By Chip Letzgus
Greetings, Idophiles!
Well, finally.
Last week, Ladies’ Night on American Idol was largely a sad and tortured affair, an assemblage of mostly mediocre performances that the judges seemed to resent having to endure.
This week? Well, the judges were still spouting their inanities about “bad song choice” and “it’s too big for you” and “I don’t know what kind of artist you are” and whatnot, but the contestants were in much better shape. In fact, there were no less than six above-average performances out of eight singers—that’s certainly a first for this season. Since the eight contestants were shoehorned into a 60-minute time slot, it made for a thoroughly enjoyable hour of musical entertainment.
Well, almost.
In order of appearance:
KATIE STEVENS—Breakaway—7 / 84
Katie. Katie, listen to me. Are you listening? Can you see my lips moving? Okay, good. It doesn’t matter if you are the second coming of Janis Joplin, Maria Callas or Mahalia Jackson. On “American Idol,” you do not sing a song made famous by Kelly Clarkson. It’s like desecrating the flag. To do so is to guarantee that the judges will spend nearly all of their time telling you that you’re no Kelly Clarkson. And that’s exactly what happened to you tonight. Which didn’t leave them any time to mention that, at the beginning of the song, you were flat, and so overall was the entire performance, in every way. Which to me is the point—regardless of the original singer.
SIOBHAN MAGNUS—House of the Rising Sun—1 / 99
No time for pre-taped intro segments tonight, but Ryan Seacrest did do a couple of brief live interviews before performances. In his interchange with Siobhan, she revealed that this song would be a surprise for her dad, in the audience, “the best singer I’ve ever heard,” whom she’s heard sing this song all her life. An emotional connection to a completely internalized song—the performance could still go horribly wrong, but a perfect performance requires it.
And that’s what we witnessed. Siobhan sang the first verse a capella, slowly and softly; you could hear a pin drop. Then the band came in and she gradually built the song to a raucous climax (and without the screeching high note that scared the neighbors’ dogs last week)—and then ended up where she started, low and soft and completely in control. It was brilliant.
Simon Cowell, who seems to have taken over Paula Abdul’s job of using words that don’t exist, was “underimpressed,” but I have no idea why. This was the best performance of the season thus far.
LACEY BROWN—The Story—3 / 93
Siobhan was a tough act to follow, but—without even the benefit of a commercial break—Lacey (she of the purple Day-Glo Adam Lambert hair and Betty-Boop-meets-Minnie-Ri
KATELYN EPPERLY—I Feel the Earth Move—5 / 89
In a previous outing, Katelyn accompanied herself while seated at the baby grand; tonight she stood behind a keyboard. I appreciate her musicianship, and the fact that she stayed on key and in strong throaty voice throughout. She also projected enough in the way of facial expression to make it look like she was feeling the song. However, Katelyn’s version wasn’t significantly different from Carole King’s, and the keyboard prevented her from using her entire body to perform the song—something that the lyrics, even the title, demand. It was a good performance, but not at the top of this week’s heap.
DIDI BENAMI—Rihannon—4 / 91
DiDi is another singer I fully expected to go quickly and painlessly this Thursday—and who after tonight may find herself in the Top Twelve. If you wanted to hear the Fleetwood Mac version of this song, you would have been disappointed; DiDi began by accompanying herself on the acoustic guitar, with the band nowhere in earshot. The orchestra did eventually kick in—too soon, in my opinion—but the arrangement still maintained a ballad-like, almost bluesy pace. Simon and Kara Doggonit loved it beyond all reason. Yes, it was good; yes, it was DiDi’s best performance to date; but overall? Compared to tonight’s top three, it was a trifle boring.
PAIGE MILES—Smile—8 / 82
A friend of mine who shall remain Philip suggested to me last week that he was surprised that the Idolsphere was not up in arms over the fact that three of last week’s four eliminated contestants were African-American, demonstrating the racism of the “Idol” voting audience. I don’t know about that; I would have kicked off that one dude who looked like Pee-wee Herman if his skin had been as milky white as my very own. But I will say this: If Paige Miles gets the boot on Thursday night, it won’t be because of the color of her skin. It will be because she disintegrated before our eyes during this performance.
The judges could blather on about this being a bad song choice all they wanted, but that was a bit disingenuous; it was the judges themselves who chose this song for Ruben Studdard to sing on Final Three night in Season Two. It is, of course, one of the great songs that is rediscovered by each generation. Most recently, it was “covered,” if you can call it that, by Jermaine Jackson, at the spectacle that was his brother Michael’s memorial service, wherein he butchered almost every line of the lyric until it was completely nonsensical: “Light up your face with sadness / Hide every trace of gladness / All through the year we’ll be ever so near”—oh, it wasdreadful, but people ate it up, unless they happened to be listening.
Well, Paige managed to get the lyrics right, but that was about it. At first, I thought,Well, this is a different approach—she’s not smiling, perhaps because she’s not giving advice to someone; she’s trying to convince her heartbroken self to smile. That’s a reasonable interpretation, not unlike the one La Streisand took when she recorded it the day after she had to put her dog to sleep. But then Paige’s eyes kept darting back and forth, like she thought someone was following her. And her stony expression remained; she managed to get through an entire song called Smile without so much as a smirk.
The judges recognized this as a disaster, and when Ryan asked her why she imploded, she explained that this was Michael Jackson’s favorite song, and that she was a huge M.J. fan, and the song meant so much to her that in rehearsal her emotions kept getting away from her . . . and there was the true tragedy of this performance. We saw Paige trying to keep it all together. She should have just let all those feelings out and tried to smile as she did so. The emotional impact of watching her try to smile through her tears would have been devastating.
Instead, what did we get? Train wreck.
CRYSTAL BOWERSOX—Give Me One Reason—2 / 97
Crystal may not have as many teeth as most of us, but damn—that girl can sing. Tonight she accompanied herself on electric guitar and gave us one of the grittiest and most perfectly interpreted vocals I’ve heard in ages. Ellen DeGeneres declared this the best performance of the season, and she was almost right. Crystal spent too much time looking down at her fingers on the frets of the guitar, and too much of the rest of the time with her eyes closed. If she had just established a focal point and sung to it, this would have been a killer performance—instead, it was just a killervocal.
LILLY SCOTT—I Fall to Pieces—6 / 88
When, before the break, Ryan announced that Lilly would be singing a Patsy Cline song, I knew we were in for something overdone—I mean, Patsy Cline only recorded like, what, four songs before she got on that plane—and yet offbeat, this being Lilly Scott of the Ann Jillian hair and wacky voice and all. Fortunately, Lilly didn’t choose “Walkin’ After Midnight,” which Kellie Pickler demolished during Season Five. Instead, she chose a similar Cline classic, and accompanied herself on what looked to me like a teeny tiny electric guitar but which Randy Jackson called a mandolin, even though we all know a mandolin is something you use in the kitchen to make waffle fries. Anyway: strange-looking performance, and strange-sounding too, especially the part at the beginning where Lilly—who’s almost always dead-on pitch-wise—was flat.
Despite a subpar performance that could be considered odd even by Lilly’s standards, I think she’ll be safe this week. Based solely on how they did this week, Katie and Paige should be going home on Thursday night. But they could have substantial fan bases—in which case it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Katelyn and DiDi set sail.
At least they will have left after giving good, solid, “American Idol”-worthy performances. Should be interesting to see if the guys have improved as much tomorrow night!
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