This is the sort of song someone sings on Idol, and then the judges tell her that she shouldn’t have picked it, because it reminds us she’s not Aretha. That’s not the problem here: instead, it reminds us that Katie is not Kelly Clarkson. It’s not that she has a bad voice, but she falls just short of Clarkson’s ability to unleash the inner middle-aged Motown singer in her throat: she still seems a little too small for the song, a little like she’s playing dress-up. She does, however, “connect to the song emotionally,” which is to say, she bobs her head side to side a lot.
