Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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.

Ad for Iron Man 2: It did its thing. Just the right level of Garry Shandling. Cheadle!

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."

15 comments:

  1. I'm not sure why I'm so out of step, but I MUCH prefered Tim to Alex this week.  And I thought Todrick did fine on Somebody to Love.  Sure, he's no Freddie (and why couldn't Lambert have done that arrangement last season!) but it was entertaining, he hit his marks, and he didn't hit the ice.

    Overall though, this continues to look iike a loooong season, as there are only three singers (Mike, Crystal, and Siobhan) that I've enjoyed more than one performance of.

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  2. Andrew10:50 PM

    I not only forgot that Lee DeWyze was on the show when he performed. Then when we got to the recap clips, I forgot that he was on. 

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  3. I have to agree. I preferred Tim, as well, and he has more of an "improvement story" going on, especially if you think about where Clark Kent was a few weeks ago.

    Todrick. Meh.

    Really, other than Big Mike and a performance by Casey where I didn't think Keith Urban through the whole performance, it was mostly lackluster.

    Nice use of alexisgracean, BTW.

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  4. Definitely agree with you on Big Mike.  Best of the week, although not the best of the live shows, Simon.

    While I am definitely fine with Casey staying into the top 12, but I was not that crazy about that performance.  It had a nice ending, but I did not like his phrasing in the first half.  And he does have dead, dead eyes.  Just because he does not smile does not mean that he actually gets the song.

    Hated Aaron's performance.  Did not like the singing at all, and Kara (gulp) was absolutely right.  That song was too old for him.

    Did not enjoy Todrick, although at least part of that was because I did not like the song choice or style.  Still, I think that he was singing was off---this song was too big for him.

    Otherwise, I thought everyone else was at least fine.  Even Tim Urban, whom I would have thought would have gotten eaten alive by Hallelujah.

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  5. Cecilia6:49 AM

    I actually hated Big Mike's performance.  Part of that is that I much, much prefer the Kate Bush version to Maxwell's.  I thought he got way over theatrical.  And, I GET IT.  You had a kid.  But you've missed said kid's birth and subsequent time with said kid not because of some tragedy or because you're being kept from her or anything against your will.  Performance of the year?  No.

    Adam: I totally agree with you on Tim Urban.  My whole train of thought while he was singing was that he did not understand what that song was about.

    I also loathed Aaron's performance.

    I appreciated Toddrick because everyone else was boring to meh (including Carol Brady, who I loved so much last week, and Garcia who has totally crashed and burned for me), but in a normal week I probably would have had a very different opinion of Toddrick.

    So last night left me in a very cranky mood, which is not what Idol is supposed to do.

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  6. <span>I thought Alex sounded terrible. I'm a big Ray LaMontagne fan and I felt like Alex really killed that song - and not in a good way. I wish Lee had chosen it instead. 
     
    Didn't like Aaron or Todrick. Wasn't crazy about Big Mike's performance but didn't hate it. 
     
    I liked Lee's version of that song better than the original, but that isn't necessarily saying much since I can't stand the original. Thought Casey was pretty good. I don't see the dead, dead eyes thing with him but it's still so early in the season. 
     
    Completely agree regarding Andrew and Tim. 
     
    Really wasn't too thrilled with any of the performances last night and sort of wish we were trimming more than two guys this week.</span>

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  7. Jenn.8:50 AM

    Ack.  The first week of the finals is going to be Rolling Stones songs.  I (as it happens) am not really a fan of the Rolling Stones oeuvre, but I also suspect that many of these kids can't really handle a Rolling Stones song. 

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  8. Steph9:23 AM

    In addition to the abundance of fireflies, what the significance of the earth's rotational speed? Time slowing down? More time with the fireflies? Huh?

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  9. gretchen11:12 AM

    I didn't hate Big Mike's performance, but I didn't jump for it the way the judges did, either.  I really love that song, in both the Kate Bush and Maxwell incarnations, and I thought that his arrangement was a weird hybrid of the two of them plus some random angsty belting in the middle.  I would like to hear him do a full-length cut of it -- that might give the song more time to build organically rather than moving so quickly from the ethereal falsetto to the power notes. 

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  10. Paul Tabachneck12:11 PM

    Alex and Tim are straw men to me -- like most of the dudes in the competition.  I think Aaron's getting mowed down.  Todrick might be in trouble, and will continue to be if he doesn't get his runs under control. I don't want to talk about Owl City, so I don't want to talk about Lee.  Casey is top 12 because he is.  Big Mike was awesome at that thing he did, I'm fine with the gestures and stuff, and he messed Kara UP, which was amazing to watch.

    As for Andrew Garcia:

    Respect for your material is important when you're walking this tightrope of camp and sincerity, and "Genie In A Bottle" actually has amazing verse lyrics.  Andrew didn't even try to sell them by memorizing them and internalizing their meaning. He starts with the line "I feel like I've been dropped all night/on a dentury of lonely nights," and I don't think that's him screwing up so much as not having made the effort to know what is actually the lyric. 

    Maybe he should have taken this approach:

    http://www.youtube.com/v/7ebIW8S4jq4&feature" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="170" height="140

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  11. Jim Bell1:00 PM

    I thought Big Mike was awesome!  I don't know if I was in a really good mood last night or what, but hypercriticality left me, and I no longer believe that every woman in the contest is better than every man.  I know this may sound like blasphemy, but I think I genuinely enjoyed every performance last night except Todrick and the 16 year old kid who is definitely not already there or whatever calling his kids from the road, go Kara.

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  12. Anonymous2:50 PM

    Here's the thing with Tim:  he sang the song more or less competently, and he got hugely praised for it.  He didn't go off key, his voice didn't shake with fear, and he didn't squeak.  But he didn't do anything good with that song, which is such an amazing song.  The judges didn't care, because they're grading on a curve:  Tim has improved, therefore he gets big points.  Fine, tell him he's better than last week, but please also point out his flaws!
    There was no emotion (and the judges like to talk about not connecting with a song - but they didn't do that with him).  He sang every note absolutely dead straight, when that song really needs to have some of the notes lingered on and pulsed a little stronger.  He didn't connect b/c yeah, he doesn't know what it's about. He made that gorgeous song rather dull, and he got lauded for it.  And he might get top 12 for that.  Grrrrrrrr.

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  13. Jenn.3:08 PM

    I do have a problem with their tendency to grade different people differently.  I can guarantee you that Andrew Garcia and some of the other guys would have gone hugless and compliment-less if they had sung Hallelujah like that.

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  14. Genevieve3:56 PM

    Guest there was me.

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  15. girard314:22 PM

    I really didn't think one of the guys had a serious shot to win it until Big Mike hit it big last night, showing not only emotion, but versatility.

    Andrew tried to repeat the "Straight Up" magic because the judges kept reminding him of it. (Yay to Simon for calling himself and the other judges out for confusing people).

    And Adam, it's easy to mock the Owl City song, but that other "Fireflies" song is no better. When you mix in Fleetwood Mac's "Fireflies", I think it's best to just never sing about them ever.

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