviews of More Beatles Night on American Idol are up. Who’s going home tonight? Who couldn’t be going home? It was not the most fab of evenings, with weak performances from some of my usual favorites (Brooke, Jason), expectedly weak performances from others, and the best of the rest—David A, David C, Amanda, Syesha—were really the best by process of elimination rather than being real standouts. Even Chikeze, who I enjoyed much more this week than the judges, wasn’t as good as last week. (Speaking of which, I didn’t get the judges’ dissing of the bluegrass-rock second half of the arrangement, seeing as how I’ve Just Seen a Face is essentially a bluegrass song.)
As I say somewhere in my reviews, I’m starting to suspect that part of the problem is: Beatles songs are just not meant to be on American Idol. Many of them, especially the ballads, had such understated vocals in the original that to give them the full-on Idol treatment—all those crowd-pleasing melodic gymnastics—sounds silly or tacky. David A was probably the song-choice winner this week, picking The Long and Winding Road, one super-emotional Beatles ballad with the absorbency to survive an extra dip in the schmaltz barrel.
I’m going to play the odds here and say it’s Kristy Lee Cook going home—too many Cooks spoil the broth!—but this could go any number of ways. Won’t you please, please help me?
