Last night's show featured selections from Rod Stewart's American Songbook collection. The Idols will tackle the standards we all know by heart (hey, how about Jimmy Buffett night one of these years?). I have a confession. I kind of love Rod Stewart. I love that he actually was a grave digger before he was a star. I love that he had the balls to sing "Do You Think I'm Sexy?". Anyway, Rod is great, he's married to some young hottie and he has the world's cutest baby boy. Rod Stewart: life is good.

Chris starts the night off with "What A Wonderful World". Not to be sacraligeous, but I'm not a big fan of the song. To his credit, Chris dials down the vibrato and sings it straight. It's nice. I like to be reminded that Chris is a good singer, not just a "rocker". My only wish is that he would have rocked out the last note and just given a little wink to the fans that this wasn't the birth of Wussy Chris or something like that. A solid 7.

Paris, dressed like she's interviewing to be the summer intern in an office near you, is next up with "These Foolish Things". Paris was born to sing songs like this. She may come across as an un-self-aware teen, but she has an old soul. I don't love this type of music, but I love to listen to Paris sing it. She's near note perfect. An 8.

Taylor sings Sam Cooke's "You Send Me". I'm torn about this performance. The start is absolutely boring but right near the end Taylor kicks it in, rocks out, and has fun. When Taylor has fun, we have fun. That's the secret to his appeal. First half of the performance: 5. Second half: 10.

Elliott is smart to choose a well known song like "It Had To Be You". I love Elliott and I wanted to vote for him last night, but the sad fact is that this isn't his best performance. It's just a little tepid. Elliott is so close to letting loose on stage and doing something fantastic, but not yet. He's still a little too guarded and while he's technically great, he hasn't put his heart and soul into a song yet. Another 7.

Pickler sings "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered". In case we forget her appeal, the camera lovingly pans her body throughout the performance. Yes, she's blonde and has a nice body. However, last night her singing was the musical equivalent of a wet rag. She's limp and hits a slew of bad notes. At the end, she's clever enough to be self-deprecating, but she still sucked. A 3, and I think I'm being generous.

Ace goes all Sampson on us and pulls his lovely hair back for his performance of "That's All". And that's all indeed as Ace is just bad enough to guarantee his departure. His falsetto is still gorgeous, but American Idols cannot live by the falsetto alone. I give it a 4.

Katharine closes the show with "Someone To Watch Over Me". She's beautiful and has a lovely voice, but her performances are boring. I'm sick to death of her singing torch song after torch song. If I'm ever going to vote for Katharine I need to see a different side of her (and no, dirty-minded director, that doesn't mean you need to break out the Ass-Cam). Like Chris and Elliott, Katharine gets a 7.

My rankings:

1. Paris
2. Taylor
3. Chris
4. Katharine
5. Elliott
6. Ace
7. Pickler

I predict (with a little help from Dial Idol) that Chris, Ace & Paris will make up the bottom 3, with Ace finally saying so long.