Cook reminds me of Ewan McGregor’s less-sexy but still-sexy and better singing (which boosts his sexiness back up again) younger brother. That said, I didn’t think it was his worst or his best performance tonight, but Randy’s standing ovation though made no sense.
Two things about David Archuleta:
1- Was anybody else kind of “eww” about him wearing leather pants? I know he’s 16/17 so it’s not quite Dakota Fanning in a thong but it is sort of Jr. Miss icky.
2- I’ve said before and will repeat, and I don’t mean this as an insult, but David A. has “star of a blockbuster DISNEY Broadway show” written all over him. He could take over Simba at once and have a special adaptation of pretty much any other one written for him.
Maybe it’s because Carly didn’t sing a Mariah song. That was “Without You”, written & performed by Nilsson in 1972.
I think Mariah discharged her responsibilities in about, oh, 45 minutes. Bring in the Idol…sing the song…“that was wonderful, try going la la instead of la la…just be yourself & sing from the heart. (hug hug) Next”
Oh, that was snarky. I’m sure Mariah is deeply and sincerely engaged in furthering the careers of these fine young singers, and the fact that her album dropped today is *purely *a coincidence.
My judgment is clouded tonight by my hatred of all things Mariah. Man, most of those songs just sucked. Syesha’s in particular had everything I hate in these kinds of sappy songs - a boring chord progression, generic lyrics about feeling strong/loving yourself/not letting go/giving it everything/not crying/surviving/making it through/being who you are/standing tall/being proud/yada yada yada, all capped off with the big glory notes and runs to show just what an awesome singer you are. Bah.
The only song I even recognized was ‘Without You’, and that wasn’t even a Mariah Carey song (Badfinger recorded it before she was born).
The female performances were all about the same - power ballads with big, show-offy notes, sung with varying degrees of competence. None bad, none memorable. Brooke was doing her Carole King thing again, only she’s looking more nervous and freaked out each week. Diogenes, I don’t think she’s acting - I think she’s unstable. Her whole face was trembling tonight as she was singing. She’s an emotional wreck. I suspect she’s not got much longer on the show, because she can’t can’t take the pressure. David Cook, on the other hand, is eating up every second of this.
As far as ranking them, it’s tough because none of them were horrible and none of them were great. Carly hit a few bad notes, but also hit some amazing ones. Same with Syesha, who I actually thought put a little more into the song than the other women (except Brooke, who put way too freakin’ much into it).
I hate David Archuleta. Sorry, Liberal. But every week it’s the same thing - some annoying ‘inspirational’ song, sung like Poor David is going to going to die a horrible empathic death if the world just won’t learn to get along and love each other and everyone learns to stand their ground and be who they wanna be. And the thing is, I think he believes it’s really deep, like those insipid poems you wrote in grade 8.
If Bono or Bob Geldof organize another group sing to save the chickens or the snail darter or something, Dave’s your man. He can also hit that big note you need to hit when you say the word ‘care’ in the chorus.
I will admit, however, that he was better than average tonight. If I’d never heard him before and wasn’t annoyed by the repetitiveness of it all, I’d probably put him in the top 3.
I have no idea whether David Cook was any good, because American Idol’s sound man decided that what I really wanted to hear most about that performance was the backup singers blasting out of all four surround channels. I could barely hear him singing until the last bit. Unfortunately, he’s starting to get repetitive. He needs to come out with something right out of left field to stay on top. A blues number like Michael Johns did, or just something other than a sparse grungy re-arrangment of a pop song. They all sound good, but they’re all starting to sound the same.
Anyway, I guess I’d line them up like this:
- David Cook (judging by the opinions of people who could actually hear him)
- Jason Castro (For at least being original and having his own voice)
- David Archuleta (“Hi, Dad! I’m on a stage! Please don’t hurt me if I suck.”)
- Syesha Mercado (Her best performance, I think.)
- Kristy Lee Cook (Actually had some emotion going in her song, too)
- Brooke White (but it was painful to watch)
- Carly Smithson (but not horribly bad. Just the weakest of a fairly average group of performances)
I think Kristy might survive another week. She’s not splitting the country vote with anyone. Syesha, Carly, and Brooke are on the bubble. Any one of those three could go home (but I hope it’s not Brooke).
But oh, how I’d like to see a ‘surprise’ of David Archuleta going to the bottom three, just to hear the howls of outrage from the audience. They don’t have to send him home - just scare him a little, and maybe give his Dad a coronary.
I’m having a hard time really picking a favorite this year. I appreciate that Cook at tries to be alittle different, but I’m not blown away by him. I appreciate Syesha technically but she’s boring.
I think, just by default, I might pull for Jason. He at least seems like he doesn’t have a lot of ego and he’s got a nice, pleasant, consistant identity. He’s always going to be the kid with the guitar on the beach around the fire, but there’s nothing wrong with that. he knows he is and doesn’t trry to push it. I think he’s pretty genuine.
I’d still never buy a CD from him, but I wish him well.
Plus, I heard that if you vote for him he’ll score you some weed.
I actually feel about the same way - I wouldn’t be upset at all if he won.
I just want to give a general “thanks” to everyone for your excellent posts. The Idol threads rawk!! Once again I had to miss all the performances tonight, but reading these two pages makes me feel like I was there. I’m particularly loving Liberal’s report card, Diogenes’ right-on one-liners (and for not mentioning Carly’s tattoos for once 
) and Sam Stone for making me imagine a Bono-led group sing to save the snail darter. But really all of you - [red wine]I loooove you guysh![/red wine]
I look forward to watching the clips tomorrow night, or whenever the Idol Machine stops its relentless YouTube sweeps.
What is it with Ryan always saying something dumb? Carly says its not fun anymore without Michael.
Ryan pipes up, “Youre saying the other contestants have no personality?”
And what was the green sign he ran into the audience and ripped in half?
The reason they weren’t mentioned tonight is that <gasp> we didn’t see them! She was wearing a really pretty grey dress that had <gasp> sleeves! It was the first time I’ve thought she actually dressed well. All the girls were dressed well, though; apparently they all decided tonight was “pretty dress” night.
Oh, man…two non-unwatchable weeks in a row? Two? My goodness…at this rate, it’s going to blow The Amazing Race right out of the water! 
In a strange way, I really think that Mariah Carey wasn’t a horrible choice, precisely because her big hits are so incredibly infamous for their window-demolishing notes. That’s becuase regular human beings can’t do them, so the contestants have no choice but to sit down, look through the discography, listen to a lot of stuff they’re not familiar with, and make an informed decision about what to go with. (Same with Dolly Parton; Islands in the Stream is a duet and gospel doesn’t fly with much of the voting public, they don’t work, need to pick something that does.)
Note that even though it wasn’t a horrible choice, that doesn’t make it a great choice, or even a particularly good one. Castro was fragged, just as most of us feared, and White got even less incentive to do anything remotely challenging. In the end, I have to say it was average all around. And while Cowell’s proclamation that the guys stole the show might be wishful thinking, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they all made it clean for once.
Anywheres…
Archie: Another solid performance, and I wouldn’t even know it was a Mariah Carey song. He’s on cruise control right now, no matter what anyone says, and it’s going to take a big letdown to get him in trouble.
Smithson: She got a watermelon tonight and barely managed to knock a double. Will probably survive this week, but against Mercado and KLC, she has to be sweating now.
Mercado: If Smithson got a watermelon, she got a damn SUV. Even so, it looks like America really doesn’t want to crown yet another dang diva. Simply making it to the two-song stage could be a triumph for her.
White: The one on the female side in the most trouble for reasons already mentioned. If it weren’t for Castro, this’d be her swan song.
KLC: Not going yet. Next! 
Cook: I liked this one. A lot. He took a well-known bland pop hit and made it sound downright nice. (And I didn’t catch no stinkin’ stalker vibe.) I predict that he will outlast Castro and then quietly bow out, his future secured.
Castro: This was about the worst thing that could possibly happen to him, and he really sounded to me that he either mailed it in or just couldn’t get into the groove at all. A sobering reminder that this is not in any way, shape, or form a fair contest. Barring amazing luck, he’s gone.
It’s okay, Sam. You’re entitled.
You don’t like him because you don’t like his song choices and his interpretations of them. Whether I agree with you or not, those are some of the right reasons to dislike him. What I can’t abide is an irrational hatred based on things like how he licks his lips or how deferential he is. Some of the things people have said about him have just floored me. It would be like someone complaining that Sayesha doesn’t use hair straightener. Or Cook’s bangs are combed over. That sort of thing.
Also, I wouldn’t think of myself as some great big fan of Archuleta. After all, I’ve given him as low as a “D” before. It just so happens that most of the time, his voice and his performances are meaningful and moving for me. Others are less consistent. I do very much like David Cook, except for the grungeness of his voice. And I think all that’s just a matter of when I grew up. Archuleta sounds more like early Elton, and Cook sounds more like Vedder. I was already old in the 90s.
By the way, I didn’t write my insipid poems until the 10th grade.
I’d just wanted to mention that Mariah did the German version of AI (Deutschland sucht den Superstar) a week or 2 ago. Apparently she lip-synched her performance, as evinced by the comments of one of the contestants and by Dieter Bolan (the Simon equivalent), as reported to me by someone whose German is quite a bit better than mine.
I’m generally about a week behind in watching AI but I’ll be curious to see if she does the same thing here.
Gosh darn it, Sampiro, now I’m going to be late for work! 
Thanks, though!
Wait…who is missing? Ah right, Brooke White.
Funny you should say that. My wife thinks he would be perfect for Disney, and says so every Tuesday night.
My rankings:
- David Cook—I love what he does. I love that he took a really bad Mariah Carey song and made it something I might actually buy. His may be the first American Idol record I ever buy.
- David Archuleta—Much better than last week, I thought. Really well done, if a bit forgettable after the fact.
- Carly Smithson—She sang probably the only Mariah Carey song I actually like. The fact that I like the song may be influencing where I’m ranking her performance, but I really do think she did a nice job with it. She wasn’t quite so shouty this week.
- Syesha Mercado—As has already been pointed out, technically really good, but kind of boring. I just can’t seem to connect with her, even though I think she’s beautiful and sings really well.
- Jason Castro—I didn’t expect him to do well this week, and he didn’t. He’ll pull through, though, and I look forward to hearing what he does next week.
- Brooke White—How weird was it to watch that close up of her face as she totally lost it three-quarters of the way through the song? I thought it started pretty solid but she got all shaky and it fell apart. This might be the end for her.
- Kristy Lee Cook—I wondered for a moment if I was listening to a different song than everyone else, because I thought she was just terrible. I didn’t think she hit the notes and she twanged all over it. I didn’t think it was possible for a Mariah Carey song to get any worse, but Kristy accomplished it.
I have to work on Tuesday and Wednesday nights now and don’t always get to see the show. Didn’t someone used to recap and include the songs the performers sang? It would help to follow the comments if I knew what song they were referring to.
Just had to share the AI column in today’s Washington Post:
http://http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/16/AR2008041603928.html
Cracks me up every Wednesday morning.
I keep turning to my husband and saying, “I don’t know this song. Is this Christian Rock?”