February 26, 2008

Princess Midwest is out shopping and showing off her fabulous new haircut, so expect a little less swearing and a lot less discussion of things like "pitch" and "tone" in your recap tonight.

Our theme tonight is "the music of Perry Como". Just kidding. It's "the 70s". Well, I guess that's 10 better than last week.

First up is Michael Johns. He plays tennis, although he's no Pat Cash. Anyway, Michael sings Fleetwood Mac's "You Can Go Your Own Way". Michael sings every song exactly like Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, but with half the passion and twice the vibrato. He's managed to strip the song of any sense of urgency. It's "You Can Go Your Own Way And I Won't Even Bother To Get Off Of The Couch". Utterly boring.

I AM BEOWULF!

Jason Castro has beautiful shiny eyes, although that might just be the pot. Jason and his acoustic guitar make the fatal error of singing a song originally sung by a group with The Bee Gees' "I Just Want To Be Your Everything". It's a mess, but it's a charming mess. He really has incredibly long eyelashes too. Hmm...you know, I strongly suspect that it really doesn't matter how Jason sings tonight. He's too cute for America to send home. Yet.

Does watching American Idol make anyone else want to download a bunch of Bee Gees songs?

Up next is Luke Menard to sing "Killer Queen" by Queen. I think his falsetto is better than his regular voice, but it's still pretty nasal and frankly unpleasant to listen to. I'd say he's got 1/1,000 of Freddie Mercury's talent and 1/1,000,000 of his charisma. Oh, and I love it when Simon agrees with me. In general, that means I'm on the right track.

Reading People on my flight home last night, I learned that Robbie Carrico dated Brittney Spears for three months. It must have been hard for K-Fed to walk in his footsteps. But hey, Robbie is singing Foreigner's "Hot Blooded". I would like this song, except that I hate all songs where singers refer to their lovers as "Mama". Like Michael Johns, Robbie has the posturing down, but he doesn't have the range, passion or the raggedness to pull it off.

Something tells me that Danny Noriega was born for the 70s. God, I love this kid even more than Sanjaya. OMG, he's really singing "Superstar" by The Carpenters. And, shockingly enough, he's pulling it off. He's got a nice, deep voice for someone who comes off so feminine. Go Danny! I'm really tempted to vote for him.

We're back from the break with David Hernandez (who?), here to entertain us with "Papa Was A Rolling Stone". He looks angry, but sounds kind of awesome. He can really belt out the big notes and so the whole thing is showy, but quite fantastic compared to how colorless some of the other performers were.

If you miss Monday's season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, then Skynet has already won.

Jason Yeager is singing the Doobie Brothers' "Without Love". Oh, the dancing. The dancing! Make it stop. Jason has a decent voice, but he's just so unbearably smiley and cheesy. He'll coming soon to a cruise near you. I hope. Although I'm afraid that Jason is going to pull a Hillary Clinton and try to cry his way out of elimination.

Good God, there are still 3 more to go. Chikezie is singing something by Elliott Yamin's favorite singer Donny Hathaway. It might be called "I Believe"? Chikezie is actually having a lot of fun and doing a great job. He's got some soul! Who knew?

David Cook and his stupid hair are singing "All Right Now" by Free. He's playing guitar, so he actually looks cool. Put an electric guitar in a man's hands and he looks cool. It's just a fact. Don't try to fight it. David is playing this too serious. He wants to be a dark Chris Daughtry guy and that's fine but this is really a good time song and he should be having more fun with it rather than trying to turn it into something angsty.

No really, you must watch the season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles if you want to save the world from the killer robots.

Finally, it's time for David Archuletta. I want to love David, but then he has to go and sing John Lennon's "Imagine". With so many wonderful sensitive 70s folk singers to choose from, why this? I guess the answer is that even though the song sucks, David doesn't. I suspect this isn't the first time he's performed this song. It's professional and polished and light years beyond what everyone else did. I'm not sure that's a good thing though. Do we want perfection or do we want someone that's going to let go? I guess that's the difference between pop and rock. I wanna rock!

Tonight's best:

David Hernandez
David Archuletta
Danny Noriega

The worst:

Jason Yeager
Luke Menard

I predict that Jason gets kicked off Thursday.

Posted by kris at February 26, 2008 08:28 PM

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