There isn’t much to analyze this week as far as the results. None of the four boots sang well, and in the semifinals that’s usually enough to get you kicked out eventually.

What’s much more interesting to talk about is what’s shaping up to be a pattern of the would-be Idols this year – changing up songs and utterly failing in the process. Now, given that I’ve been as big an advocate of the need for Idols to change up their songs, this is something that I can’t ignore.

The fundamental problem is this year’s crop of contestants don’t fully understand why previous contestants changed things up. For that, I’m going to resort to a favored tactic: the Idol history lesson.

As I said two years ago when I first wrote about the current Idol era, we first started seeing more rounded singers in Seasons 4-6 due to a lot of factors (Kelly Clarkson’s post-Idol success, the raised age limit, etcetera.) One underappreciated factor, however, was the fact that many second Idol epoch contestants had no choice.

Let’s take the three of the early experts in changing up songs – Bo Bice, Taylor Hicks, and Blake Lewis. All of them were up against technically superior singers who could, if they really wanted to, beat them if they tried to out-power them. Bo was up against Carrie Underwood, about as unenviable a task as any Idol contestant has ever faced. Blake had no business being anywhere near the finale if you just looked at this vocals.

What second-epoch Idols realized was if they couldn’t out-power their opposition, they had to out-think them and make what vocal ability they did have count. It was a trend that, in many ways, reached its zenith in the past two years.

The best example was last year. Kris Allen had tons of subtlety and control, but trying to outpower Adam Lambert was a losing proposition, period. So, instead, he picked songs that could work for him. Whether it was originally by  Kanye West, or Donna Summer, it didn’t matter. A Kris Allen, or David Cook, or Brooke White, would essentially ask three questions before picking a song and rearranging it:

1. Is this a good song to sing?
2. Will it fit in the theme for this week?
3. If the answers to #1 and #2 are yes, can I do it in a way that will impress the Idol voter by showing off my strengths and hiding my weaknesses?

#3 is critical. Rearranging a song serves no use if it doesn’t put you, the Idol contestant, in a good light. They changed up songs in order to highlight what kind of artist they were, which is the way a second-epoch contestant wins Idol.

Now, with that in mind, let’s look at what’s going on this year. Remember, in order to properly change up a song, the answers to all three questions have to be yes.

By large, the answer is… no. This year’s would-be Idols saw what had made so many contestants successful, but didn’t learn why they did it. Kris Allen knew what he was doing with Heartless. Why did Todrick Hall change up Kelly Clarkson and Tina Turner? We don’t know. It told us nothing about what kind of artist he was; he was doing it because… he could. Todrick’s the worst offender, but he has not been alone this year. This is not a winning formula.

The only person who, right now, I’d bet could change up a song and make it work this season is Crystal Bowersox. It’s not a surprise: just look at her background. For five years running, music pros have done very well, putting one of their number in the finale and winning more often than not. She’s the favorite (based on the gambling odds), and that status is completely justified. (TIG readers, help me out here: is there anyone else who has the kind of pro music background that Crystal has?)

Ultimately, the lesson to this is deeper, and goes beyond Idol: before copying a strategy that worked elsewhere, figure out why that strategy worked. If you can produce the factors that made that strategy successful – by all means, go ahead with it.

So far, however, the Idols imitated only the technique, not the underlying methodology. If they keep going down this road… it could be a difficult season. As our friends at What Not to Sing say: Study. Then Sing.

Three performance shows in and we really hadn’t been blown away. Sure, there had been good performances, but not really great ones. This week… we got some great performances. For the first time, I felt that someone in this top 20 might actually deserve to win the title.

Crystal Bowersox has made a lot of news this week, entirely for non-music related reasons. She reminded us that before her unfortunate bout with diabetes, she was making waves for her music. Long As I Can See The Light was a supremely confident, well-sung performance. It was the performance of someone who knew exactly what they wanted to do artistically, and how they wanted to do it. Some otherwise good contestants take many weeks to figure it out, if they do at all. Crystal’s done it in two weeks. Those who are in the path of Mamasox should be afraid. Very afraid. Best of the night.

It’s a good thing she was that good, because it took a while for another good contestant to show up. Haeley Vaughn was not one of those good ones. She was bad. Very bad. To be fair, though, she wasn’t really going to impress anyone with a Miley Cyrus song – even if it was well sung. Which… it wasn’t. Haeley has no range, no power… she’s skating by on personality alone. The best song of the night was followed by the worst.

Lacey Brown wins the Best Attempt At Sucking Up To Judges award. Granted, it was a very obvious suggestion last week from Kara, but even then doing exactly what the judges wanted after just one week is worth noting. Did it work? No. First of all, it was too much of a copycat performance. Second, it wasn’t even a good performance – the vocals were a mess in some parts (and only decent, at best), and Lacey never looked completely at home on the stage. She did a good job of covering it up, but it’s there. Is she a unique singer? She is, but she’s not good enough to make that uniqueness come into play.

It’s hard not to know that Katie Stevens is one of the youngest contestants this season. She’s such a bubbly, energetic character that people can’t help but like her. Unfortunately, for me at least, all my warm feelings go away when she sings. Katie isn’t bad – but she’s just not memorable based on her singing alone. It doesn’t have anything to do with singing young or whatever the judges are saying. Katie, technically, is a reasonably good singer. She can sing the notes in the right pitch, key, etcetera. However singing is so much more than that; it’s in effect telling a story. Katie fails miserably in that category. Add to that inexperience due to her young age and you’ve got the poster child for “why auditioning for Idol the first year you’re eligible is not always a good idea.”

Last week Didi Benami went the subtle route. This week, she didn’t – with rather middling results. At points, it sounded more like she was wailing rather than singing. It wasn’t as bad as Simon thought it was, but overall it was mediocre. (Didi, though, is an excellent case study of when changing up songs works. That topic will be the feature of tomorrow’s editorial.)

Few people – if any – would have thought Michelle Delamor would ever choose a Creed song to sing. In nine years of Idol, it has to be one of the most curious song choices ever. Seeing With Arms Wide Open turned into a diva-type power ballad is… strange. Did it work? Like Todrick Hall the night before…. no. Hell no. She did do a lot with the song, but she didn’t do it nearly well enough. Michelle is a good singer, but she doesn’t have the vocal chops to pull off what she did. The vocals were okay – it was well-controlled, but not terribly interesting. It was really so-so, and it wasn’t strong enough to overcome the “What was that?” factor.

Give Lilly Scott credit for sheer guts. She seems to have a knack for picking songs that on paper shouldn’t work… but do. If anything, her song choice this week could have been described as reckless. A Change Is Gonna Come had been done in last year’s finale by Adam Lambert. Two years ago, Syesha Mercado had tried her hand at it. Lily had no business trying this song. And yet… it did. This was one case where changing the song up clearly worked. Like last week, it wasn’t a vocal masterpiece – she didn’t bulldoze it with glory notes and runs the way Adam did last year – but it didn’t have to be, because Lilly is so good in getting audiences to connect with her performances and selling the emotion of the song. It’s right out of the Kris Allen and David Cook recipes to success. Is Lilly in that category? Not quite, but it’s very early in the season. There’s a lot of room for growth here. Very well done.

Sitting down in front of a piano, taking a song, slowing it down, and stripping it down to its basics is a familiar route to Idol success. It really only works for good singers who are fundamentally sound. Fortunately, Katelyn Epperly is. The vocals were great, and aside from some moments where Katelyn played too much to the camera her overall performance was pretty good too. What Ellen said about the song was right, though – they could probably have sped up the song just a little, and the vocals and emotions of the song would have been fine. Good performance from her, and exactly the kind of performance she needed to put herself on the map.

If Lacey won the gold medal in sucking up to the judges, Paige Miles took the silver. Picking a song written by Kara? Not a coincidence. It was a fun song, and Paige sang reasonably well, but the basic problem was it didn’t feel original or interesting. At all. It was very, very, very well done karaoke – but still karaoke.

Siobhan Magnus was possibly the last person anyone expected to do Aretha Franklin – for good reason. It didn’t really suit her that well, and it would have been a big departure from what she did. And yet, somehow, she found a way to make it work. Her vocals were pretty good overall, and while sometimes the song did feel a little too big for her, Siobhan is such a good singer that she’s able to paper over bad song selection if she can put her singing voice to the task. Brave, and one heck of a gamble. But it paid off – mostly, at any rate.

Our rankings go:

1. Crystal Bowersox
2. Lilly Scott
3. Siobhan Magnus
4. Katelyn Epperly
5. Paige Miles
6. Katie Stevens
7. Didi Benami
8. Lacey Brown
9. Michelle Delamor
10. Haeley Vaughn

Like the guys, this should be an easier pick than last week – even if I got those horribly wrong. That said, everyone in the top four should be safe. There’s a pretty good consensus that all four were good, and you don’t get booted out in the semis if you sing well. Paige did reasonably well, and Katie, will no better than “mediocre”, is still getting a bounce from her “favorite” status.

That realistically leaves the bottom four. Didi probably won’t be it – being that emotional on air will win her a few votes. Of the bottom three, really, it’s as close to a cointoss as you’re going to get. I’ll call if for Haeley and Michelle, almost entirely on the strength of Lacey’s quirkiness. It should win her some votes, and the margin between the bottom three is not likely to be very large.

TIG picks: Haeley Vaughn and Michelle Delamor to go home.

Some starting pitchers do well on short rest. Maybe it’s something Idol should try it more often – this week was a huge improvement for the guys from last week. Of course, given that last week was solidly in the land of the trainwreck, just an average episode would have been an improvement.

What we got was more or less a “standard” semifinal episode – the frontrunners are beginning to establish themselves, there are a few contestants on the bubble, and the trainwrecks are providing the bathroom breaks.

Michael Lynch got some good song advice this week. Now we have a good idea what he’s good at. He’s not technically outstanding, but he connects with audiences extremely well, he can move around the stage, and he’s got a huge amount of confidence and self-belief. It’ll be interesting to see how much versatility he has down the stretch – it’s one thing that could really pose a problem for him down the road. For now, though, barring a major disaster, his top 12 ticket is punched.

John Park wanted to be more “honest” this week. It didn’t work. Technically, he’s pretty good – he’s got good power, control, all the characteristics you normally look for in a good singer. Unfortunately, singing is so much more than the technicals: in that department, John is sadly out gunned.

Five years ago, Bo Bice sang I Don’t Want To Be and really knocked it out of the park. Since then, three other Idols have done the same song. None of them did as well.  Casey James‘s take on it was… okay. The vocals were okay, but that wasn’t the problem. I Don’t Want To Be is as much a performance as a song; to do well with it you not only have to sing well, you have to command the stage. Casey didn’t. Standing in the middle of the stage and playing his electric guitar without much in the way of theatrics… it didn’t work so well. The singing was good enough to make it above average, but only just.

Alex Lambert was a very pleasant surprise, and easily the most improved from last week. Then, he was clearly scared out of his wits on the “big” Idol stage. This week, though, he was clearly nowhere as nervous. Part of it may have been his decision to slow down and give his song – and the environment – a very intimate feel. He may not be able to out-perform the rest of the field, but his vocals are competitive, and his personality has an honesty to him that people will love. He will do better than people think.

In a night of people learning from their mistakes last week, Todrick Hall learned nothing. Last week’s fiasco had relatively little to do with how much or how little he changed the original material. It was simply because he didn’t sing well enough to allow people to forget the original. This week was no different. He’s just not good enough to pull off these drastic reworkings of songs. The past two winners – David Cook and Kris Allen – were both supremely good at it, and in part that was because they had a good idea of their strengths and limitations. Todrick doesn’t seem to have that, and he will probably go home before he figures this puzzle out.

Perhaps by picking What’s Going On as his song, Jermaine Sellers was tempting fate. That was what we were asking as his performance went on: what is going on here? It just went nowhere – the singing was mediocre, he didn’t really connect with the audience – it was one of the worst of the night.

For a so-called favorite, Andrew Garcia hasn’t really been all that impressive. Certainly he did himself no favors with You Give Me Something. It’s hard to imagine a more ironic title. The audience had very little to take away. It was just… there. Andrew’s a decent enough singer that it wasn’t awful, but it was a very mediocre and middling performance.

My Girl does not have an auspicious history on Idol. While Aaron Kelly had the best version of that song ever on Idol, that’s not saying much. It was okay, but it was not particularly memorable. The David Archuleta comparison is inevitable, and there’s no way Aaron comes out of that comparison well – he’s not as good. By any standard, though, it wasn’t bad. Maybe not particularly good, but not bad.

After last week’s apologize, my expectations for Tim Urban were… low. He was better than he was last week. That doesn’t make him good; just less awful than he was last week. It was a much better song selection, and wouldn’t have been half-bad… but it justly confirmed that Tim wasn’t really top 24 material.

Lee DeWyze didn’t do anything too different from last week. It won’t convince anyone who really disliked him back then, but I’ll give him due credit: give him the right material and he shines. That’s not to say his performance was perfect – there were some rough spots in his vocals (not many), he spent a little too much time “pandering” to the camera (that’s what I’m calling eye-screwing now)… but overall it was quite well-rounded. Well done.

Here’s how our rankings go:

1. Michael Lynche
2. Alex Lambert
3. Lee DeWyze
4. Casey James
5. Andrew Garcia
6. Aaron Kelly
7. John Park
8. Tim Urban
9. Jermaine Sellers
10. Todrick Hall

The top three places are fairly close together in my book; so are Andrew and Aaron. Casey’s right in the middle between the two groups. There are still four bad performances, but they weren’t all quite as bad as they were last week, Todrick excepted.

Who’s going home: Unlike last week, there’s a pretty clear delineation this week of who was bad and good. While semifinal boots are always something of a crapshoot, last week might as well have involved rolling dice.

This week, though, the bootees should come from the bottom four. The rest either have “strong” (as strong as they can be this early) fanbases, sang well, got praise from the judges, or other factors that put them safe. (Of that group, the closest one in danger might be Aaron. He’s forgettable, yes, but his youth should give him some help with the tweener voting bloc.)

So who’s going home? Our picks are Jermaine Sellers and Todrick Hall. America does not really like contestants talking back to the judges, and Jermaine has managed to do that two weeks in a row. “Justice”, as administered by the Idol voters, isn’t always delivered on the same week as the crime, but doing it twice in a row is asking for it. If he’s not gone this week, chances are he’ll be gone next week.

As for Todrick… whatever he’s doing, this can’t be a good way to build up a fanbase. He hasn’t sung well, not defined himself artistically in any meaningful way… this isn’t a formula for success either. Last week he escaped largely because so many people stunk so badly. This week? Not a chance.

Our picks: Jermaine Sellers and Todrick Hall to go home.