Tuesday, May 5, 2009

ADAM LAMBERT WANTS TO GIVE YOU EVERY INCH OF HIS LOVE: This week's theme appeared to be Play It Loud, and that was going to be a problem for our non-manic preacher fellows. A big problem, especially in the wake of a Double-A ass-kicking ...

Lambert, "Whole Lotta Love".
Adam: This was pantheon-level awesome. Yes, it was pretty straightforward, but so what? It was Robert f'n Plant, and he nailed it. In terms of presence, in terms of singing, it was spot-on awesome, the best rock performance on the show since Chris Daughtry did "Hemorrhage" in the season five semis.

Kim: Yes, Lambert nailed Robert Plant. (And Adam, if you can’t say Robert Fucking Plant on Rock Night, when can you say it?) What’s keeping it from being over the moon iconic for me is that for the first time, I found Lambert’s performance just the slightest bit karaoke. The best karaoke ever, perhaps, but it was a little mimicky to me. But this is wild nitpickery – it was by far the best solo performance of the night. I’m also so glad that AI paid whatever the hell they had to in order to get Adam the rights to the song he’d most been wanting to sing all season.

Allison, “Cry Baby.”
Kim: Well, thank the Lord that Adam finally stepped in and did what the Idol stylists couldn’t – transform Allison into someone who actually looks like a rock star. I thought this was going to be perfect for Allison when I heard her rehearsal clip. But somehow in the process of losing her nervousness, she lost her rawness. This “Cry Baby” was a little too polished, a little too smooth. Still, an easy #2 solo of the night.

Adam: For once, someone did the song I suggested on the show, and it was twice as good as any Jackie Jormp-Jomp we've seen before on the show. Was it Joss Stone "Cry Baby" good"? No. That's why Joss Stone never had to do Pop Idol before becoming a star. But it was assured and strong and every bit the singer we've been hoping Allison would be during this competition.

Team Jebus, "Renegade"
Adam: I think it's perfectly fine to have the singers do duets during the competition, and want to see this feature come back next season. But this? They harmonized rather well, I thought, but the song was completely forgettable. Not actively bad in any way -- oh, that will come -- but nothing to download later.

Kim: Other than the harmonies, they each looked like they were trying to do their best to forget that the other guy was on the stage. Nice harmonies, though. I wonder how the pairings were done? Because clearly, whoever didn’t get Lambert lost before they even got started. I feel a little bad for these two guys, because it sounds like the marching orders for this week were to locate their inner rock god and let him shine. Other weeks have rewarded the reworking of other songs into one’s own style, but this week seemed to be much more restrictive. Or maybe they just didn’t try. Who knows.

Kris, “Come Together.”
Kim: Now what makes Kris, of all people, pick a song with no melody? “Revolution” would have been better from a “dude jamming with a guitar singing some fun lyrics” standpoint. And he just looked so miserable throughout the whole show – duet, comments, chatting with Ryan, solo, comments. Poor Kris. Nothing he did sucked, but it just wasn’t all that good.

Adam: Remember when Carly Smithson did "Come Together"? Because that was good, and this wasn't. Trying to sing the devil's music, and not very well -- it's a song with absurd lyrics and he had no idea what to do with them. Unless there was some "you must be LOUD" requirement from the producers, this was a night for him to do Eagles, Tom Petty, something mellow but still guitar-based.

Hokey Gokey, "Dream On".
Adam: You want me to say "fuck" tonight, Kim? Because this was a fucking disaster. The whole point of "Dream On" are the screams Steven Tyler pulls off at the end, the ones that Adam Lambert could have pulled off at the end ... and as Gokey was going through this song, it seemed like he was just going to rearrange the song to avoid them. Jen and I kept looking at each other -- now will he? -- and then, when he did, it missed as much as Scott Macintyre missed everything on "The Search Is Over," as much as Corey Clark on "Against All Odds". It was brutal. Both on his cumulative downwards slide and especially on tonight, he deserves to go home now.

Kim: Totally. In a season that didn’t have Adam Lambert, maybe Gokey could have gotten away with the screaming. But knowing that there was someone hanging out backstage who could have matched Steven Tyler screech for screech just made this even worse. What made him think this was a good idea, I do not know.

Team Rock God, “Slow Ride.”
Kim: This. Was. Awesome. This is why having duets on the show hypothetically* makes sense. By far the best performance of the night, and lucky lucky lucky for Allison, as it transformed the ethos of the evening from “Adam then everyone else” into “rockers then those other bozos.” (*But do let me take this opportunity to mock the producers once again for being entirely incapable of squeezing six songs into an hour, much less the eight that this week should have had.)

Adam: At first, I was, like, Foghat? When they could have done Mick-and-Bette? But they elevated each other, and I have to wonder if the producers decided that this was the night to axe half of Team Jebus -- even the Danny half, if necessary -- by putting A/A together, giving them the pimp slot and Adam the opener (primacy and recency!), and keeping Danny's suckfest fresh in viewers' memories. This was just a great duet, and all I can do is gratuitously like to Mick and Tina at Live Aid, because this made me that kind of happy.

Overall:

Adam: Go home, Danny. But if Kris ends up going on the basis of tonight, it is not unjust.

Kim: Total agreement. It should be Danny. It will be sad if it’s Kris’s time, but he was always kind of the underdog, and tonight he didn’t perform like a guy who thought he should be in the top 3.

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