A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

BIRDS FLYING HIGH, YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL: Is Jamie Foxx starring in a movie about music right now? Because it wasn't mentioned at all tonight. Odd. As for the singers in our padded hour, everyone's pretty tightly packed in the B+ to B- range tonight, and I think I come out with them ranked like this:

• Kris: "The Way You Look Tonight". Just dreamy. Lovely. Didn't oversing it, and just a totally engaging performance.
• The Lambert: "Feeling Good." Oh, no! Not the song that knocked off two semifinalists in one 2007 week! Is it even a Rat Pack song? And honestly, until the last ten seconds I thought it was kitschy, indulgent, Liza-esque, in need of the pimp slot he was awarded ... and then, that note. Oh, my. Yeah, that was something. Also, the entrance.
  
• Allison: "Someone To Watch Over Me". Confident, mature, didn't shout it, pretty damn good but not (though Kara felt otherwise) the tier-shattering performance she needs.
• Hokey Gokey: "Come Rain or Come Shine". Ditches the playoff beard for a goatee, but that's not the real problem -- I thought his histrionics at the end of the song, regardless of how well-performed they were, had nothing to do with selling the emotional content of the song. It was showy for its own sake, and I did not feel it, dawg.
• Matt: "My Funny Valentine". I see him in that hat and think about The Obsessed Best Friend in Not Another Teen Movie. On the performance, I don't believe he quite hit the notes he was supposed to, and I think and hope he's going home. For once -- and it's rare -- Simon was completely wrong in his praise of this performance.

And, yeah, even with only five performers, they still ran over by a minute.

N.B. Each of the songs tonight has been performed earlier on the show -- in particular, take a look at Melinda Doolittle's pantheon-level "My Funny Valentine" from the S6 semis and Constantine Maroulis' smoldering take on same, and Katharine McPhee's "Someone To Watch Over Me" and "Come Rain or Come Shine".