I have class on Tuesday nights this semester, which is tragically keeping me from watching American Idol live. The plan has been to tape it, run home immediately after class, watch the tape, and -- if all goes well -- have just enough time to cast my vote.
This time around, I was invited to join some of my classmates for a drink after class, and I decided that perhaps, just perhaps, socializing would be a better use of my time. This is unlikely to be my conclusion should the situation arise again once we're down to the Top 12, but we're still in the preliminary stages after all. The upshot is that I finally saw this one the following day.
On the whole, the singers in this round were pretty good! I had two people vying for first place, who were almost too dissimilar to choose between: Katie, who sang "Orange Colored Sky" (the "wham-bam-alakazam" song), and Matthew, who sang "Walking in Memphis." The latter was a bit rushed, but I figure that was probably due to time constraints; the former was lots of fun, showed personality, and was performed quite well, I thought. I had Diana ("I Got the Music in Me") in third. Worst of show was Jennifer ("Imagine"). And then there's Fantasia. I found her hard to place, but ended up putting her in sixth place. Basically, Fantasia's voice is almost identical to Macy Gray's, and I rank Macy Gray's voice just slightly above the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. (To the extent that I can put aside the fact that I just plain hate her voice, I'd have to grudgingly put her in a dead heat for third place.)
Possibly I should've voted after all, because what ended up happening was that Fantasia and Diana made it through to the next round, with Matthew coming in third. I can only hope that Fantasia gets voted off really quickly, because I'm dreading the prospect of having to listen to her sing for weeks. But I'm not optimistic.
Posted by Shmuel at February 18, 2004 8:50 PMKatie was my favorite of this group, and I'm totally bummed she didn't make it to the next round. I also voted for Matthew, more because he's so nice to look at, though he sings nicely too.
This is my first year watching American Idol, but it looks to me like the judges are telling America that Fantasia is going to be the winner. Kind of annoying; I wish they'd allow the audience to make up their own minds a bit more, but whatever. Fantasia doesn't bother me so much, though -- I kind of like her voice myself.
My favorite of them all is coming up next week -- that Amy girl with the bright red hair got my heart from her very first audition weeks ago. She's so damn cute and sweet, and she sounds good too!
Posted by: Heather Shaw at February 21, 2004 8:58 PM