The American Idolater

Eh, I didn’t think that this was one of the better nights for this season of American Idol. Some good stuff, but overall it just felt too mediocre; you’d think at this point in the competition everyone would be “bringing it dawg” and “giving 110%” and all that.

Melinda Doolittle — Big surprise, Melinda sang great. I’m not sure what Randy and Paula are wanting her to do. I guess by not ever screwing up Melinda doesn’t give them anything to talk about. If she could have sang badly last week, then this week Randy would have been “yeah now this is the Melinda we remember, that was hot!” instead of wanting something more. And instead of Paula wanting her to “throw away her technique.” What was that all about? Seriously, Melinda’s biggest problem is that she’s too consistently great.

Or maybe her performances need an extra spark of something that she’s not bringing, since right now DialIdol says Blake and Jordin are pretty much tied at the top, and Melinda and LaKisha are pretty far behind them. That’s a pretty big drop for Melinda from early in the season, when she seemed to be solidly in the #1 spot every single week.

Blake Lewis — I still like Blake, but these were two of his weaker performances. His falsetto isn’t his strongest area, so spending almost the entire first song singing falsetto didn’t work out that great. And I can’t remember which song it was, but one of them had so much delay on his vocals that it was really distracting and annoying. A better mix would have helped. The second song was better, but neither of them were anywhere close to his best.

Lakisha Jones — Pretty good this week, but according to DialIdol it doesn’t look like it will be enough. Will she ever take a mentor’s advice? This show we got to see Barry Gibb give her two pieces of advice, both of which she ignored. I actually agreed with the judges that the biggest problem with her version of Stayin’ Alive was how much she changed the song around. I liked the idea of it slowed down, and it sounded good when she sang it for Barry, but it just didn’t work with the band. Too slow. And her modified chorus didn’t work for me either. The second song was much better, but nothing great.

Jordin Sparks — I actually liked her second song a lot more than the judges did. I guess I’m just weird. She didn’t blow me away with either song, and I know she can do better, but according to DialIdol she’s winning, so I guess that was good enough to win over all the people that are voting.

So I guess what I’m saying is that the theme of the night was “come on, you can sing better than that.” Anyone agree? Disagree? Anyone still reading at this point? Yeah, that’s what I thought…