Simon's just sick of this. He has not been himself this season at all.

Simon does seem annoyed with the whole show. He likes about six of them I think, can't stand Paula (I know I can't either), and is just putting in his time I think.

He seems mostly annoyed at Paula. He seems to be really pressing her this year to say what she thinks instead of her stupid ass non-commital comments that she throws out.

Although, when Paula says how nice you look that means you really left a turd on the stage.

Actually, what he's been doing to Paula is busting her for not making sense. He hasn't been downright mean about it, but every time she makes a nonsensical statement, he says he doesn't understand what she means. It goes beyond making fun of her for being nice or non-committal.

What color was that performance?

I agree...Paula and Simon legitimately don't get along. Show would be much better with just Simon and Randy although I don't think Randy's offering that much this year either.

I think they should replace Paula with Jewel. I really enjoyed Jewel's stint last year.

(hubba hubba)

I'm done with this show if we don't get Akon shitting on the stage this year.

Speaking of Paula, I knew there was something she said last night that made absolutely no sense and had me laughing, but I couldn't remember it. Until I saw this recap:

"Amy steps up to the stage. Paula, making no sense at this point, tells Amy, “This is the most amazing platform for you, because now you have millions of people, and it’s your chance now to do whatever you want to do. You got to go paint that door, and that knob, and go for it.” WTF? Did Paula just suggest Amy give BJs? Paula is wack, and it’s awesome!"

Lol! That was the line I couldn't remember.

Yikes.

ROFL. I didn't have that interpertation of it until now.

Anyway, I agree with you that Simon has been on Paula more than ever about her wierd phrases, but I disagree with him disliking her. I think that is mostly their act and that he genuinely likes her.

Then delete it and stop being a pussy looking for attention by whining, complaining and threatening.

David Lee Roth on American Idol!

(Clever use of the Runnin' with the Devil vocal track that recently made its way around the net)

He's 64?? Wow.

is this thread still here

Wiki says 53, fwiw.

I don't consider this a spoiler, so...

This week's theme is 70's; next week's is 80s. Guys performed yesterday and girls today, so there are some guy performance spoilers out there.

I've also read that they really do narrow their song choices down to "about 50" which I read last week somewhere else but didn't want to believe. But after a couple of duplicates last week and reading that same song limit elsewhere, it might be true. Man, that sucks.

A) That sucks
B) That makes it pretty lame how critical they are of song choice. That means if they don't want dupes the were 27 songs to choose from for last week.

It's even worse. I knew how Great American Band did song choices and wondered, since they're from the same production company, whether that translated to AI. And it does - each contestant chooses 3 songs they want to perform, and the show chooses one for them. And guess what happened to Garrett?

"We are allowed to choose three songs from a list," he tells reporters. "Every contestant is for sure to get one of the songs; I didn't get any of my songs, because they had given them out to all the contestants before that, so I just ended up with having to choose from the list again. I didn't get to chose. They threw the song at me and said, 'Sing this one.' I took what I got and I did what I could with it. It is hard to make a ballad song pop out at the beginning. I did the best I could and I am happy with what I did."

I suppose he'd risk being thrown off the show if he did this, but wouldn't it be awesome if, after getting lambasted for song choice, one of these contestants went off on the song selection process and bitched about being forced to choose a crappy song? I guarantee what happened to Jason Yeager is that he opened his big yapper about Moon River and his Grandma, and they forced him to sing that song because of the backstory.

Oh, and not that this has anything to do with the show or there's anything wrong with it, but pics have surfaced of David Hernandez as a dancer at a gay nightclub called Burn.

This is no way directed at you KSyrup - I hate finding this stuff out about Idol. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Don't get me wrong. Keep posting them and I'll keep reading them, but I guess it's more that I hate that this is what it is really about. Just - meh.

It's not surprising at all, though.,

The one thing I could say in defense is that the band has to be able to play the songs in a week's time as well. And they have to learn all 24 songs. (not that that is really a great justification)

Was this posted yet? iTunes accidentally left the popularity of American Idol downloads available, which they said they wouldn't. I'll spoilerize the list.



http://www.votefortheworst.com/20080...opularity_slip

One could make the arguement that if you can't find three songs on a list of 50 that you can sing well you probably aren't the best singer in the pack, or certainly aren't the best contestant. You wonder if there's strategy in the lists, if an obvious front runner would pick a popular song off a list so that they could try to block it from the other contestants, even in place of songs they might do better.

The other thing I wonder, and this piece doesn't really make it clear, is when the choosing happens. I could swear that I've hear idol contestants throughout the years talk about working on more than one song...so maybe the choosing is late in the process. I know for certain that in celeb weeks they sometimes go show the celeb a couple different songs.

Luke Menard was a LOT better this week! Simon obviously didn't want him in the top 24 though.

Um, winner???

Good grief that was solid.

David Archuleta (sp??) I mean.

OK. I have no idea why they love David Archuletta. He did a bigger injustice to Imagine than Buccaneer. :)

I did not know you could make that song so bland and uninspiring.

I don't care how "good" his vocal was, I think he murdered that song.

Um, what??? He absolutely owned that. That was one of the best performances ever on the show. Easily.

I don't know where they hid the guys from last week but hopefully they don't come back...This week was much stronger across the board. I think Archuleta's performance will get the pub and rightfully so but I believe he's got some legit competitors. I was very glad to see Chikeze bounce back he's one of my favorites.

My rankings:
DavidA - on paper I thought this song was going to be too big for him but I really liked what he did with the tempo and he showed off his voice bigtime
David Hernandez - Halfway home, best of night so far
Chikeze - I know your name, it's chikeze!. showed off his voice, went from ruben studdard light to ruben ultra.
michael good leadoff batter, rickey henderson? maybe not. He was rock raines tho
jCook - much better than allright, now or anytime.
JasonC solid performance, no big moments
jYaeger - fair to middlin in my book.
DNoriega - slow start, decent build and finish. CREEPY
RCarrico - good fit song wise. Too bad he sucks.
JMenard tackling freddy mercury is tricky, I think he sounded like he was trying to do an impression

I guess we are cut from the same cloth.

I know/knew no one would agree, but I agree.

Technically an incredible performance.. but I felt like he didn't "get" the song and it showed in how he performed it.

A better night overall, but I'm not seeing the "best talent in AI history", at least not yet. Unlike last week, when I thought several could go home, I think its pretty predictable this week. Luke Menard and Jason Yeager improved over last week, but bad song choice on Luke's part, and poor performance on Jason's part likely doomed them. I would put Jason Castro a step above, but not a big one, and then Robbie Carrico as the other potential two in trouble.

I liked David Archuleta the most and I find the love/hate for him on this board very interesting. Michael Johns would have been fifth for me tonight, which is a disappointment given what I've seen of him so far.

David Archuletta has an amazing voice, amazing control, polished, etc.

That being said - I want to punch him in the face.

I get not liking him, and I can't stand Daniel as well, BUT they do have very good voices. David's performance tonight was outstanding. My wife is a huge John Lennon fan, and when I realized what the song was I figured she'd get angry. She doesn't usually like hearing anyone "messing" with Lennon. By the time the song was done, she had goose-bumps and tears in her eyes. It was amazing. It has been a long time since I immediately wanted to see a performance again on AI, but I immediately replayed that one. Incredible.

We all know how this goes. Some people shine early and fade out, so it is hard to be strong on a prediction this soon...yet, I have a feeling David will be performing that at the finale.

As for the rest of the night...meh. There is just not a lot to like in these guys outside of David. Daniel has the second-best potential voice, Chicky dude did better, David Cook is ok but boring, Dread-lock dude is good but lacks vocal-depth.

In all seriousness I feel like David could run into the problem that Melinda ran into last year - if he just keeps being so good consistently will expectations be skewed and he won't be able to keep up the momentum?

No. He lacks her biggest weakness. He doesn't look like a troll-doll. The teen girls are going to stay in love with him. Even if he doesn't win this, he has the potential to mint money Miley Cyrus style if they "Disney" him up.

No he won't run into the problems Melinda ran into because he isn't as unattractive as Melinda was.

Good points.

Either way I'm sure he has a successful career - and at this point doesn't that matter more than AI victory?

Yes. I think none of them would say it, but I think any one of the contestants would trade a successful selling run over winning the show. Winning doesn't equal success at all.

Exactly. Wouldn't Taylor Hicks rather be Chris Daughtry right now?

Guys, you want to know why some of you were turned off by Archuleta's performance. It's because he's been doing it so long, it's like he's working in Vegas at this point:

Same arrangement, lower octave.

I was very impressed with Chikeze tonight, and I thought the best part about David Cook's performance was how bad it made Robbie Carrico look. The judges couldn't explain it to Carico after he was done, but David Cook said with his performance what couldn't be put into words - you are not a rock singer, dude. not that Cook was awesome or anything, but the difference in their voices and attitudes was so obvious it was embarrassing to RC.

Tonight's column...

http://www.solecismic.com/frontierblog/?p=236

Overall, it was a better night than last week, and the boys are definitely dividing into the cans and the can nots. The only question is whether the voters will pop the Noriega/Castro dictatorship of pretentious mediocrity in time.

Didn't Castro come off as socially awkward/geeky in his piece? That was all kinds of strange to watch. I wasn't expecting that from Jack Johnson Lite. I was really shocked at how bad Noreiga's vocals were tonight. Within 10 seconds I yelled out "Sanjaya, welcome back!"

Jim, totally agree about Cook's comment at the end. Completely ruined the momentum and good feelings he had coming off the performance.

I thought Michael Johns was not good, mainly because he insisted giving Lindsay Buckingham the Eddie Vedder treatment. I'll admit I don't like EV imitations to begin with, but the toneless vibrato really pulled his vocal off key throughout the song.

David Archuleta is more overrated than bottled water

You could see that from Day 1 Castro's been on camera that he is just incredibly shy and doesn't like all the attention. I think that's really going to get votes for him though, talking to my mom tonight she mentioned about Jason "he's so cute". You know, awkward-cute I guess.

Yay - Jim agrees with me on Archuletta! ;)... And I'm totally agree with his top 3, in that order.

Agreed on David Cook. I was yelling at the screen when he started to talk to Simon, "No! Don't do it! Shut up!"

Michael Johns was so early I forgot how much I disliked him.


Thank you!

The National Anthem comparison is spot on.

Archuleta, Cook and Hernandez were the best, Chikezie made the biggest climb back and Yeager is borderline rediculous. Michael Johns set himself up to have a monster show next week if he's smart. He's back in the middle of the pack on expectations by tonight, but he should do very well with any of a handful 80s songs.

Menard is getting hammered, but I liked him a lot more than Carrico, Castro and Yeager. At a minimum, he offers a different sound and took on a very difficult song. It's interesting that the judges constantly criticize people for being "safe", yet they were real nitpiky on Luke's performance. IMO, doing a decent job on a diffcult song is much more impressive than karoke-singing the Doobies or Foreigner somewhat in key. It's like losing in hoops to North Carolina by 3 points compared to beating Canisius by 7. I can't see how the latter is more impressive than the former. I think this might be the easiest week yet for the boys as Yeager and Carrico were miles behind the other guys.

Tonight's spoilers!