Tue, 08 May 2007 21:22:00
American Idol - The final four perform
Tonight’s theme is Barry Gibb-written stuff and BeeGees music. If we’re lucky, everyone will stay away from Stayin’ Alive.
Each contestant sings twice. Well this oughtta be agonizingly long and tedious. Oh my. Barry looks like a Muppet in his old age!
- Melinda Doolittle - Love You Inside And Out. A group harmonized song transposed to a solo act.
Hmm. It’s...Dionne Warwick in 1978. I don’t mean to say it’s bad. Not at all. Dionne can sang. But the dated arrangement and instrumentation isn’t helping. It picks up some through the chorus and beyond, but overall it was just a’ight for me dawg. She didn’t seem that thrilled with it herself.
Randy: “I don’t know if I was jumpin up and down but it was good.” Yep. That about sums it up.
Paula: “Your vocals are always spot on...we’re looking for something that is gonna wow us.” She seems to be taking the long way to saying this was just a’ight for her, dawg.
Simon: “I think was Paula was attempting to say was that she wasn’t impressed by it.” “That wasn’t incredible.” “That was more of the backing vocalist performing.” Yes.1-866-IDOLS-01
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- Blake Lewis - You Should Be Dancin’. Please do the weird shit to it. Barry likes the beatboxing addition to the breakdown of the song. He was in total falsetto in rehearsal...can he keep that up?
Wow...he’s staying in tune in the false. It’s no BeeGees falsetto, but the only human male on earth that could match a Gibb brother in that ball-curdling range is Prince. See, if you play with the disco-ness it works, people! You have to do shit to it...oh nice, he’s doing the horn section with his mouth-hole. Nice. And the scratch effect works too.
I just like this guy messing with stuff. I liked it. Crowd loved it too. They won’t let Randy talk.
Randy: “Tonight it really didn’t work.” “It made it very corny I felt like I was at some weird discotheque in a foreign country.”
Paula: decided to claim his pitch was off? She’s saying more negative things about him than she’s said about 9783475 other performances. Are they trying to tank him?
Simon: “I’ll give you unique and I know this is a matter of personal taste but I thought it was absolutely terrible, that performance.” I could not disagree more.Did they not hear the crowd? Does it matter to the folks that want to make money selling records that this kid can...you know...sell records to the fans?
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- LaKisha Jones - Stayin’ Alive. I have zero faith in this. She’s slowing it down and that is absolutely necessary due to her lisp. Barry tries to convince her to take it to the upper register and effortlessly hits the falsetto in the chorus...damn. That hurt my balls. :)
She had to change the first line from “I’m a woman’s man” to ‘I’m a woman.” I’ll forgive that. It would look entirely stupid. Oh my god, she just laid off and let the background singer take the entire melody of the chorus. She ran out of air. Now she’s shouting in the second chorus. She sounds halting and jerky, like she’s doing some weird staccato version. She ignored Barry’s advice altogether about the upper register.
That sucked. Flat out, it sucked.
Randy: “Good thing you guys got two songs.” “It wudn’t working, all that stopping and starting with the melody.” See? Staccato. It sucked.
Paula: re the audience: “Everyone is on their feet.” Cowell snipes “They’re heading for the exits.” Heh...I guess he doesn’t like it, eh?
Simon: “No kiss tonight baby.” “We’re back to the shouting again...the performance was verging on scary in parts.” Yep. Not. Good.1-866-IDOLS-03
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- Jordin Sparks - To Love Somebody. The rehearsal sounds great. Barry said “I know a couple of hundred people have sung this song, but I haven’t heard a greater version than Jordin’s.” Damn…
Her performance was brilliant. Nuff said. The issue I’m having is that all of a sudden i recognized the melody in the instrumentation - It’s actually just a rehash of Drift Away by Dobie Gillis. Drift Away came out in 1972. Badd Gibbs! Bad! ;)
Randy: “That’s probably the best vocal so far...Mariah, sort of Aretha throwback vibe.”
Paula: “It is the best vocal so far tonight.”
Simon: “Best song choice, best performance so far, we’re back in the competition.” Agree with them all.1-866-IDOLS-04
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- Melinda Doolittle - How Can You Mend A Broken Heart. She’s editing the song to remove the “How can a loser ever win” line and Barry wonders why. She tells him that she;s afraid of singing about being a loser on live TV. Smart, actually. She says she’ll go back to the “stop the rain from falling down” lyric because she’d rather be wet than a loser. :) He agrees.
It’s a little jazzy, smokey arrangement. She’s being very, very controlled at the beginning (in a good way). Very VERY expressive although she’s controlling the vocal. It’s so weird to watch Shrek singing so well. And then she just blows that song wide open and it’s really - as we expect from her now - great. One teeny tiny flaw - when she broke the ending note to re-start it bigger...it was off-key for the first .3 seconds! She corrected it so fast it’s barely noticable.
Crowd gives her a big response
Randy: “Great song great vocal beautiful ending.”
Paula: “I would love for you to throw all your technique away and just surprise us.” How, by sucking? This is what pisses me off about these judges. They;re yelling at her for not taking risks and yelling at Blake for taking risks. You can’t win on this show.
Simon: re: Paula’s nonsense; “You don’t understand a word of that do you?” “I think the second half of that song has put you in the semi-finals.”1-866-IDOLS-01
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- Blake Lewis - This Is Where I Came In. He picked it because it’s not a well-known song. Barry likes him and what he does.
The band is trying to overplay this “funk” vibe and he’s singing way too quietly. Can I say that the reason this wasn’t a hit for anyone was that it sucked? The chorus gets a little of that Britpop edge Blake sometimes throws on stuff. It;s still not great
Bad song choice. With all the BeeGees and Bary Gibb material picking this is a mistake. That could put him out if LaKisha manages to not screw up. Of course the odds of me winning the NYC marathon are better and I can barely walk to my care without getting winded.
Randy: “I do think this was definitely better...still not jumping up and down.” Hmm. I thoroughly disagree this was better. Also, he stopped beatboxing for most of this competition. This is only the third one in a row he’s done it on, Randy. “It get’s old.”
Paula: “Ain’t nothin’ old about Blake.” “I enjoyed it.” “Spot on key.”
Simon: “I don’t know what that song was, I found it completely tuneless, I don’t know why you chose it.” Exactly. Bad choice.1-866-IDOLS-02
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- LaKisha Jones - Run To Me. Well. Again, I don’t expect much.
Uhh...this time she was run over by a truck with green paint on the tire and it was going vertical up her ampleness. Horrible style. She’s all over the road with the key. Plus I can’t get past that lisp. When the chorus comes, she holds the note from the end of the verse, lets the background singers take the key change, and follows them. While that may be a cunning plan to avoid screwing it up...Melinda would NEVER need someone else to start the new key. Is all I’m saying.
Hey, look, she’s shouting at us again. Yay! OHHHHHH! Oh my. That “sweet” soft note at the end? Yeah, she fucked that up eight ways from Sunday. Wrong key, her voice broke, she ran out of air...just everything that could go wrong did.
Randy: “I know you got a little hoarse at the end, but that was good...”
Paula: “Do not beat yourself up...”
Simon: “Better than the first, still wasn’t great.” No, it wasn’t.1-866-IDOLS-03
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- Jordin Sparks - Woman In Love. Dude, this is all about her skills. Barry again praised her and said she’d be one of the greatest female recording artists.
In the early part, she’s kind of stripping the melody out a bit. She’s singing well, but flattening out this great melody. When she hits the chorus she does just what you’d think: opens up and belts the note. In the chorus my ear heard it as a bit sharp but still great overall. Definitely the singer of the night.
Randy: “Pitchy, not your best.”
Paula: “Was not...the...you know my dear.” Whaaaaa?
Simon: “it was pageant-y.” Yeah, that dress isn’t helping her look young.1-866-IDOLS-04
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Bottom two: I say LaKisha and Blake (not because he deserves it but still). Donna says LaKisha and Melinda. We both say LaKisha to go home.
Posted by JimK at 09:22 PM on May 08, 2007
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Categories: Television, American Idol
Tags:
Technorati: TV Music American Idol Paula Abdul Randy Jackson Simon Cowell Blake Lewis Jordin Sparks Lakisha Jones Melinda Doolittle
Comments:
#2 Posted by GripeBoy 
on 05/09 at 07:59 PM -
Seriously, what does Paula know about pitch? All three judges are driving me nuts. They aren’t really judging at this point. They’re just being subjective. Whatever. It’s all down to what the morons in this country think. We all know how easily they can be duped.
Blake is the only interesting performing in this whole affair. He always has been. Like him or not, the rest are just a rabble of nothing new.
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#1 Posted by Grover
on 05/09 at 09:53 AM -
I’m in complete agreement with your reviews for all the singers.
My only question is why was Sean Connery trying to teach theshe kidsh to sing?