(I think Brenna’s a good performer and I like her personality).
[/quote]
I meant to put McPhee in there too.
My rankings:
-
Katharine McPhee. (9/10) Shockingly good; excellent, relaxed stage presence, and great control. Beautiful to boot. A force to reckon with. Great performance.
-
Lisa Tucker. (9/10) I can’t believe she’s 16. Not quite the control and skill of Katharine, but pretty damned close.
-
Paris Bennett (7/10) I think there’s a significant gap here between 2 and 3; Paris was really good, but the top two were much better. If you listen to her performance she didn’t actually sing all that much. Great presence.
-
Kinnik Sky (7/10) Very good diva job; I liked her more than the judges did.
-
Mandisa (6/10) Basically, she’s a big black woman who can yell; she knows what she’s doing (she should, she was a voice major.) She still ain’t Frenchie. At this point she does deserve to stick around, though.
-
Brenna Gethers (5/10)
My wife made an interesting point tonight: the people who make bad song choices always pick songs they personally like. Brenna picked a song that presumably meant something to her, but wasn’t at all appropriate for the situation. A person who genuinely understands performance will pick a song that will elicit the right reaction in the AUDIENCE.
When you’re up against eleven other people, this now is your chance to take risks and get noticed so you don’t slip into the background. Some schmaltzy song is never going to help you, especially when it’s so against type, as it was in this case. A horrible, horrible song choice that did nothing to accentuate her strengths. I may be ranking her too high.
-
Ayla Brown (4/10) Passable. There is no appreciable difference between her and the next three.
-
Melissa McGhee (4/10) She looks just like the utility guy Peter Griffin painted.
-
Heather Cox (4/10) Picked for looks. Won’t last and doesn’t deserve too.
-
Kellie Pickler (4/10) Playing to the hayseed vote, which will keep her alive for awhile. I think she’s actually thickening her accent.
And then the bottom two…
-
Stevie Scott (1/10) Of all the pre-real-show show picks to make it to the final 24, this is the one that had me saying “What the fuck are they doing?” She was ghastly, and she simply does not have the talent to go further.
-
Becky O’Donohue (0/10) Just appalling; incredible as it is, she may actually be the worst finalist ever, even worse than Julia DeMato or Mickaiillagh Gordon, and is certainly the most blatant picked-only-for-looks candidate since Ryan Starr. An absolute joke; they had 100 better qualified people in Hollywood.
Thanks for reminding me, I must have blocked her performance from my mind. Does she actually sing the lyrics or does she make up her own? Because I didn’t recognize any of those word-like things she was singing. I have never heard anyone sing with a jersey accent before.
I agree pretty much with your choices, except that I would have put Mandisa and Ayla a bit higher.
Brenna must go, along with Heather, Kellie, and Stevie.
I honestly don’t understand the hatred of some toward Pickler.
Is it because of her backstory? If so, please keep in mind that producers ask very specific questions, and even encourage specific responses, and then play the responses that best serve the story arch they’ve chosen to present. Pickler might have mentioned her father one time in the whole interview, and everything on both sides of that statement wound up on the cutting room floor. Notice that on stage, she spoke only of her grandfather.
I don’t know whether Walter Windchill’s “jugmental Christian” remark was directed at Pickler, but aside from the uncanny irony of calling someone judgmental, I have no idea where that comes from with respect to her. The invocation of Jesus most recollectable to me was from Mandisa, in declaring her forgiveness of Simon.
So, what’s the dealio? Her accent? Her blond hair? Is it just petty crap like that, or is there someone she slandered, murdered, or ridiculed that I missed while glancing away from the TV screen?
Mandisa is the one I meant.
Speaking only for myself here, I don’t think she’s particularly talented. I said upthread (pg. 1, I think) that she “icks me out,” although I’ll admit that’s not entirely fair of me to say that – what I am icked out by the is way she is being pimped by producers as this hard-luck case who deserves special treatment because she “won” the World’s Worst Parents contest. Having a terrible, awful backstory does not magically make you more talented, and last I checked, this was still a talent competition. I think it’s unfair to the truly talented to let Kellie Pickler through because her story makes good TV. Then again, I also think it’s kind of unfair to let people through who obviously don’t need this competition (see: Paris; Lisa; Ayla), so I guess mine is a totally irrational and subjective bias which I cannot entirely explain away.
In other words: Kellie Pickler herself does not ick me out, just the producers’ intervention on her behalf, which has to some degree turned poor Kellie into a caricature of herself. She’s a pretty girl, and she seems a decent enough person with a fairly good head on her shoulders. I just don’t think she belongs on American Idol. Her singing hurts my ears. Does that help?
Wow.
I thought Paris’ performance was stellar. When I was watching it, the only other AI performances I would compare it to were when Fantasia did “Summertime” and Bob Ice did “Whipping Post”.
Lisa might be a better singer (maybe not) but I get a lot more emotion, originality and natural ability out of Paris.
I thought Mandisa was only so-so. Ayla was better than I thought she was going to be.
Stevie tore my ears apart. I had to flip over to the Olympics. Yikes. Brenna was bad too. Even though her personality has been the story, she’s showed a little talent. Last night I thought she was weak, though.
Explain this continuity problem – in introducing Mandisa, the narrator of the video clip (Ryan?) said she liked Simon… until she heard his remark on television. They then show her coming in and telling Simon he’d hurt her, but just like Jesus forgave his oppressors, SHE was going to forgive SIMON, in what I found to be a very transparent display. Whatever. I won’t call her “judgmental” anymore and confuse Liberal’s sensibilities. The question is, HOW did she see it on television? They didn’t broadcast the auditions until after the Hollywood rounds were done.
I saw all of it pretty much the same way as you, though I thought Mandisa was quite good. Truth be told, my biggest criticism from last night is of Randy. Dude, not every song has to begin with top-volume bleating. Some songs build from quiet to strong. It isn’t the case that a song begins weak just because it was sung softly the first few measures. Keep in mind that you chop up these songs like TNT chops up a good movie.
Yeah, still falls into language “ruts”, too.
He’s tempered the “dawg, dawg” thing a LITTLE, although let’s see it tonight when the boys perform.
I think someone told him to stop saying “pitchy” so much, so now he just says, “you were sharp” or “you were flat” or “you had pitch problems”.
I feel bad for a guy like Grey Taylor who has to pump his arm and “woof” whenever Randy calls on the pound.
I don’t believe that’s the case, although I’ll be the first to admit I could be wrong. I think the Hollywood rounds started around the same time that the first week of city auditions aired. Mandisa was in the first episode, so she could have seen her audition episode while she was actually in Hollywood. No reliable cite, unfortunately, but I’ve seen this info around.
Ah, I see.
I’m pretty sure Simon’s top four ladies are the same as mine: Katharine, Mandisa, Paris, and Lisa. In no particular order for me. I really liked all four of them, and it’s too hard to choose.
In addition to the two of them, I’d probably put Ayla Brown and Melissa into the top six based on last night’s performances. I don’t know why everyone is hating on Melissa. I thought she was good. I’m going to sound very Paula here, but I love the tone of her voice. It did bother me that her hair was going down the front of her shirt though.
And the rest: (in order)
7. Kinnik Sky - not bad, not bad! She could definitely inch up into my top six.
8. Kellie Pickler. I just didn’t think her vocal was that strong last night. She seemed to sing about four big notes and the rest was just … there.
9. Brenna. I think Brenna is succumbing to Mikaylah Gordon syndrome. People say one thing, she does it, then they tell her to just be herself, then they tell her to try being more like this, blah, blah, blah, until she forgets who she is and so do we. I kind of like the girl, but last night she was boring.
10. Becky. Oh, Becky. You’re so pretty, but you’re just not going to cut it here. Sorry.
11. Stevie. I feel bad about this because I want Stevie to do well. I like her. But the song just didn’t work for me.
12. Heather. I don’t care what Paula says. This girl is not pretty. Nor is she talented. Good bye!
I think it will be Heather and either Stevie or Becky to leave us this week.
After four seasons, we should know better than to think, “these were the best singers, so they’ll move on.” Instead, we should be speculating, “what dynamic young talent will get kicked off immediately?” and “what undeserving wretch will survive week after week despite their obvious lack of talent?”
For my part, I was charmed by her audition and thought she sang really well. I never expected such a good voice to come out of that tiny body. Then something happened and she hasn’t sang a decent note since.
She’s a bit obnoxious - she wants to hijack every conversation with some pointless anecdote about her family - but she’s young and goofy and genuine, so I don’t hold it against her. What I do hold against her is a string of terrible performances. I’d be happy to support her if she could manage to sing well, but so far Pickler’s the bottom of the pack.
Nah, if I was voting with my eyes, Nanny McPhee would be my American Idol. 
She looks like a mix between Natalie Portman and Lindsey Cardinale from last season.
We saw ‘Sway’ Penala at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater (which is only about a 10-minute walk from my house) - he was actually on both times we were there last year. He won both times, deservedly so, because he was way better than anyone else there that night. I remember thinking, ‘this guy’s an amateur?’ He was that good.
Apparently there were rumors earlier that he might be kicked off the show now because he had an existing record deal with a label in Manila when he auditioned for the show last August. Haven’t heard anything since, so I guess it was just that - a rumor.
I don’t think he’ll win, but he’ll last quite a while yet. On balance, I think the guys as a whole are much stronger than the girls this time around. In fact, none of the girls really struck me as ‘pure star potential’. Some are gorgeous to look at, some have great voices, but no one seems to really be putting it all together.
I took some notes to remind me of who everybody was, and next to Becky, I wrote “enunciate”. I couldn’t understand the words either.
It makes sense that if that’s your perception, you’d feel that way. I guess I’m lucky that, in her case, I never thought she was that good even at the audition. She was okay. But Paris eclipsed everyone in Greensboro. And honestly, I feel something similar about Paris that you feel about Pickler. Not quite to the degree, but I’m damned if I can figure out how she went from sweet sweet child to precocious loudmouth so quickly and so thoroughly — and yet… There are still glimpses of the humble and quiet girl from time to time, which from where I sit is her charm. I wonder if it had anything to do with that door that hit her in the head in Greensboro.