Here, check this out. The first single from the new album:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WcwO0VS9FVo

EDIT: And apparently it's tied to a video game. Huh!

Don't knock video game songs too hard. I discovered the band Rise Against as a result of one of the Need for Speed games. :)

I wasn't knocking it, I was surprised. I didn't know that until I did a search for the song on youtube. The song kicks ass.

Honestly "gothic metal" doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I just bought this song and My Immortal from iTunes (the latter I have definitely heard and liked before). Toss me a few names I can sample on iTunes and I will check them out, though.

Damn, I also found the second song on the album, which is a killer duet with Keith Caputo of Life of Agony:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EFbqmKcXq84

The best are Within Temptation and Nightwish, IMO, although there are quite a few. If you like true symphonic music, then you should at least hear Therion, which is a metal band backed by opera singers and a 175 piece symphony orchestra.

I think this is a more apples to apples comparison, cause it's live. And I'd freely admit that it's still not close. The louder sections on both are good but when you listen to this or the studio version above, you really notice the melodic points in the song relative to Gina's lower volume softer points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA6qs7YvAyk

It's an interesting idol strategy....the judges frequently make the point that you shouldn't tackle one of the heavyweights for fear of comparison. If you take an A+ vocal performance from history and perform it at the B+ level, everybody says you're not as good. If you take a B- vocal from history and perform it at a B+ level, you're going to look good. Now the trick is, if the song was a B-, it might not be because of bad vocals, it just might stink and you might end up singing it very well and still only do a B- performance. In these earlier rounds, that works ok cause you only gotta beat a couple people and there's always a couple who are awful.

Now, the deeper we get in the competition, I think the smart move starts becoming taking a very familiar song and singing it in your style...unless you can blow it out of the park in its original style. I think Gina can make some hay doing this provided she survives (and I think she will because I think a lot of people will love/hate tonights performance, being hated is no worse than being disliked in American Idol...either way you don't get positive votes). If she comes out on Barry Manilow week and sings Mandee (ok this might be stretching a bit too far) in a loud/raucous style. I also think Gina will get a lot of points in the middle stretches of the show because she'll be the odd one out stylistically. If the girls break out: Melinda, Stephanie, Lakisha, Jordan, Sabrina and Gina, then Gina is going to be the odd one out stylistically...but for a long time that will play well for her. I would not be suprised to see her last to the top 4 or 5, if she stays smart.

Anyway, back to the original topic, they should just stop this season, award the title to Melinda, and go back to the drawing board to pick another handful of diverse, talented singers, and maybe give 6-8 of the current folks a second shot at it. I have absolutely no interest in her stylistically, but she has nothing left to prove from a vocal and performance standpoint. She's ready now. The only thing that could stop her is having o do different genres, peaking too soon, and getting bored with being the frontrunner for another 2 1/2 months.

Welcome to the last of the semi-final rankings for this season. The girls sent the semi-finals into oblivion tonight in grand fashion, proving once and for all that every single one of the six who makes it past this week deserves to be in the final six (assuming, of course, that the right six remain, which is probably not going to be the case because of some hormonal adolescents who will dial the ever-loving plastic out of their telephones tonight).

Some of the girls tackled the divas tonight, and some went with more conventional fare. Song choices were generally solid, with a couple of exceptions that might mean an early demise. But overall, an exceptional night for this early in the competition. They were as good as the boys were mediocre last night.

On to the rankings...

1. Melinda Doolittle. I fear for her, because she did such a fantastic job that it's almost hard to rally behind her. Again, just stop the show, sign her to a recording deal and let her put out records. The fear really is at this point that she will somehow not win this competition, and American Idol will forever be tarnished. This was perhaps the best performance ever on the show, spanning all those seasons. Score of 99.

2. LaKisha Jones. Local girl took on Whitney. Local girl didn't really make it her own, but to do a very passable Whitney and still show some flair reveals unusual talent. Score of 86.

3. Jordin Sparks. For me, Pat Benatar is the paragon of lost singing souls. I grew up with the story of a trained opera singer who made the transition into rocker. I wore out those vinyl albums before little Jordin was born. So that comparison is difficult. I like that she tried to R&B it up a little, but she did struggle with the notes that made Benatar the unquestioned talent of her rock generation, someone who could sing the hell out of songs no one else could sing. Score of 82.

4. Gina Glocksen. I love that song, and she tackled the hardest pieces of it unusually well. She was not as good with the less energetic pieces and had some pitch problems. Still, I compare it to everything the boys have done since day one, and this was a lot better. I hope she does get a chance to try songs more up her alley, now that she has rocked out a bit. Score of 81.

5. Sabrina Sloan. Impressive, but not outstanding. I don't like her voice at all when she's building up for the big runs. She has considerable ability, but I don't think she works hard enough at the transitions and I don't find her terribly memorable. She deserves to stay, but I wouldn't be crushed if she left. Score of 75.

6. Stephanie Edwards. She's very young, and, more than anyone else in this entire competition, really hasn't figured out who she is as a singer. She made a poor song choice. It had a little of absolutely everything, and she was competent with it, but not particularly good with it, and it made for uncomfortable listening. I think she's in trouble this week, though overall she certainly deserves to continue. Score of 73.

7. Haley Scarnato. I used to watch the Miss America pageant when I was a kid, and this would have fit in perfectly with the talent segment. It just wasn't good enough for Idol tonight. Score of 57.

8. Antonella Barba. It says something that this was her best peformance. She had some bad pitch problems, and she's in way over her head right now. I will be very annoyed if she continues in the competition. Score of 53.

Who should go: Antonella and Haley.

Who will go: Haley and Sabrina.

I think Gina has not been the best singer, but has had a good strategy in the competition and, as such, has positioned herself very well to be the "rocker" on the show. With Sundance crapping his pants and Chris Sligh being a little more soulful than I had originally though, I think Gina might be able to carve herself out a little niche and be able to carry a solid bloc of votes each week, while the other girls will be fighting it out with one another over the best R&B performances each week.

If she can continue to improve and peak at the right time, I can see her getting near the finals.

I agree. She would fill a void that the show has usually cast the past few seasons. Same with country - if someone could pull it off, it would the smart move to make.

I agree with Jim's rankings this week.

Melinda is great, but she is a ringer. How is somebody who works in the business, with that voice, not already signed to a record deal? If I had to pick the winner, I'd pick Lakisha over the ringer at this point.

Am I the only one that will be surprised if Melinda wins?

I think she and Lakisha are clearly the best singers, but I just cannot see fans getting excited enough over her to keep her in for 11 weeks.

For a layman, you are so cocky about your own preferences. I don't even know if you're right about that genre, but I know that you've been silly in my eyes many times.

No, I have no idea where that vitriol came from. I actually like you.

Schmidty = Simon Cowell? ;)

By the way, Jim got it right this week.

NICE JOB JIM!!!!!! :D

If you are a front singer, are you going to praise your background singer? If you are a record executive, are you going to pay any attention to the background singer? If she is a ringer, she is putting on quite the show. She probably has learned a lot just watching and figured Idol was her best shot.

Pretty much agree with Jim's ratings as well. Should be Antonella and Haley going tonight with an outside chance of Gina, Stephanie, and Sabrina. I think Stephanie is going to struggle the most outside of her comfort zone on theme nights. Too bad about Haley, I thought this was her best performance and a good song choice for her. She would probably rank near the top of the boys performances so it's a shame she's up against more talented women.

It was pretty awkward when no one booed when the judges raked her and Antonella over the coals. Instead dead silence. Probably a sign that those two will go this week. Like how both stood up to the judges though. Please please let Antonella and Sanjaya go home this week America. :)

This I do agree with and think is likely. Unless Melinda somehow completely stumbles on a theme night, then when (and yes I think there's a good chance it is when) she goes home - doens't it expose Idol for what we all know it truely is? Does it become less "valid"? of course, in my mind, that happened last year with Hicks/McPhee - but this would be even more obvious.


Like I have said multiple times, I personally think it is pretty unlikely Melinda wins.

I have strong opinions about the music I am passionate about. In this case, there's no question Amy Lee gets big props for Americanizing and popularizing this particular style, but it's been around for 15-20 years in Europe, which is something a lot of people don't know, and IMO, done much better by the originators. That's all I was trying to say. Just because I like it better doesn't mean anyone else will or should. *shurg*

I don't know if Melinda will win or not, but honestly, who else is going to win? Lakisha? I'm already getting a bit bored by her, despite the fact that she's a competent singer. I think, like Mandisa, she's going to run out of steam toward the middle/end of the competition. If she didn't have Doolittle to compete with, maybe she would be this year's Fantasia. As it stands, I think she's more like this year's Jennifer Hudson. Especially because, just like the year Fantasia, Jennifer, and that other R&B singer were in it together, they were all too similar stylistically to keep moving on. We have the same problem this year. Stephanie probably won't last as long as she should/could, either. The only thing to distinguish them is performance/vocal ability, and right now the group of them should be ranked:

Melinda
Lakisha
Jordin
Stephanie
Sabrina

Haley's kinda in her own Disney soundtrack/Marie Osmond look-alike world, Gina's now been given the Ann Wilson mantle, and Barba should go back to teaching violin to 13 year old boys who want to sneak a peek down her dress.

I don't think it is wise to count out the boys at this stage.

If nothing else a few of them have one thing going for them:

Who do you think votes more than horny teenage girls?

This has been a theory I've always gone on (maybe it's wrong) that much of what happens on AI is driven by the like.. 12-18 group... I personally don't know anyone in my age range (20's) that votes... and I can't see a lot of people in say their 40's staying up late pounding the phone...

So anyway... Ace Young was an example last year of someone that was able to use this to go further than I think he "deserved".. I certainly thing Richardson, Blake, and maybe even Jared Cotter have this working in their advantage.... In addition, Chris Sligh has that extra factor...

I mean.. seriously.. what business did Taylor Hicks have in the top 4, let alone winning?

I just realized you were talking about the girls... this was more to address your first sentence than anything else.

In some warped way, I would love to see Sanjaya and Barba make the finals. Then every week when Simon and the others talk about how this is a singing competition only, we can ask why they chose to put 2 people through who honestly were there more for their story/demographic quality than vocals. Barba was terrible from the beginning, and Sanjaya, although he showed a good voice during his initial audition, had to have come off as inexperienced and meek during Hollywood Week as he does now. I don't recall really seeing anything about him during Hollywood Week...maybe they were hiding his performances.

Just admit you make choices based on things other than singing ability and quit chastising America for falling for the stories/personalities the show highlights. You can't have it both ways.

There's clearly time for a guy or two to step up. I think Blake probably has the best shot. I think Sligh is too off-center in his song choices (and too Christian rock, now that I've read more about him) to make it far, Chris R., I'm hoping, will finally be exposed like Ace Young was...I'm having trouble recalling any of the other guys except Head. Oh yeah, Cotter...please be gone tonight. If he stays, someone needs to hire that dude from Top Chef to wrestle him to the ground while someone shaves his eyebrows off.

I really have come to realize that I think I feel sorry for Sanjaya.

They could have done him a huge favor. He's young and obviously not trained/practiced as a performer. They've set the precedent with Gina and others that you can go to Hollywood, take your lashings, and come back in the future. It would have done him a TON of good for them to give him feedback that he needs to work on the performance element, but has a good voice. Instead he got pushed through for whatever reason (young male? add diversity?) when they knew there was no way he'd go through.

Anyway - I agree with you. But in Simon's defense, my perception is that some of these folks are in despite his best efforts. It does make me wonder even more about some of the people that did not get through that really seemed to me to clearly be better than some of those not only gone, but still there right now.

As I said earlier, I like Blake and Richardson. I personally feel like Richardson right now has shown far more talent than Ace Young did. Don't get me wrong again, I know he's got issues, but I think he's clearly a better singer than Young was. And I think he and Blake are ones that right now I can see you put them in the studio, and they make a pop album that would sell well to the masses. Anyway, I'll always be biased about Richardson for him being a local boy - but even without that he'd probably be in my top two guys.

That would make an really interesting reality episode or two - wathcing them discuss how people were chosen at each stage. I'm sure there were obviously more people involved than just the 3 of them in making the choices, and they'd never allow the "guts" of the show to be exposed, but it would be interesting to hear who pushed for which people and why they chose to leave certain demographics off, like country/rock this year. And if Sanjaya or Rudy/AJ were there as diversity choices only (seems fairly obvious to me, at least re Rudy and Sanjaya).

I'll admit that I don't like or get the whole Timberlake scene, so he's got that working against him (both in style and the obvious copycat look), but vocally, I think he's getting way too much credit. His voice is tinny and nasally and really isn't holding up well. What's working in his advantage is that no one around him makes him look bad by comparison. That should change next week when he'll have good female singers performing right before and after him. All the guys are going to have to step up, or as bad as they've looked until now, they're going to look even worse.

I won't post it here - although I'm not sure if it's accurate enough to be considered a spoiler, I won't take the chance ;) - but as of midnight, I have the two names that Dial Idol supposedly have in the bottom two. I'll be interested to see if those two end up getting voted off tonight. They claim an 87% success rate.

I don't mind this being spoiled because I often don't even watch the results show and just look it up after the fact - and I find this concept intrigueing to see before and after.

If this is accurate, it's pretty interesting. Looking at the geographic map is especially intrigueing, particularly the East Coast for the women.

I understand the logic, but it baffles me. :D

Ditto on both points.

I was calling tech support last night, and this Indian dude told me that he had to put me on hold to call in his vote for American Idol.

Ditto. I just looked at the men graphic, and it is just as baffling - again, the East Coast intrigues me.

On the graphs, do you know what the multi-colors mean? Not the colors of the contestant's names, but the graphs themselves? All of the guys are blue, while some of the girls are green, Gina is red, and a couple are blue. Are those the trends?

I think this ties into the "Dial Idol Rank"...

Hmm.. trying to explain this without giving too much away... The graphs from last week don't seem to be showing up for me to use that...

Ok..

Go to Season 5, Week w/20 Idols.

Look at the guys.

You'll see Taylor Hicks is just 1, Ace Young 2, etc and they have different colors. Then you get down lower and you have people that are closer grouped. Daughtry and Makar are 3-4 and 3-5... So they are closer, but not WAY close (therefore the -4 and -5)... Then you get to the bottom 5 and they're all 6-10 and the same color.

So it seems to be a prediction of range. They're saying Hicks was a clear #1, but that Daughtry could be anywhere from 3rd to 4th. Makar from 3rd to 5th. But that the bottom 5 guys all could finish from 6-10.

The people with the same "range" appear to be the same color bar.

Interesting...

If I look at the "Raw Numbers" screen for this week it makes me wonder about their methodology.

This site intrigues me, I've never been to it before.

To be clear I'm not so much interested in a particular genre of music as I am interesting melodies and harmonies. The Evanescence tune from last night had some great stuff (in terms of pop music) for me. It was a nice mix of that and power (and I loved the actual Evanescence performance, I pretty much knew I would: I was overlooking Gina's flaws and talking about the song itself).

I listened to Nightwish. Not for me. Within Temptation didn't turn up anything on iTunes, so no idea. I honestly don't think I'm going to like more stuff from this genre than most others, I just like interesting songs from any genre. Evanescence might just have a few songs that catch my ear and none of the other bands in the genre do. So far, not too encouraged with the others.

I dig Amy Lee, too.

Interesting. I was thinking about this during the drive to work this morning, about how strange it is to me that people think in terms of individual songs, or even in your case, certain meoldies/harmonies. I don't think in terms less than by artist, and in some cases, even genre. I don't think I've ever consciously segregated a song from an artist/genre as something I like out of a "whole" that I don't really enjoy. I don't buy downloads all that often, but when I have, I have never bought less than an entire album.

So it was with that mindset that I jumped from the Evanescence thing to the genre as a whole. With digital music taking hold and the ease with with people can buy single tracks these days, I suppose my mindset is becoming less and less a frequent occurrence among music listeners.

I've turned almost completely to single song purchsaes off of iTunes for the most part. I buy an album from tehre now and then when it is an artist I know I generally like their whole body of work.

Now, for full disclosure, I lean much more "mainstream" than you in my music tastes.

The mainstream thing isn't really that important, though. I could buy single tracks of underground/indie bands if I was so inclined. I think we've discussed this elsewhere, but even when I use my MP3 players, I never listen to anything but by album. Occasionally, to mix it up, I might shuffle the songs within the album, but even that's very rare. I've never created a mix or playlist or anything like that.

Dola.

BTW, Within Temptation is the band that I posted the 2 youtube videos for if you're still interested to at least hear them (which I gather you're probably not!).

I think you're right. They've done a bad job casting the boys, and that has a lot to do with the Idol format (rewarding the big voices ahead of any other talent).

Sanjaya is a prodigy of sorts. The problem with him is that he has no style, no real personality and has never been taught to perform. If everyone just sat in a room, received the same unfamiliar sheet music, had an hour to learn it and then record it (no video), Sanjaya could do very well.

...

Going back to Melinda. Ringer is a good description. I don't know how someone learns those subtleties that separate great singer from great performer without a producer noticing.

Maybe Idol refrained from casting these people in the past out of fear. There are stories of singers who blow the roof off the initial audition, but don't even get in to see the producers, let alone Simon. The fear being America just won't get it, and the show will quickly lose credibility.

The trick of Idol is getting singers good enough that a handful will stand out together on the level of a Daughtry or an Underwood, and the judges can lead the public in the right direction to that handful - and the final selection is something everyone can get behind.

Casting Melinda was a stretch of hubris. They are placing a lot of faith in the public. If she goes out fourth or fifth, the show becomes a joke (unless somehow she forgets everything she can do and is hopeless in theme weeks).

...

DialIdol is an evolving program. Some guy with a decent knowledge of statistics attempting to measure busy signals over a range of time spanning two open voting periods. Busy signals in the first few minutes are different from busy signals at the end. He has to factor in when each call was placed, as well as the fact that the demographics of people using his software are very different from the demographics of the viewers themselves.

There are two other problems - one, there's no easy way to tell a successful vote from an "all circuits are busy" error message. It only measures busy signals and counts everything else. And two, there's some indication that Idol is trying to make this measurement more difficult, possibly figuring out a way to route some busy signals into a different type of error message.

We'll know more later, when the call volume increases.

Yeah, I brought up the comparison a few pages back between AI (Melinda specifically, and at the time, Brandon, before he showed why he is probably a lifetime backup singer) and Survivor, where it seemed they were going less for the ordinary guy/girl and more towards those inclined to already be in the entertainment field. Melinda might not have had the "fresh off the bus" feel to her a few years back, which would have kept her from being on the show. The reason it's so noticeable now is because she is head and shoulders above everyone else.

And it's likely to continue, since there seems to be a trend toward raising the age limit. One of the Nigel's mentioned possibly raising the limit to 30 for next year.

OK.. too much stuff to read, I faded out about 10 posts in. :)


I discovered a few bands from the Tony Hawk series.


Simple as this: look at her. We've talked about it before, and it's mean as hell, but that's why. And she's very meek.

If it is quality music, of course I am. Where did you post them?

A day late, but not a dollar short. Here's the femm's abridged rankings (they were good enough to get real names):

1. Melinda - She can make just about anything sound polished. She's in it for a while but I agree with the many that doubt she will win. I think it's because of her high bar. At some point she won't meet it and it will give one of the "low bar" men a chance to steal the crown.

2. LaKisha - Nice performance but not much originality. That said, Whitney is a good choice if you can nail it and don't want to add anything.

3. Gina - Her and Blake are the dark horses. They are somewhat unique and always seem to be entertaining. While all the divas will be fighting for the "technically tops" vote each week, she'll keep flying under the radar with her crew of fans.

4. Jordin - Liked her energy but it wasn't as good as other weeks. She's safe though.

5. Sabrina - Not as bubbly as Jordin, not as good as Melinda or Lakisha and will rely on knocking it out of the park each week to survive. She will make the top 12, but probably will be one of the first girls to go.

6. Stephanie - Stuggled in her Bubble performance. Hoping the tournament committee focuses more on her high RPI instead of her quick exit at the conference tourney.

7. Haley - Will almost certainly be gone.

8. Antonella Barba - She's like the 7th or 8th place Big East team. Not really good enough for the tourney but there are enough east coast fans that may end up getting her in as an 11 seed over a more deserving mid-major (ie, Stephanie).

Haley and Barba should go. I'm going to guess (hope) that is the actual result as well.

At or near the top of this page. They got lost in the flurry of posts, I imagine.

Here they are again:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WcwO0VS9FVo

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EFbqmKcXq84

Another pretty good band is After Forever. These European bands may not show up on the standard downloading services, I don't know.

Isn't it 30 now? Melinda is 29, Sundance 28, Brandon 28, Chris Sligh 28...