Shmuel's Soapbox: American Idol Annex

Top 2: Performances

Three songs apiece: contestant's favorite from past performances, a new one of their choice, and the winning song from the Idol songwriting competition. (Which can't possibly be worse than the original songs they've commissioned in the past. Right?)

Read on for reactions typed as the show goes along...

Blake won the coin toss, but let Jordin decide the order. He goes first.

Blake: You Give Love a Bad Name (rerun)
Totally brilliant.

Quoth Simon: Blake isn't the best singer left, but he is the best performer. Simon is right.

Jordin: Fire (new pick) [Oops. Fighter. Thanks, TeKay!]
Not bad. And supports both aspects of what Simon said before.

Simon calls round one for Blake. And I concur.
To nobody's surprise, when asked by Ryan, Paula says it's a tie.
Randy says Jordin had the better vocals, Blake had the better performance.

Blake: She Will Be Loved (new pick)
Blake is clearly agog at the size of the crowd. It's kinda endearing.
Anyway, he plays this one straight, which is a good idea, all things considered. Nice job. A bit thin, but maybe that'll help the contrast from the first number.

Jordin A Broken Wing (rerun)
Good performance! I'd give this round to Jordin, and I'll bet Simon concurs.

Simon has four words: "Now, that was good."

Blake: This Is My Now (songwriting contest winner)
Blake's got the Kermit-singing-Rainbow-Connection pose going on.
Yeah, this song is up to the usual Idol-original standard. Because the world needed another "A Moment Like This," crossed with "This Is The Night" for good measure.

All three judges concur that this was an awesomely bad singer/song mismatch.

Jordin: This Is My Now (songwriting contest winner)
Can I say once again that the entire concept of shoehorning contestants into performing an arbitrary song is very very bad idea? Because Jordin is actually coming close to making this sound good. It's about as fair to Blake as assigning a freestyle beatbox number would be to Jordin.

Randy calls the whole enchilada for Jordin.
Paula gushes.
Simon says he was wrong in thinking that Jordin wasn't good enough for the finale. It is a singing competition, he notes, and she just wiped the floor with Blake.

Simon says the best individual performance was Blake's first, but that the best overall singer was Jordin.

...oh, please tell me they're not dragging out Paul Anka.

No, it's Daughtry. Whew!

All things considered, Blake probably should've sung his songs in reverse order from what he did; as it stands, he started strong and petered out, while Jordin got better as she went along. She's totally gonna win this.