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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Season Nine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.