American Idol This Week

This week saw Gwen Stefani sit in the coach's chair as the contestants sang songs that "inspired" her. Given that theme, it's a little strange that three chose to sing No Doubt songs, putting Stefani in the difficult position of critiquing people singing songs that she wrote. In one case, it wasn't a huge problem as Jordin did a surprisingly good job with a risky song, but I can only imagine Stefani's reaction after she heard what Chris R. did to her biggest hit, or when Sanjaya told her he was going to sing "Bathwater."

In fact, I don't have to imagine it, because yesterday Idolator linked to a leaked report from yesterday's dress rehearsal which said Stefani went to Executive Producer Nigel Lithgoe and said she did not want Sanjaya singing one of her songs. I can't say I blame her, as I don't want Sanjaya singing any song I have ever heard, or even might hear in the future.


Screen cap courtesy of Idolator

On to the recaps and rankings:

Lakisha, "Last Dance" -- A good performance, but she loses points because it's a really boring song. Melinda ran into the same problem later and handled it better -- it was very interesting to see the two strongest competitors sing songs from the same artist in the same week. It made a head-to-head comparison easier, and I think LaKisha came out on the losing end.

Chris S., "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" -- I hope that hearing Chris stumble through this song will accord Sting a bit more respect for his vocals. This is a really hard song to do -- the interplay between Sting's vocal and Stewart's drumming holds together perfectly but tenuously, and removing either element (or, in this case, both) can turn this song into a train wreck. I think I've seen enough Chris Sligh.

Gina, "I'll Stand By You" -- after last week's "Paint It Black" debacle, Gina needed to come out strong, and she did. Chrissie Hynde is a tough singer to emulate, but Gina picked one of her most conventional songs and gave it just the slightest bit of Adult Contemporary sheen, while still sticking with the original melody. One of the best performances of the night.

By the way, D Jo totally wants her skull cameo.

Sanjaya, "Bathwater" -- If he hadn't already, Sanjaya has now crossed over into joke territory. All of the discussion of his hair only serves to obscure the fact that he forgot the words to the song, just like Gwen suggested he might. He forgot the words to a song by one of his favorite artists, which he was preparing to sing on the top-rated television show in America? Give me a break.

Next week (because he will be around next week), I expect Simon to just flat-out refuse to say anything abut Sanjaya's performance.

Haley, "True Colors" -- Pretty girl. Shame about the song choice. Where Gina's adult contemporization helped her, Haley's decision to take Cyndi Lauper's vulnerable ballad into Shania territory underscored her main problem, which is that she's not a very good singer.

As an aside, I hit Wikipedia to see if Lauper wrote "True Colors" or if it was a Rob Hyman composition, like "Time After Time." Turns out it was written by Billy Steinberg & Tom Kelly, who wrote a ton of hits for female singers in the '80s, including "Like A Virgin," "Sex As A Weapon," "So Emotional," "Eternal Flame," "Alone," and "I Touch Myself." Pretty impressive. Oh, and they co-wrote "I'll Stand By You," the song Gina sang, as well.

Phil, "Every Breath You Take" -- A surprisingly self-assured vocal from Phil, who I like more and more each week. A surprisingly lucid and helpful Paula dinged him for being "boring" in the verses, but that's how the song is written, and I'm glad he didn't try to add too much there. He got to show off his voice on the bridge, and did a fine job. Since so many people erroneously think this is a beautiful love song, I appreciated that he rocked the creepy-stalker vibe a little bit. Or maybe that's just the way his eyes always are.

Melinda, "Heaven Knows" -- Randy and Paula's comments about Melinda inhabiting the song and telling a story were spot on here. She does what most of the other singers can't manage to do, which is get inside the song and understand what it's about. Haley was smiling while she sang "True Colors," for God's sake! Melinda's professionalism allowed her to once again elevate a boring song and make it worth listening to. My only knock on her is that her arm gestures are awfully backup-singerish, but it's a small quibble. I am prepared to be ashamed of the American people (well, more than I already am) if Melinda doesn't win this competition.

Blake, "Love Song" -- The comments about how much the judges liked his arrangement of this song tell me that they've never heard the execrable 311 cover from the 50 First Dates soundtrack. They managed to take a spare, simple song (which I once quoted in a birthday card to my wife) and muck it up with watered-down reggae beats, and Blake did nothing but perpetuate that monumental error. He does move up one notch for not beatboxing or popping and locking, though.

Jordin, "Hey Baby" -- A huge risk that really paid off. This is barely a song, as even Gwen Stefani tacitly acknowledged when she praised Jordin for making it more musical than she thought it could be. Jordin's take was sassy, which is an adjective I feel should only be used when describing comely, lissome 17-year-olds competing on American Idol. She did a great job of actually singing the verses, avoiding the temptation to imitate Stefani's rapped/sung style, and still managed to avoid getting tripped up by all the words. Well done.

Chris R., "Don't Speak" -- One theme that ran through this week's song choices was simplicity -- I would classify fully half of this week's song as simple. But simple doesn't necessarily mean boring, and the singers who did the best with the "simple" songs this week (Gina, Phil) did the least to them.

I felt Gwen's pain on this one, as Chris took her biggest hit and rendered it just about unrecognizable. His "verbal Olympics" obscured the basic structure of the song and impaired his ability to connect with it. He may still be the top male performer in the competition, but he didn't show it tonight.

For the night: Melinda, Gina, Jordin, LaKisha, Phil*, Blake, Chris R., Haley, Chris S., Sanjaya

* -- Just like on the New York Times sales charts, an asterisk means a singer's rank is barely distinguishable from that of the singer above.

For the season: Melinda, LaKisha, Jordin, Gina, Chris R., Phil, Blake, Chris S., Haley, Sanjaya

Gina passes Chris R., and Phil and Blake swap spots. If America would just vote Haley off, we'd have a clean division between the women on top and the men bringing up the rear. And yes, there were two sexual innuendos in that sentence.

Who should go home: Let's just stipulate that Sanjaya shouldn't be here. Given that, it wouldn't upset me to say goodbye to Chris Sligh or Haley either.

Who will go home: One of the Chrises, either the deserving Sligh or last week's surprise bottom-two member Richardson.