FOX
First, let’s give credit to American Idol‘s producers, shall we? After a season rife with timing errors and overrun issues, they took the challenge of fitting eight performances in an hour—you could see Ryan Seacrest tensing up over it—and actually came in nearly exactly on time, with only a few toll-free numbers running into the 9 p.m. timeslot.
The girls had a challenge, too: dealing with, as Simon characterized it, the pressure of not being one of the semifinalists to come this close to the final 12 and not make it. How did they do?
Doesn’t look like a week to expect an upset. Crystal Bowersox hitched up an electric axe and nailed Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason.” (Weeks until the Sox does a Bonnie Raitt song? She has to, right?) Though I was a bit concerned to see her sitting down to take the judges’ comments immediately after her performance: is her health still shaky? No matter if she needs to give the rest of her performances hunched in a chair like John Lee Hooker, this season of Idol needs her, so I hope she’s taking care of herself. (Especially with the non-stop Idol rehearsal/promotion/taping schedule.)
Lily, meanwhile, kept herself safe (I think) with Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces”—but to my surprise she was outdone by Didi Benami, above, whom I’ve never much cared for, and an arresting acoustic version of “Rhiannon.” Of the leading ladies, Siobhan may be in the most danger (though I’m not betting against her), with a strong version of House of the Rising Sun that nonetheless underwhelmed Simon.
While I don’t think Katelyn has Siobhan’s potential in the competition, I’ve liked her so far, so I was disappointed she did herself no favors with a blah, same-sounding cover of Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move.” (My amateur kibitz: if she had dropped the band and backup singers and sung it with just herself and the Wurlitzer, it would have been much more distinctive.)
Conversely, I’ve been ready for Lacey to go home from day one, but I suspect she may have bought herself another week. Really, what Idol needs is some kind of playoff among her, Lilly and Didi, with only one or at most two able to represent the burgeoning Adele/Duffy wing of the competition. I can only deal with so many coffeehouse-ified covers on each episode.
My bottom picks have to be Katie and Paige. I feel kind of bad for Katie; she may be a little inexperience for Idol, but I think she also just had the bad luck to come on the show a few years after her time. She’s a young, powerful naif in the Diana DeGarmo mold, and time was that Idol explicitly wanted malleable pop singers that Simon Fuller et al. could bend into whatever leasing shape they wanted. This year, suddenly, the Idol put-down of choice is “You don’t know who you are.” Not that Katie would have been a pick to win in any case, but I suspect she’d have had an easier time in, say, 2004.
Paige, meanwhile, succumbed to that worst of Idol sins, poor song choice, with an earnest but boring version of “Smile” that inspired possibly the funniest line I have ever heard Randy(!) give: “It’s like we’re at a banquet—you going to have the beef, the chicken or the shrimp?”
I’m picking Katie and Paige, though I’m hoping Lacey slips in there somewhere. Your picks?