IT'S HARD ON A MAN; NOW HIS PART IS OVER: On whom will the Idol Axe fall tomorrow night? I think we've got three men who are no-question safe, a fourth and fifth likely safe based on cumulative good will, and the other three are up to you, America. Starting from the top:
Big Mike: Hot damn -- a pimp slot earned on "This Woman's Work." Perfect song selection. Emotional delivery. Wow. (Bush, Maxwell.)
Casey: Exudes star quality. A solid performer who's not going to have trouble until he's forced into genres which require more, um, singing. It'll be very interesting to see what the producers start throwing at the kids this year, because they've had no constraints thus far.
Alex: I really liked his phrasing on "Trouble" (a/k/a Bill Simmons' least favorite song until he heard "Use Somebody"), but I've got to tell you I'm getting an Aaron Stampler vibe from him and I think we'll see Roy before this competition is over.
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Lee: Please don't sing about 10 million fireflies; real songs only have one-hundredth as many fireflies. Odd song, performed safely.
Andrew: Okay, I'm thinking now he's more Kim Jong-Il than Lea Delaria, but it's a close call. He was trying so hard to repeat "Straight Up" that it felt like a gimmick, derivative of himself and a performance he's done a hundred times before. A potential flameout of alexisgracean speed.
Todrick: I very much want him to succeed on this show, but his "Somebody to Love"was all over the place. Ambitious, but it didn't work. As Dan writes, "Todrick the Entertainer doesn't have nearly the voice necessary to do this song without an arrangement that turns every single triple jump into a singe. Sorry. I have to get figure skating out of my head." But Freddie Mercury is near-impossible to do right, and he didn't.
Tim: You don't know what that song is about. Don't sing it. I'm upset we didn't axe you from this competition when we had the chance, and now you've picked a song guaranteed to give you enough votes to survive. Ellen, don't encourage him!
Aaron: Do. Not. Like. Thank you, Kara.
added: Sepinwall: "On yesterday's podcast, Fienberg and I talked about the awkward racial dynamics of the eliminations this season. So far, though, none of the eliminated minority contestants really deserved to stay. And if, say, Paige and Todrick are both eliminated tonight from the women and men's sides, those will be fair choices. But if it's Paige and Todrick and Andrew? i.e., not just the maximum number of minority contestants who could be eliminated this week, but including a guy who was easily the male frontrunner (if not the frontrunner of either gender) going into the semis? That's gonna be awkward."
Poniewozik: "But many of the guys this season are only hurting their chances by bleeding stage anxiety. Aaron Kelly and Alex Lambert have strong enough voices, but they come across gunshy, as if expecting Ryan to give them the back of his hand, and they project all the assertiveness of Butters from South Park. Andrew Garcia, who once seemed like a contender, offered what Simon rightly called a "desperate" cover of 'Genie in a Bottle,' retreating into his security zone and finding the closest thing to his much-praised cover of 'Straight Up' without it actually being "Straight Up." And whatever you thought of Tim Urban's 'Hallelujah' (personally, I think the song has become 'And I Am Telling You' for boys; unless you can raise the dead with it, at this point it should be retired), the memory I'm left with is not his singing but his wide-eyed, Bambi-in-the-headlights look."
NYMag: "Strumming along as if he had just Googled the guitar tabs an hour earlier, Andrew's voice went clumsily from one octave to the next and he seemed intent on drawing out all the wrong syllables. Three weeks ago it might have been a misfire, but at this point in the game it’s a nail in the coffin. You can't even call him a one-trick pony, because he just whiffed at the same trick. It's as if Gallagher swung a mallet at a watermelon and missed."
