American Idol Last week
Becky went back to the pages of
Maxim, and
Stevie? Nixed. The top 10 were a bit disappointing tonight. The ladies made some bad song choices, and almost every one of them attempted to sing too low for her range.
Katharine combined both mistakes by kicking things off with
Stevie Wonder's "All in Love Is Fair." How many times have I asked you people to please leave Stevie Wonder alone? Katharine was much more impressive last week, so hopefully she'll wow us again. Two people who may not have that chance are
Brenna and
Heather. Heather, there is a reason nobody has performed
Mariah Carey's "Hero" on
American Idol. The woman's voice goes from gutter growl to dog whistle at the speed of light;
nobody can do what Mimi does. Nice gratuitous name-dropping by the way,
Randy Jackson.
I'd love to see him try to tell Mariah she sounded "pitchy." And it was not a promising sign for Brenna when she started "Last Dance" with the verse "When I'm bad, I'm oh so bad." She clearly went to the
Scott Savol charm school. I'm not sure if
Lisa Tucker and
Paris Bennett can win with these judges. Even though they got semislammed for sounding "old," I think if they sang age-appropriate tunes, they'd have the judges telling them to get out of their comfort zones. Plus, Lisa's song
was originally done by a kid. Country songs were all the rage, with
Melissa,
Kinnik and
Mandisa all taking on the genre. Plus
Kellie "aw, shucks"
Underwood oops, I mean
Pickler, sounded very country singing
Bonnie Raitt. How sheltered do you have to be not to know about calamari? Though Kinnik looked cute in the cowboy hat, Mandisa definitely had the best night of all the girls. Overachiever and resident tomboy
Ayla also had a good night, and it was satisfying to see hard work pay off for her. Was anyone else freaked out that the best judge comments came from
Paula Abdul? I guess trading spots with Randy switched on something in her head. But I'm sure she'll be back to, um, normal, for the next show.
Ken McGilvray
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