First things first. Is it really the case that this bunch of not-Nigel yahoos can't manage to finish a seven-contestant performance show in an hour, even with a two-judge limit on speaking? I've never produced a TV show in my life, and here I am with the solution -- cut down the Ryan banter. Subtract three dawgs and one we got a hot one tonight after the commercial break, and Lil gets to finish defending her not-particularly-defensible take on "The Rose" before 9 pm.
The Bad.
- Matt. I did not like this. Did not like it at all. I'm not a particular fan of "Have You Really Ever Loved a Woman" under the best of circumstances, but these were not the best of circumstances. Randy got it right -- when Matt starts jamming all over the place on a song that is nothing but melody, you just lose whatever wispy power the song had in the first place.
- Kris. I don't know that I'd ever heard "Falling Slowly" before. But now, listening to the real deal, I both like the song more than I did a few minutes ago and am even more underwhelmed by Kris's performance. I'm going to posit that this is a song that needs the duet -- without the high and the low parts together, it's less interesting.
The Meh.
- RDJJ minus the glasses. It wasn't a bad performance of "Endless Love." As Paula pointed out, the back half, in particular, was quite good. But what the heck is a presumptive final-two guy doing, delivering the same thing week after week after week? If you take a look at his whatnottosing scores these last six weeks, his numbers are heading lower and lower every week. This guy needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat and fast.
- Lil. I heard what she going to sing and shouted oh no, I've heard of this song! Mary J. Blige does not sing "The Rose!" Then I watched some more of the clip and thought oh, ok, a gospel slant, that could be good. Then I watched the actual performance, and when she kicked into the gospel bit, I got a little bit of a head tingle, which usually only happens when someone's delivering a really big performance. But then it just . . . ended. It never ascended into the kind of big groundmoving performance that you need to deliver if you're going to go the gospel route.
The Good.
- Anoop. When I heard him bullfrog out that first note of "Everything I Do," I thought that Tarantino's "rough it up" comment was going to end in disaster. But after he settled down, I thought that this ended up being one of his best performances, even if it was another one of those squashy Bryan Adams songs. He added just enough "rough" to keep it interesting.
- Allison. I'm actually pretty disappointed in this one. From the bits we heard from her rehearsal with Tarantino, I thought this was going to be awesome. I don't know whether she was kind of sick, or whether it was just that the smoothness and not-at-all-edginess of the band just totally wiped out the raw power of the song, but this didn't get where I thought it was going to go. That being said, it had the good fortune to neither be a Bryan Adams nor a Bette Midler nor a Lionel Richie song, and for that I am deeply grateful.
The Lambert.
There is nothing this guy cannot sing.
Nothing terribly surprising about this week's song choice in terms of what we know about his taste in music -- this week hearkened back to his "Satisfaction" back in the semifinals. But the effortlessness with which he uses that crazy instrument, his total comfort on the stage, even the obvious joy the band gets out of playing for the guy -- he is head, shoulders, and bellybutton above anything anyone else is doing in Season Eight.
(I know, I know -- the people who hate him will hate this too. But really, who do you think can or should beat him out of the six available candidates? Allison has the voice, but she just isn't half the performer or the artist that Adam is. Who else? Tender Kris Allen? Hokey Danny Gokey?)
Bottom three: Matt, Kris, and . . . I'll take one of the girls. But if Matt stays and Kris goes home, I'll be pissed.
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