Yes I did indeed just go old school.
I’ll be honest here – I’ve no idea who’s going to win, but I think one way to figure it out is when the contestants sing the “hit single” (which sadly does NOT include Geddy Lee… ten bucks ain’t what it used to be). Think about this – “A Moment Like This” was infinitely better for Kelly than Justin, the producers didn’t want to play favourites between Clay and Ruben so they wrote different songs for them, and “Inside Your Heaven” was again better for Carrie than it was for Bo. And Idol 3… I don’t think anybody cares, actually. Fantasia and Diana are utterly forgettable.
The upshot of it is, I hope the producers go the Canadian Idol route and choose a song that’s adaptable to both parties. “Alive” has been, far and away, the best “Pop Idol” single I’ve heard from a winner, and if you haven’t heard it, you can do so here. If not, you should be able to tell from the song who the producers are pushing to win the whole shebang.
Anyway, enough with the prologue, on with the show!
Opening Credits
Here’s Ryan Seacrest under a single spotlight, because we are at the Kodak Theatre, and we must show that the audience has been bumped up from maybe 150 people to about 2-3 times that. And of course, here are the judges: Salt, Pepa and Spinderella. Randy says it’s now or never. Paula hopes they chose the “right” songs. Simon thinks they should hope that their opponent forgets some words. Nuke LaLoosh says that this is a simple game. You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.
Whoops, sorry. Got a bit carried away with the cliched lines there.
And just so you know, all the previously eliminated Top 12 contestants are here, and they’ll camera drop as many celebs/former contestants they can find. These include: Mandy Moore, Ben Stiller, Cristina Applegate, and Constantine. I will not mention this again.
Backstage, Taylor won the toss, so he’s opted to go second. The first two songs from each contestant will be a song that they’ve done previously on the show, so selection could be critical here.
Katherine McPhee has opted to sing an upbeat song, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” by KT Tunstall. And she’s decided to stand this time.
It’s an ok song, and you can’t deny that Kat pulls it off rather well, but there’s no real “wow” factor to the song which I think could hurt her with the judges. We’ll see.
Randy – You sang it better than the first time.
Paula – Fun opening
Simon – This was just a warmup
Rating: 6.5/10
Taylor Hicks has chosen to sing Stevie Wonder’s “Livin’ For the City”.
Like Kat, this was an upbeat song, but unlike Kat, Taylor chose to move around on stage, in the audience, behind the judges, etc., which REALLY got the crowd into things. Pretty much your typical Taylor performance, so if you’d never seen him before, you’d know what he was all about.
Randy – We got a hot one tonight. I’ve come to understand this as Randy’s equivalent of “BAM” while “worked it out” is like when Emiril says “garlic”.
Paula – Our clothes match.
Simon – Round one, Taylor.
Rating: 7.5/10
I should note that after each song (and the judges comments), Taylor is shouting “SoulPatrolSoulPatrolSoulPatrol” which is amusing the first time, and incredibly annoying each successive time thereafter.
Ad Break
It’s second song time, and Katherine McPhee has chosen her “best” song, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”. Yep, both her choices were her “on the ground” songs.
Obviously, a great performance. My wife notes how she pulled out her earpiece, but I figure it’s because she had some musical cues for her a capella portion. The song was great last week, and it was great again this week. Not much else to say, really.
Randy – You worked it out, blah, blah, blah.
Paula – You have God-given talent.
Simon – This was your best performance of the season.
Rating: 8/10
Ad Break
Taylor Hicks is up with his second song, and he’s decided to sing “Levon” by Elton John.
I didn’t really like the song the first time he sang it, and I still don’t like it now. I suppose that the problem is that Taylor’s voice isn’t really designed to sing Sir Elton’s songs, and the strains that made the first song sound good just make this one seem painful.
Randy – It was kind of pitchy.
Paula – It’s the essence of who you are. Paula is at the top of her game tonight with the inane comments.
Simon – Paula isn’t making sense. (THANK YOU!) It wasn’t as good as the first round.
Rating: 5/10
Ad Break
It’s time for the hit single portion of our show, and like Season Two, they’ve come up with different songs for each singer… meaning that we’ll be getting albums from the both of them.
Katherine McPhee gets a song that seems appropriate, “My Destiny”.
…Well, Kat’s destiny is to apparently sing really shitty songs, because that song was about as bad as it gets. It’s one thing for the singer to go pitchy with a song, it’s another to have the song DELIBERATELY put you there. And to top it off, the song sounds like a simple rework of “Inside Your Heaven”, complete with the Gospel singers popping up during the last chorus. Taylor’s song had better suck just as much, because they’ve really screwed Katherine over otherwise.
And as an aside, Kat has looked dead gorgeous tonight, and it’s nice to see that the stylists actually did the girl justice for once. So, overall, ok singing, hot chick, crap-on-a-stick song.
Randy – Loved your voice, hated the song
Paula – You are brilliant
Simon – You went from brilliant to quite good with just one song.
Rating: 5/10
Ad Break
Taylor Hicks gets his song now, and it’s called “Do I Make You Proud”.
OK, Taylor’s song is marginally better, and I suppose on that basis the two are even with respect to the “hit single”, but why does it always have to be a ballad? Straight pop ballads are obviously the WORST thing you could give Taylor. Or Elliott. Or Chris. Taylor needs something much more upbeat, and should he win I’m thinking that they’ll switch it up for something else. Hey, it’s happened before with Clay. And INXS was initially going to release a song called “Easy, Easy” as their first single with J.D. as the lead singer – and that didn’t even make the album. Still, this is the marginally better song, and if you want to go by that, Taylor should probably win the title.
Randy – The song is slightly better than Katherine’s
Paula – She’s pretty much a blathering idiot at this point.
Simon – You’ve just won American Idol.
Rating: 6/10
Time to recap the singers, and time to start voting. But first, Daniel Powter sings us out LIVE.
