The preseason buzz had the girls being worse than the guys this year. Based on last night, we’d have to agree. That might have less to do with the girls being good and more with the guys being utter disasters, though. Wednesday night was one of the most cringeworthy episodes in recent memory.
I’ve heaped a lot of praise on persons “making songs their own”. Todrick Hall, though, went a wee bit too far. If you’re going to go change a song that drastically, you’d better have the chops to make it work. Whether its good vocals, or connecting emotionally with an audience, you have to make the audience forget the original exists. Doing that with Kelly Clarkson, of all people, on the Idol stage? Todrick had to be really, really good to get away with that. But he wasn’t. He was okay, but not much more than that. The reaction to him was, “what on earth was that?”, not “wow, that was really good.” He reminds me a lot of the previous night’s leadoff singer, who also sang competently but chose the wrong song to sing.
Aaron Kelly didn’t really sing poorly, but he didn’t exactly sing well either. To use one of my favorite phrases when it comes to so-so performances: it was musical wallpaper. It was decent, but not really anything I’d call memorable. It was just there. That said, it was one of the better performances of the night, which is saying something.
Whatever the girls were drinking last night that made them pick songs so poorly, Jermaine Sellers had some too. The song and arrangement didn’t particularly make sense, and the judges were right: he was trying too hard. The singing was iffy at best, but worse for Jermaine it felt entirely emotionally disconnected. He could have been reading the lyrics off a teleprompter. One odd thing about all the older comments: the song dates from 1988, and was popularized in 1990. It’s not that old by Idol standards.
Tim Urban is here only because Chris Golightly was, well, an idiot. Unlike last year’s last-minute replacement, Felicia Barton, who proved she should have advanced in the first place, Tim showed exactly why he got cut. One word: disaster. Two words: utter mess. Kris Allen couldn’t make Apologize all that palatable last year, and Tim wasn’t anywhere near in that category. Bad vocals, poor song choice… no. Just no.
For Joe Munoz, you could take everything I said about Aaron Kelly and repeat it. He was better than Aaron Kelly, but just as uninteresting.
The judges have been noticably saner this year. Maybe it’s because without Paula around, there’s nothing in the Coke cups anymore. Tyler Grady sang pretty well, and truth be told he was probably one of the best of the night. There was just a trace of trying too hard, and while I don’t completely agree with the judges, I can see why they said why they said.
We haven’t had a real love-it-or-hate-it contestant yet among the guys. Lee Dwyze might be it. Half of people are going to love his laid-back, casual vibe. The other half will think it’s vocally lazy. Truthfully, it’s somewhere in between – I’ll be interested to see what he comes up with next week. Still, he did exactly what he set out to do, and you could do a lot worse in the top 24. Minor aside: is it just me, or he looks just like Tory Belleci from Mythbusters?
John Park…. where do we begin? It was just not good. Heck, it was quite bad. Dull, dreary, sleep-inducing… it wasn’t quite a trainwreck, but in some ways it was worse: it was utterly dull.
From everything we’ve seen, Michael Lynche is a nice guy. He should have some friends advising him, right? Someone should have told him he could have done much better. It wasn’t a bad song, and overall Michael was better than most of the guys this night. Not much of a complement, but it is one. Still, the song was not particularly a big challenge, and it didn’t highlight his strengths – whatever they were.
Alex Lambert has to be one of the most nervous contestants in the history of Idol. That’s saying something. The vocals were awful, the stage presence was awkward… poor Alex was clearly out of his league. There was nothing he could do.
Casey James was good, but not as good as most people seem to think. It was a polished performance, but like Michael earlier it wasn’t particularly challenging, and for an emotional song it was strangely wooden in parts. Let’s not even mention the fact that Casey seems to be another eye-effer. Oh boy.
Like the girls night, the pimp spot went to one of the preseason favorites – Andrew Garcia. I’m not seeing the appeal here either. Again, he seems to be a nice, perfectly ordinary guy. The singing, however, was neither good nor bad. Very middle of the road, to be honest. Apparently, Andrew’s done this very same song on Youtube. There’s some logic to picking a song you’re already familiar with, but what plays well on Youtube sometimes doesn’t translate well to the bigger stage.
So how do we rank the top 12 guys?
- Tyler Grady
- Casey James
- Lee Dwyze
- Michael Lynche
- Joe Munoz
- Andrew Garcia
- Aaron Kelly
- Todrick Hall
- Jermaine Sellers
- John Park
- Alex Lambert
- Tim Urban
The only ones I’d call anywhere near good where Tyler, Casey, and Lee. The next four were reasonable, but all were quite deeply flawed. The rest? Solidly in train wreck territory. Almost half of all performances being dismal failures? Idol audiences are used to semifinal futility, but this has to be some sort of record.
Calling this week’s boots for the guys is going to be very, very, hard. A lot of the trainwrecks (John Park and Tim Urban, in particular) seem to have built at least some fanbase support this early. It could be enough to bail them out – particularly Tim, whose comments from Simon are sure to enrage his fans.
With that in mind, these picks aren’t much more than guesses.
TIG picks: Jermaine Sellers and Michael Lynche to go home.
