The problem with Didi’s performance of WBotB is that it removed all the soul and all the Motown. I love the original, but if you take away the arrangement, the backup singers, and Jimmy Ruffin’s soulful riffing on the melody, you’re left with a really really boring & bland song with very little melody. Which is what Didi gave us.
It occurs to me that if the judges are always slamming the singers on “song choice”, why don’t they just take the song choice away from them? This is a singing competition, after all. SYTYCD doesn’t let dancers do their own choreography; why not assign each singer a song and an arrangement? It’s not like they’re going to get to show off their originality any time soon anyway.
And speaking of which, how can you categorize someone as a “singer-songwriter” when they’re not writing anything? Doesn’t that just make them “whiny vocalist with an instrument”?
The weird thing is that at the start of the top 16 I thought the women were much stronger than the men. I thought that Crystal, Lilly, Katelyn, Didi and Siobhan were better than all the men except for Casey and Lee, and that Crystal was the cream of the crop and Katelyn and Lilly perhaps headed for the top 5.
Since then, Didi crashed and burned, Siobhan has been kind of fading for me, and Lilly and Katelyn were outright robbed and booted off the show ahead of many others less worthy. So now we’re left with Crystal as the only female who’s really good from week to week, with Siobhan increasingly looking like a dark horse who needs to soon pull out an amazing performance or she’ll be done.
Strange season. I wonder - if the audience is apathetic this year and vote totals are down, could Vote For the Worst be having an even more significant effect this year? That might explain the strange bootings and the continued existence of Tim Urban.
It’s the stupid gender balance. They should go back to having contestants voted in on merit, instead of being weeded out to meet a quota. K & L would almost certainly have made the finals under those circumstances.
This has to be the worst season ever - in the past, there were always at least two or three I sort of hoped would win.
This year, as far as I am concerned, it is The Crystal Bowersox Show; she is the only reason I tune it.
If she gets voted off, I might possibly tune in for the last show out of curiosity - but will stop watching the rest of the shows leading up to it. It is sort of sad to think this group was the best they could find?!
Seriously, Bowersox is like Janis Joplin’s love child - and somehow, I think she has some secret (other than her diabetes that she does not exploit). My gut reaction is that she auditioned as a lark, and was truly surprised at getting chosen - and at first, I think she might have had second thoughts about if this was the best idea. Since then, I think she is realizing that having millions watch her every week is not a bad thing and she is simply being herself - and I truly think she doesn’t really give a damn if she wins or not.
Then again, the “winner” is not always the most successful, and I can guarantee you that Simon Cowell is going to sign her no matter what happens. It is quite obvious that he too recognizes her potential.