The most painful part of watching Idol is seeing the commercials for the local Fox affiliate’s eleven o’clock news. They’re always for an inane segment about the contestents. Tonight’s was particularly ridiculous.
“They don’t have stars on the Walk of Fame yet. But soon people will be recognizing them everywhere they go. Find out how the American Idols will deal with fame! [insert flashy IDOL FAME graphic] Tonight, on Fox 25 eleven o’clock news [sic] !”
I know! My husband came in and gave me a great big kiss, just like they do on sit-coms.
The Best:
Chris
Elliot
Gideon
Taylor
The Worst
Sway
The Owl
Crooner Guy
Sway and Crooner go. Everybody who thinks The Owl is sooooooo adorable will save him to suck another day. Sorry to all you Owl fans.
My personal opinion, best to worst:
Gedeon
Chris
Elliott
Taylor
Bucky
Will
Kevin
David
Ace
Sway
In my perfect world, Ace and Sway will be leaving on Thursday. But I know we’re stuck with Ace for at least a little while. So I’m going to go with predicting Sway and David. Honestly, though, I’m a little bit worried about Elliott-- he’s my favorite overall, I think, and his performance tonight was great but understated and it’s easy for it to slip underneath performances with more bombast like Gedeon’s or Chris’.
So I’ll go ahead and predict Heather, Kinnik, Sway, and very tentatively David leaving tomorrow.
Chris and Elliot were definitely the two best. I’d pick Elliot if I was going to download one song from iTunes… I’ve never really enjoyed the “yell at you” genre of music, whatever it’s called. Chris was good though, no doubt about it. I enjoyed his performance for what it was. Please lose the little biker beard though, Mr. D.
I hope Taylor picks it up a bit next week. I want him to stick around.
My daughter is voting for David right now, bless her deaf little fingers. Good thing we have unlimited evening minutes.
Well, Chri’s goatee was trimmed.
From what I saw and from the tiny recap clips, I think Chris was best tonight, and amazingly, I would put Bucky second. I think Crooner Guy and Sway and that little kid are probably the top three candidates to end their journeys tomorrow.
Bucky: Today Kellie and me ate at an Icelandic restaurant called Tgifriday’s. I liked me the fries, but the “dinneröhls” were just too darn sophisticated! They sure don’t make biscuits like that back home!
I didn’t think Sway was that bad. Mediocre, yes, but middle of the pack tonight. Gedeon was not that good. It bugs me that they go from saying, “when you take on someone like Stevie you got to be really good!” to saying, “hey, good choice on the Sam Cooke.” Sam Cooke had the purest voice in the history of soul music. Gedeon did not make the song his own (the way Taylor did in the auditions with the same song), nor did he come close to Sam’s original.
RICK’S RANKINGS
The guys were, overall, absolutely terrible this week.
First of all, the Paula Drunkenness Score this week was just 4/10.
In order of performance quality:
1 - CHRIS DAUGHTRY (9/10) - Not absolutely perfect and that’s the worst thing I can say. Looked and sounded like the genuine article. Great presence, great rock voice.
2 - ELLIOTT YAMIN (7/10) - Second this week but much closer to to third than to first. Great voice, but he’s boring on stage.
3 - GEDEON MCKINNEY (6/10) - Better than last week but I still don’t see him as a potential winner. Will likely make the final 12. The only black guy left, which is weird.
4 - TAYLOR HICKS (6/10) - Very disappointing; started rough, awful song choice. Maybe he knows he’s safe for now and he’s saving the good songs, but why take a risk? Gets at least one extra point for his enthusiasm - for now. It’ll wear thin within two weeks.
5 - WILL MAKAR (4/10) - Boring. Makar is falling into an old trap, the Pussy Song Trap, where some guys just cannot seem to get away from singing one wussy 90’s-style ballad after another. Those songs are popular on the radio, which is why some guys sing them, but the problem is that it doesn’t distinguish them at all. It’s a bad idea to just sing popular songs for the same reason that you can’t become a famous chef by cooking Hamburger Helper.
6 - DAVID RADFORD (3/10) I hated his performance and he’s still ahead of four guys, which should tell you something. He was chasing the band at first and never got into the swing of things.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth nobody wants to admit:
The reason guys like singing crooner songs is that they’re easy to sing and they hide the fact that you don’t have a very good voice.
David Radford is never going to do anything but croon for the same reason that red haired kid didn’t do anything but croon; because he simply can’t. Guys like crooning because it’s dead-centre tenor and has little range and it’s affected enough to hide faults in your voice. When you see someone at the auditions start crooning, think “one trick pony.”
7 - ACE YOUNG (2/10) - He’s handsome. He can’t really sing at all.
8 - KEVIN COVAIS (1/10) - Just brutal. I know he’s cute, but let’s be quite honest; if you closed your eyes and listened to his performance, so that you couldn’t see little Harry Singing Potter and how short and cute he is, you’d think, “What the Christ am I listening to? This can’t be American Idol. Nobody this bad could make it this far.” Possibly the worst male contestant to ever get this far in the competition.
And he’s still not the worst this week, or even second worst.
9 - BUCKY COVINGTON (1/10) There’s one other kind of singing a guy can do, besides crooning, to hide his bad voice; Country! It’s all sung in an extremely limited range and it’s super, super affected.
There is probably no A-list male music star in the world easier to imitate than Garth Brooks, except maybe Randy Travis, and Bucky couldn’t even do that. He had nothing in the lower notes.
10 - SWAY PENALA (0/10) - Didn’t hit a single note. Appalling.
Heh.
When Simon said Bucky was the real deal and mumbled something about video clips, I think he was indicating that certain other contestants are playing up the hick bit. I wonder what he could have meant by that.
ACE YOUNG
Pity, really. Just as I was about to cut you some slack, you tried the falsetto. It wasn’t a mellow sweet note, it was an ear-splitting cat scream. It sounded like the deliberate joke falsetto that Elton John did in Benny And The Jets, intended to make fun of bad falsetto. Even Paula struggled for something positive to say. Maybe she has come to her senses and has decided that the caveman look isn’t so handsome after all.
BUCKY COVINGTON
Very impressive. You were the second best of the night. I realize that people will be put off by your hick accent and your discolored tooth, but your voice is quite beautiful and was perfectly suited to the song you chose. Nevermind the anti-country snobs. You won’t win Idol, and in fact you’ll likely be cut tonight, but as a result of this show, and with some dental veneers, you can break into Nashville and laugh all the way to the bank.
CHRIS DAUGHTRY
Astounding. An amazing interpretation. It reminded me of Adam Duritz doing Colorblind. You and Paris were my early favorites, but you have left her in the dust. She decided that she was going to have fun in Hollywood, and you decided that you were going to work. I reckon Simon finally looked up what “charisma” means because for the first time, he avoided looking like a fool by saying you don’t have it. You have IT, dude. Up one side and down the other.
DAVID RADFORD
I’m sorry. It just isn’t going to work out between us. It’s not you; it’s me. I have good taste, and that’s my fault. Unless you want to spend your life as a lounge singer in Vegas giving blow jobs in a vain attempt to secure a headline act off the Strip, you’d best go into some sort of modeling or acting career or something. Put those puppy dog eyes and flashy smile to some good use.
ELLIOTT YAMIN
Your voice is quite good, but I have to be brutally honest. You’ll need an extreme makeover if you want to fit the American Idol mold. I know it isn’t fair, but girls like to put posters in their rooms, and yours would scare them. I told the director not to cue any cameras that were shooting from under your jawline, but she ignored me. Blame her when you’re voted out.
GEDEON MCKINNEY
Wow. Surprise me, why doncha. I think you found your niche. Randy thought Sam Cooke, and I thought Smokey Robinson, but it’s all good. You won’t win, but you’ll go quite a bit further if you’ll stay somewhere inside of Motown. It also hasn’t hurt that you’ve found some humility. Sort of. Well, compared to before, I mean.
JOSE “SWAY” PENELA
Buh-bye.
KEVIN COVAIS
Pat Boone called. He wants his knack for sucking the soul out of songs back. Dude, the lead singer of Grapevine doesn’t smile. It’s a song about being hurt. See, the idea is that the guy is hearing about the infidelity of his woman through gossip. You know how that is. Oh, wait. You don’t. Just shut up.
TAYLOR HICKS
Okay, you get a Mulligan. But ONLY ONE. And stop being so good natured about the negative reviews from the judges. It’ll make people think that you’ll take being voted out good-naturedly, and they’ll vote for someone else just because you won’t be hurt if you lose. But it may be too late. You may already be a fallen star. You know, it only takes one aw-shit to wipe out a hundred atta-boys.
WILL MAKAR
A very good presentation. I heard for the first time the really good quality of your voice in the lower registers. Disregard those clueless judges, and continue to serenade the little girls. That’s your forte, and it’s also your ticket to the final six guys. By the way, I really enjoy you in the background grooving to other people’s performances. I also like the way you bristle when Ryan says stupid shit. You’re an okay guy. Hang in there.
Best-to-worst for tonight:
Chris
Elliot
Gideon
Taylor
Will
Bucky
Ace
David
Sway
Kevin
The girls are lucky as hell that Idol switched to the equal-gender-representation format last year, or else the top 12 would be nine guys and three girls.
I only watched the first hour (Lost beckoned), but I think I’ll go with Hal. I was not impressed with Sway, but then, I haven’t been. Elliott did the best work from what I saw, unless I missed something better in the last 30 minutes.
Oh, and I left a message for a pal who works at Disney, because a couple of days ago she asked me which Idol-boy looked like Chicken Little and mentioned something about someone calling her about it. I’m wondering if she might have cleared the pic of CL for use on the show, since it’s her department.
You missed something much better, something in a whole 'nother class.
Can someone please explain to me how it is that freaking Mario Vazquez has a recording contract and Chris Daughtry doesn’t (yet, anyway)? What is wrong with people? This shouldn’t even be a competition any more.
And, even though this is not the Pit, and we’re not supposed to cuss here, I still think it needs to be said: Chris is absolutely the hottest motherfucker in America. Goddamn. He gives me hot flashes, and I’m only 32.
3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 - The pack - Boring.
Chris will be the winner. Smokin’! (If I mistakenly thought Ace might have it, please forgive me.
Can you believe what Seacrest did to Will (pulled out his shirt when the judges said for him to loosen up!) Then Simon said for Will to “watch out for that Seacrest” or some such. Seacrest just gaped!
Right now, my boys are Elliot & Chris*, with an eye on Taylor to see if he can pull it out after all. I’m really not feeling the girls this year - I’m hoping Paris will start knocking them out of the park, and I remember liking Kinnik but I can’t remember why. The guys’ performances are standing way out for me this year.
I don’t get the Will Makar thing. What is he selling me? What do those faces he keeps making mean? Why do I keep expecting him to turn into Manservant Hecubus to Ace’s Sir Simon Milligan?
*Someone explain to me why he needs this show exactly, please? People asked that of Bo too, but it was pretty obvious to me. This I don’t understand.
I can’t believe I didn’t see it until last night, but I’ve officially had my epiphany and picked my pony. Chris Daughtry will win this competition and be the next American Idol. Or…I’ll wear a bear suit to work or something. You heard it here first (and can embarrass me later if I am wrong).
Taylor, Chris, and Ace have been my favorite guys (and Mandisa and Katherine my favorite girls), so I’ll be excited if Chris does win this thing. Unless Taylor sings something by Bob Seger, in which case I’ll never look at another contestant again!
Um, I’m a woman who’ll be over 25 in three weeks. Heh.
But I still disagree with your premise. I think people like Paris Bennett and Chris Daughtery are going to be stars.