I just wish this show had more balls. There’s lots of good country music out there - so how come we have to hear crappy generic country pop? Hell, Dilana did Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ on the Rock Star Supernova show. That’s a song worth covering. There’s a host of modern country songs from artists like Alison Krause, Patty Loveless, Neko Case, and Loretta Lynn that are very good. Some bluegrass might have been nice. Hell, even the Dixie Chicks have better songs than anything I heard last night. This show seems to take any genre, suck the life out of it, and emphasis the least cool aspects of it. Aside from Melinda and Jordin, everyone made these songs completely bland and forgettable.
I wanted to like this show more than I do, because I really liked Rock Star and it doesn’t look like it’s coming back. But every week this show highlights everything I hate about modern music, and even when they play good songs they generally manage to make them suck.
Actual order I think they finished in:
Melinda
Jordin
Blake
Phil
Lakisha
Chris
Sanjaya
I liked Sanjaya last week, and I said I hoped he stayed around until the end just because he at least brought something interesting to the show, unlike Chris. But I take it back. That performance was so incredibly bad that he should have just self-combusted on stage in embarassment. The hair was all ready to go Michael-Jackson-in-flames on us, and that would have been far more interesting than anything else he’s done. And he’s now coming across as a bit high on himself, which he really has no right to be. Go home, Sanjaya.
I think this whole contest is going to come down to Melinda, Jordin and Blake. Blake’s the only one who brings something new and fresh to the table. Melinda and Jordin are better singers. Melinda is the best singer and song interpreter, but Jordin is young and has a fresher look and feel.
After Simon laid into Chris about being nasally, basically the wife and I looked at each other and said, “why hasn’t he said that to him after EVERY. SINGLE. SONG. he’s done this year?”
He’s worse than Sangina and has half the personality.
I heard Lakisha Jones is running into the same problem as Ruben did. Money grubbing friends and family coming out of the woodwork to become part of her posse so they can grab a piece of her wealth when she makes it big.
Whoop, sorry…sorry. Like I said, I was in a bit of a rush last night. Here’s the revised list:
[ol][li]Jordin[/li][li]Melinda[/li][li]Blake[/li][li]Phil[/li][li]LaKisha[/li][li]Chris[/li][li]Teabagging my nutsack into a fishtank filled with hungry piranha.[/li][li]Sanjaya[/ol][/li]
I found the orignal song on YouTube. Unfortunately, I could only listen to about half of it before it became a choice of “turn it off” or “kick my speakers in”. I…didn’t care for it.
I turned to my husband at the start of the show, and said: “Ooh, I bet Melinda does Crazy!” Husband responded, “Is that a country song?”
“It’s in the canon!” I retorted indignantly.
“What does that mean?”
“Um. It’s a country standard.”
I really shouldn’t try and use words or phrases or spellings that I’m not entirely sure of.
But about Chris R. Are you sure you heard what I did? Not only is “nasally” the best he achieves (I said also last night that he could make Michael Bolton sound good to me–and I loathe Michael Bolton) he was excruciatingly off-key. His voice is thin, nasally, unpleasant, and he has a hard time actually hitting the right notes. Plus, he’s smarmy. I also said that I’d love to get him in a room and make him (Chris R) actually watch the show so he could hear just how not-good he is. It’s always a revelation to hear one’s own voice played back. (That’s why, my friends, I am not a singer. I have heard myself, and it was Not Good.)
I think that’s just the nature of aesthetics: one person’s heaven is another person’s hell.
I don’t see anything even remotely smarmy about Chris. To me, the only smarmy one this season is Sanjaya. And I agree that Chris’s voice can sometimes thin out a bit, and it’s a little retro, but again — it has a vulnerable quality that I find charming. I don’t know why you’re affected one way by it, and I’m affected another way, but oh well. […shrug…] (I’m also a big fan of Boston Rob, so maybe I’m just tuned in to the rejects and renegades, what with being one myself and all. :D)
At any rate, what do you think about Chris’s head-twist? Don’t you agree that objectively, it sets him apart?
They need *something * to drive this season (and I’m suddenly picturing Nigel Lythgow throwing up his hands and saying “jesus take the wheel”). Both Simon and Pauler have publicly commented that this season’s batch pretty much sux.
Point taken. It is a thin line between all the categories these days! I still think Bonnie Raitt is pop/R&B/blues but that song? Pure pop. Again, I blame the producers for what they include on the choice list.
Ooo, I forgot about that. During one of the first few mentoring segments, I said to my wife…
“…Geez, the way McBride looks is so distacting.”
“Why is that?” “Well, look at her. Between the long hair and that dress, she…”
“…Holy crap, she looks exactly like Cameron!” “Ah-yup.”
I’m just glad that the cringe-worthy country genre night is over. This year has had no contestant that has set themselves as being a country singer, so forcing everyone to jump into that genre for a night is a prefab train wreck, when none of these singers are marketing themselves as country idols. Why not have “acapella adaptations of Baroque harpsichord waltzes” night instead, it would make just as much sense.
