Last night had to have been a stellar moment in the life of Paula Abdul, as she was slurring and stumbling over her words to an embarrasing extent, culminating in Simon having to support her when she was standing towards the end of the show. It’s partially the reason why I stopped writing judges comments in the recaps – it’s hard to pull something meaningful from the incoherent ramblings of Paula Abdul.
80’s Week gave us some better performances, although this may be simply because we got rid of some of the jobbers and got down to the seven singers who are trying to get into the Final 12.
Yes, seven. Should Luke make the Top 6 men it would be huge upset.
Again in the “totally safe” category are two of the Davids, Archuleta and Cook. David A. suffered a downgrade from “the one to beat” to “Final Two”, but I think he took a bigger hit as somewhere in Paula’s comments she said his performance sucked (although not in those words). Archuleta has a good voice but unlike Cook or even Josiah from the earlier rounds he really doesn’t do that great a job of making a song “his own”. Basically, he does a good job of showcasing his voice but he doesn’t do a good job of doing so without sacrificing the song.
David Cook, on the other hand, did a great job turning Lionel Richie’s “Hello” into an emo ballad. I’m not really sold on his winning the competition, but certainly he’s got the ability to gain more mainstream appeal than Taylor Hicks or Jordin Sparks. BTW, it’s been almost a year, and I’m still not sold on Jordin. I thought her first single sounded a lot better when it was called “Eighth World Wonder” and Kimberley Locke sang it, but that’s my opinion. It also wouldn’t hurt if she learned how to smile. Again, just my opinion.
Jason Castro, I’d also put as safe. He seems to be well liked, but my only thing with him is his whole “This one time, in band camp…” method of speaking. It was funny when Allison Hennigan said it, but it gets old with Castro constantly talking like that. I’m just saying.
So, four singers accounted for, four more to go. Michael Johns could go home, but to be honest I’d be surprised if he did. As for the other three, I wouldn’t be surprised if any of them get sent packing. Danny seems to have the support of the VFTW people, so he could be safe for now. To be fair, he’s not THAT bad of a singer, especially when compared to Sanjaya, who could’ve given the Superstar USA contestants a run for their money.
Which brings us to Chikieze and David Hernandez. Both guys sang songs from the Celine/Mariah/Whitney catalogue, and that generally leads to no good. With Chikieze, it’s a bit of a double whammy as the song (“All the Woman I Need”) was also covered by Luther Vandross. At least David can be compared to Meat Loaf, who’s a great performer but not the world’s strongest singer. In the end, David’s turn as a male stripper is probably not going to do him any favours, and he’s likely to be our “shocking” elimination come Thursday.
So to reiterate, my predictions for elimination are Luke Menard and David Hernandez. Bring on the ladies.
