American Idol This Week

Our six remaining finalists sang "inspirational" songs this week, with their performances interspersed with clips of crushing poverty in the United States and Africa. Forgive me a bit of cynicism, but I'm pretty sure the hat Ryan Seacrest wore on his trip to Africa cost more money than many of those people will see in their lifetimes.

Still, Ryan and Simon seemed genuinely affected by what they saw, and I'm glad that American Idol, which has to be one of the biggest money-makers in the history of televised entertainment, has decided to "give back." I just wish the giving was a bit more involved and, you know, lucrative.

I suppose we'll find out more tonight, but at this point I'm unclear what the corporate sponsors (some of the largest, and in some cases evilest, corporations in the world) are giving, other than generously providing their logos to American Idol for a bit of free advertising time.

Anyway, on to the performances, which broke down very cleanly into two groups. You can split these six finalists by gender or by race and the results are the same: white men can't sing, at least not as well as non-white non-men.

Chris, "Change The World" -- He really has to stop with the vocal acrobatics. Eric Clapton's message, which is a good (if hackneyed) one, gets obscured by all the runs, trills, melisma, and general rococo flourishes that Chris spits out. He was less nasal than usual, which is nice, but overall it was just middle-of-the-road, which at this point doesn't cut it.

Melinda, "There Will Come A Day" -- Another brilliant performance. I've never heard this song (as far as I know), and was shocked to find out it's a Faith Hill song. Melinda started out with sort of sn early 70s "What's Going On" vibe before transitioning into soaring, emotional voice that captured the spirit of the song perfectly. Just fantastic; Jordin has been inching closer and closer to Melinda over he past few weeks but as good as she was, Melinda was better. She deserves to win this competition.

It was also nice for one contestant to disprove the notion that "inspirational" is the same thing as "blandly boring."

Blake, "Imagine" -- As Simon pointed out, this is a hard one to critique. It's hard to sing, too -- it's a simple song, but deceptively so. John Lennon was too smart to be totally straighforward with his message, and while the song seems like a straight-up plea for unity a closer look at the lyrics reveals more than a little subversive thought ("Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too"). So you have to sing a simple lyric, while finding a way to connect vocally to both the text and the subtext. Blake didn't. He went the boring, safe route, producing a version of the song that ranked, for me, one step above "I'd like to teach the world to sing/In perfect harmony" on the socially-conscious music-o-meter.

Simon's critical bind was evident, too. I mean, as long as the guy is on-key, it's hard to ding him. He's singing "Imagine," for God's sake. You just acknowledge his heartfeltness and move on, I guess.

LaKisha, "I Believe" -- She came dangerously close to shouting again, like she did last week, but I thought she displayed enough vioce control to stay on the proper side of the line. The judges talked quite a bit about the difficulty of singing a Fantasia song, which went over my head because I've never heard a Fantasia song. The main problem I had with this song was with the woeful insipidness (insipidity? insipititude?) of the lyrics. If there was a line in this song that wasn't a cliche I must have missed it.

I thought she did a very good job with it, but her inability to duplicate the brilliance of her early Jennifer Holliday number has relegated her to a place outside the finals in my head.

Phil, "The Change" -- Disappointing after last week's gem. It was obvious from the pre-song clip that this is a very personal song for Phil, and I think that turned out to be a problem. Unlike Blake, who seemed to avoid any emotional connection to his song, Phil was nothing but emotional connection, and the result was a forced shoutiness that didn't make for good singing. You could tell how touched Phil was -- I think if Ryan had said anything to him, he would have started to cry -- but emotional all by itself isn't enough, and in this case the emotion ran over any hint of subtlety that would have greatly improved the performance. Still, it was more good than bad, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement but there you go.

Jordin, "You'll Never Walk Alone" -- I imagine that all over Liverpool and Glasgow there are scores of new Jordin fans thanks to her rendition of their football team's anthem, but in fact the song dates from 1945, and was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein for 'Carousel.'

This was a very strong performance, as Jordin placed small embellishments on top of her strong, solid voice. I don't think it was one of the best performances ever in the history of Americal Idol (I don't actually think it was the bets performance of the night), but it was a great take on a great song and it has, barring some mammoth mis-step, cemented Jordin's place in the final.

For the night: Melinda, Jordin, LaKisha, Phil, Chris, Blake

For the season: Melinda, Jordin, LaKisha, Blake, Phil, Chris

No change, though Phil is inching ever-closer to Blake in the all-important "best male singer in a year of great female singers" category.

Who should go home: With Haley and Sanjaya gone there's no clear consensus, but since none of the guys deserve to win it all, it's time for the three of them to leave.

Who will go home: Tough call this week. Blake was the weakest of the week, but Chris and Phil have spent much more time in the bottom three. I'll say it'll be Phil.