Hey, what happened to Walter?
Oh, man - I thought Ace was really good! :smack: Honestly, there have been weeks when I’d’ve sent him home (or, back to my place, heh-heh), but this sure wasn’t one of them.
Taylor, Taylor, Taylor - you’ve got to SING the song. Running around all excited isn’t getting it done. Quit scrunching up, you look constipated.
Elliott picked an unfortunate key. Or something. He didn’t seem to really be present.
Tops:
Chris
Paris
- and it seemed to me those two were Queen’s favorites
Bottoms:
Pickler - blech!!! go away!!! far, far away!!!
Bucky - sounded karaoke to me
Please, people how vote, get on your phones and vote, vote, vote for everybody a gazillion times. Every body but Ace. Cuz if we can’t get rid of him after tonight, we’re never getting rid of him.
I taped it so I could fast forward through everything Paula said. It’s the only way I can watch the show.
I disagree that it was a good night; I thought it was mediocre BECAUSE it was Queen, not because Queen doesn’t kick ass - they kick five hundred different kinds of ass - but because nobody was up to Freddie Mercury.
PAULA DRUNKENESS RATING: 4/10. Was getting drunker as the show went on but started too sober to really get a buzz on in just an hour.
My rankings:
-
TAYLOR HICKS (8/10) - Good, solid performance with great vocals. The first time he’s won a whole week.
-
ELLIOTT YAMIN (7/10) - Terrific voice, but in faster songs he does have a habit of struggling to stay at the front of the tempo; he got better as the song went along but it was very noticable for the first half or so.
-
PARIS BENNETT (6/10) - Very good, but not quite great, vocals, and I agree the look wasn’t her.
-
CHRIS DAUGHTRY (4/10) - There’s a big difference between 3 and 4 here; don’t give Daughtry a lot of credit for finishing top half. Stupid, stupid song choice; Queen wrote so many great songs and he did one 95% of the audience has never heard? Standard Chris-yells-the-rocker-version presentation. Boring.
-
BUCKY COVINGTON (3/10) - I can’t believe I’m ranking the Buckster ahead of my alternate wife, Katharine, but he was reasonably non-atrocious and picked the right song.
-
KATHARINE MCPHEE (3/10) - Really struggled with the song, and was clearly flat on many higher notes. “Who Wants To Live Forever” is a tough song to sing, so more than anyone else, Katharine just managed to demonstrate that she does not have Freddie’s chops.
-
THE PICKLER (2/10) - When your version of any song is clearly, totally outclassed by Constantine’s version, you suck a lot of ass. And she was dressed like Mad Max. Picklerism of the night: “Ah don’t haive ayn ayaxent!” Everything she says is scripted bullshit.
-
ACE YOUNG (1/10) - If I sit in a popular karaoke bar for most of the evening, two things will happen. One, I’ll be hit on by a lot of cougars, and it will gross me out. Two, I’ll hear at least two karaoke renditions of Queen songs that will be better than Ace Young.
WHO WILL GO HOME: Beats the hell out of me. The odds say Ace but they’ve fooled us before.
WHO SHOULD GO HOME: Ace and the Pickler both deserve to. Bucky deserves to stay another week but he can’t win so it really doesn’t matter if he goes this week.
Not wannabe, be. They showed her at the opening of the show. Pretty weird that they didn’t even have her say anything.
Oh, I’ll be on the phone all right. I call every other minute while I’m watching House. Seriously.
Top 3:
Paris – Her speaking voice irks the hell out of me, but damn, that girl can sing when she wants to.
Chris – I can think of a dozen songs I would have rather he had done, but he still kicked some pretty good butt with that one.
Bucky – Miles better than I would have expected. Not perfect, but still entertaining.
Muddled Middle:
Elliot
Taylor
Bottom 3:
Kelly – It was all I could do not to break into a rousing version of Kiss Me Deadly
Katherine – I just. Don’t. Care about you.
Ace – No, wait…this is still way to high up. We need to recalibrate the suckometer for this one:
----- Winger -----
----- Getting bashed in the ankle with a ball peen hammer -----
----- Losing all your worldly posessions -----
----- Kip Winger bashing you in the ankle with a ball peen hammer before stealing all your worldly posessions -----
----- Ace’s performance tonight -----
Ace, I hereby swear by all that is good and holy, I will get you for that. How dare you say afterward that “I rocked it”? You wouldn’t know rock if I dumped six tons of boulders on your simpering head. I’ve never heard a great song wussified so badly in my life. I hearby wish death upon you, and I call you a troll to boot.
All in all, I think the most that can be said about this night is that it just reminded everybody how irreplaceable Freddie Mercury was. One of the greatest rock singers to ever walk the earth. There wasn’t a single song that I wouldn’t have rather listened to the original on CD than the performance on stage.
During all the discussion of Queen-never-played-“Innuendo,” you would have thought that somebody would have pointed out that Freddie Mercury was, like, pretty much literally dead man walking when they recorded it. Might be relevant information, Simon, since the full, original song quite definitely does not suck.
Also, they did play it live at least once. Robert Plant sang it with the band at the Freddie tribute show in '92 (?). I haven’t heard or seen the performance since, but it kicked ass, since the full song has a very cool “Kashmir”-sorta epic vibe to it.
As an American Idol song choice, it sucks. No melody anywhere to be seen in a 2-minute excerpt. Chris’ vocal was okay, but way over the top with all the extraneous flourishes.
Most of the group were okay. Nobody was really good.
My take:
Bucky - Just ok. People said he had fun with it but I didn’t see it. It was just a good karaoke. When one of the Queen’s said “He has a good attitude” I figured that was their way of saying not coming out and saying he sucked.
Ace - Amazingly enough, for me this was his best song since the auditions. Then again, I thought he has sucked pretty bad in the past so that’s really not saying much.
Kellie - What the hell?! She was good and she didn’t Kuntrify it up. Not that she should ever try to record that or ever sing it again but it didn’t suck. I was actually impressed that she could do something different.
Chris - I admit I never heard this song. I think he was brave to choose a lesser known song. I think he was good but I did hear a little of the vibrato that people keep calling him goat boy for, but come on that is no where near a Carmen.
Chris always seems to be a lot more knowledgable about music than the other singers.
Katherine - Jeff beat me to it. I was going to say that she made it sound like a Disney song and at some points I think she was just being loud, not singing. Queen should not sound like Disney.
Elliot - He lost me at having been a radio DJ and never having heard “Somebody to Love”.
Taylor - I think it was a good idea not to do “We Are the Champions” but “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” was just okay.
Paris - I got distracted by something but what I heard sounded good.
Who should go home? I’m hoping it’s Ace but Bucky could go to and it wouldn’t bother me.
Sniff. Somebody missed me.
I was unavoidably detained this evening. Now I’m going to go watch the tape.
Did Simon have more to say about Paris – more than “that was weird” – but he waited too long and the director thought he was done? Or they were running out of time?
Cuz I thought it was weird too. Her vocal was great, but she looked like a 12-year-old hooker. That was discombobulating.
While I liked Taylor’s performance, in retrospect, I’m kind of wanting to see what he could have done with I’m In Love With My Car. And off the same album, if Chris wanted to go obscure, how about '39? Could have been interesting.
Ah well, it’s said & done now. I’ve got to agree that I was having a serious Bonnie Tyler flashback during Kellie’s performance. And those shoes!! It hurt to look at her wearing them.
I got interested in AI 3 seasons ago and have been suprisingly entertained overall. I got a little obsessed over Bo last season, but my therapist assures me that in time I will overcome the need to replay all Bo’s performances while drooling all over myself. This season however is so blah. None of the contestants really stand out and I can’t imagine wanting to buy a single much less a CD by any of them. I mean, sure, you can rate them against each other to come up with best and worst, but honestly at this point I say, “So what?”
I thought it seemed like Simon’s comments were cut short a couple times.
Also, I noticed that just after Taylor’s song Paula was clapping with her hands in the air and Simon grabbed her arms and pulled them down and said something to her. I don’t know if he was trying to quiet her because Randy was starting to talk or if he was trying to keep her from embarassing herself.
I’ve been thinking that either she has an earpiece on and someone is trying to feed her coherent words and she is pausing to listen to them or someone is holding cue cards behind the camera and she’s pausing to read them because she seems to be less rambley and attempting to make more sense and she always pauses and looks distant when that happens.
I enjoyed Taylor, Chris and Katharine.
I darn near retched over Suckler. America, I beg you: do NOT cast votes for her.
Ace and Elliott were not so hot.
Paris and Bucky were okay.
Tomorrow: Ace will leave, or Kellie will. It could be a very close race for the bottom.
Um, extricating my foot from my mouth. Of course, it was written in 1991. I didn’t think about the songs from right before Mercury died. I was thinking about how Queen never performed Bohemian Rhapsody live, of course.
Urk.
I was Paula tonight. Everyone was good, even Ace. Paula, otoh, was crabby. Of course.
Let’s see what I remember:
Bucky: good not great.
Ace: 10 for arrangement, maybe a 7 for execution. But if you’re going to sing WWRY, you have to impress, & he did impress me.
Kellie: One noticeable dropped bit near the end, which I chalk up to the awful arrangement. Otherwise good.
Chris: Um, not all that amazing. Maybe a little better than Bucky. Was he enunciating poorly, or was I just thinking about something else?
Katharine: Red? No! When you sing “Who Wants to Live Forever,” you should wear light but gloomy colors, like hunter green & gunmetal! I kid; good job. Made the previous four look like amateurs.
Elliott: Least presence of the pack tonight. Drowned out a bit. Sounded better when I rewatched the tape.
Taylor: Back in form. Good job.
Paris: The best performance of the night, by the best technical singer on the show. I concede that she’s not just “baby Fantasia.” She’s better. And I love that she’s asserting her womanhood. Poor Simon is confused. He still thinks she’s a little kid. As I keep saying, she’s 17 years old!
Before I begin, I’d like to throw this question out…why is doing an unfamiliar song a bad thing? For all the factors that go into who moves on, this is still, at heart, a singing competition. If it’s something they can do, why the heck shouldn’t they go for it? In fact, shouldn’t they avoid risking a backlash with grossly overplayed songs? (I’m sick of Bohemian Rhapsody, and as cool as We Will Rock You is, I can only take so much.)
Pretty good week overall, and as unpredictable as I expected.
(I swear to god, if someone told me four years ago that I’d completely stop watching The Amazing Race and Survivor and become a regular viewer of something like this… 
)
Bucky Covington - Last week was right up his alley, and this wasn’t much different. He was good and should live to see another week.
Ace Young - Ugh. Just when it looked like he was getting a second wind, he throws a complete clunker. What every AI contestant needs to realize is that fundamentals matter. Hold notes. Stay in key. Follow the song’s rhythm. Make it sound good. Whenever I hear this much “personalization”, it’s usually a sign of desperation. I know it’s not easy to stand out with something like We Will Rock You, but he tried too hard. It took a while, but the writing is finally on the wall for him.
Kellie Pickler - Bohemian Rhapsody? Bohemian frickin’ Rhapsody?? A rock ballad that’s about six minutes long? And got played to death about fifteen times over during the theatrical run of Wayne’s World? Sheesh. She hardly did anything with it, either. If AI contestants can have “sharp jumps”, this was hers, and it was a doozy.
Chris Daughtry - Wow. We were all waiting for him to hit one out of the park, and that’s exactly what he did. Finally acting like a competitor and not just a participant.
Katharine McPhee - Simply finding the right song must’ve been a challenge, and I was quite impressed with how she handled it. She finally seems to have nailed her “persona” down. Now let’s hope the voters come to their senses and reward her efforts.
Elliot Yamin - He was good. Not great, but still good. Will all these ordinary, servicable performances jump up and bite him, though?
Taylor Hicks - I like his attitude. He’s fully aware that AI is in no way, shape or form a serious competition, so he’s just going to have a blast and give the crowd a thrill, and to hell with the stodgy naysayers. Won’t win it all, but he definitely gives me a reason to watch for as long as he’s there.
Paris Bennett - I…I don’t know. It’s a sad song, which doesn’t seem to be her strong point, and she didn’t quite measure up to Katharine (her main competition now that Mandisa is out). Definitely won’t go this week, though.
It’s a complete toss-up as to who’s going. I’m leaning toward Elliot, but that lean is at about a .001 degree angle. Jes’ gots ta wait 'n see.
As for Chris, I hope he goes far and doesn’t win. Let’s be honest, the pop idol gig would be totally wrong for him. He’s great when he has the right music, the right background, but someone has to give it to him. He belongs in a rock band, and he should audition for a spot in one as soon as his obligations with this show are over. The last thing he needs is to be stuck in a studio churning out generic pop fluff and suffering through any number of ridiculous side projects (From Justin to Kelly ring a bell?).
- Someday, somehow, I’d like to see a hit movie that has a short snippet of In A Gadda Da Vida, just to see if the radio stations will play a 17-minute song in its entirety ad nauseum. And if they do, what the hell else they’re going to have time for.
It’s not. The judges are all idiots.