Spoilerific results follow!
This week's Ford commercial: Ziggy Marley's "Give a Little Love."
Shakira and Wyclef Jean perform. I guess because they're 21st century artists, or something.
(Interesting choice, though. They're shilling for Verizon, while Idol is sponsored by Cingular.)
Mandisa, Chris, Kellie, Taylor, and Paris are all safe.
Elliott is safe. Lisa is in the bottom three. Ace is in the bottom three.
That leaves Katharine and Bucky... and Katharine is in the bottom three.
Ace is safe.
That leaves Lisa and Katharine.
Lisa's going home.
(Whew!)
I'm not sure of the exact tally yet, but most of us called it this time around.
21st century music, huh? Okay...
Lisa: "Because of You"
See, the problem with taking on a Kelly Clarkson song is that you run the risk of people noticing that you're not Kelly Clarkson, which is not a direct comparison you really want. S'okay.
(And Randy says just that. And so does Paula, essentially. We have a consensus!)
Kellie: "Suds in the Bucket"
Hmm. Is the sound mixing a bit off? She sounds drowned out by the band. Maybe that's why it seems lightweight. But otherwise, s'okay.
Ace: "Drops of Jupiter"
Oh, I get it. There's a secret theme. It's Easy Listening Night! ...s'okay.
Taylor: "Trouble"
"Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble..." ...honestly, Taylor, you shouldn't hand out straight lines like that. But he's not bad. (Which is a higher ranking than "s'okay.")
Mandisa: "Wanna Praise You"
...they can't keep the subtitles straight this week, can they. She's not Taylor.
Anyway, first performance of the week with any real energy. Not flawless, but pretty good.
(Paula? A compliment that implicitly makes light of religion is not likely to be appreciated by a gospel singer. I'm just sayin'.)
Chris: "What If"
(And Ryan unobtrusively clarifies that last week's version of "Walk the Line" was not actually original, just another band's version. I withdraw some of last week's marvelling.)
Ya know, Chris might actually win this thing.
Katharine: "The Voice Within"
Sounds a bit off, especially at the beginning, but I don't know the original. Still better than most tonight, granted.
Bucky: "Real Good Man"
Pleasant!
Paris: "Work It Out"
Finally! A good performance! (I think. I was distracted during this song, but that wasn't her fault.)
Elliott: "I Don't Wanna Be"
Not bad!
I probably would've had trouble finding somebody to vote for, if I didn't have trivia on Tuesday nights. Maybe Chris. Or Paris. Maybe.
Spoilers follow!
Okay, we've had the recap, the Ford music video commercial, and Barry's performance. On to the contestants... a whole bunch of people are safe, leaving Kevin, Lisa, and Bucky in the bottom three. Paula wipes away a tear, and it's on to the commercial break.
Lisa is safe! Bottom two: Kevin and Bucky.
Paula offers some words of encouragement... and Bucky is safe. Kevin goes home.
Huh. He was never gonna win, but I'd expected the Vote for the Worst bloc to carry Kevin further. So, apparently, did everybody else in the pool; nobody predicted he'd leave before 10th place.
Watching the tape now... reactions after the cut.
...oh, good. Best of all worlds. Manilow's coaching the contestants (and he proved two seasons back that he's good at that), but the theme is the '50s in general, giving contestants a wide range of music to choose from.
Mandisa: Nice.
Bucky: Okay!
Paris: Ooh, "Fever" is tough to pull off well. ...as evidenced here, I think. Good performance, but the embellishments seem tacked on, not springing from the core of the song itself, if that makes any sense. Maybe it's just that I am used to the song being done "cool," not "hot."
Chris: "I Walk the Line" transposed into a minor key! Interesting! Best song reworking since Fantasia. (Possibly the only song reworking since Fantasia; I'd have to check.) On the other hand, not so much vocally demanding... on the whole, not bad.
Constantine! Squee!
(Sorry, Pam; why you think he's gross but Ace is hot totally eludes me.)
Katharine: Not bad!
Taylor: S'okay. He's running around and stuff, but the song is still repetitive and boring.
(Bless you, Simon. Totally on target.)
Lisa: Not bad! Vocals a bit thin, but the key changes were flawlessly executed...
Kevin: S'okay. A bit flat.
Elliott: S'okay.
Kellie: Fire her makeup artist. The performance is the best of the night so far, though.
(Oh, come on. Somebody must have explained "minx" to her by now...)
Ace: ...okay, sorry, I have to reiterate. Y'all think this is the hot one of the two?! Please. As for the song, not bad.
Were I watching this live, I'd be voting for Kellie.
And I want Barry to come back and do this every year. Please?
Spoiler alert! This week's results follow.
Ace is in the bottom three, while Kevin is safe for the week.
Paris is safe. Kellie is safe. Taylor is safe. Chris is safe.
Melissa is in the bottom three, while Elliott is safe.
Mandisa is safe. Katharine is safe.
Lisa is in the bottom three, while Bucky is safe.
Ace is safe, making the bottom two Melissa and Lisa.
Lisa is safe. Melissa is the first out of the finals. Oh, well.
...and apparently everybody but Mo and I called it this week. (And we came close, both predicting Lisa would leave, for whatever that's worth.)
[typed while watching last night's tape, fast-forwarding through most of the non-singing bits]
Stevie Wonder week?! Oof. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: weeks devoted to the songs of a single performer or group are Very Bad. Famous performers usually become famous performers due to unique vocal qualities, and their songs aren't going to be suitable for everybody, no matter how good they might be. Have a soul week, a country week, a swing week, a Motown week, even a rap week if you must, but give the singers a range of choices within a broader category!
Ace is up first... and sucks. Very pitchy.
Kellie is boring me. Alas.
Elliott starts out okay, if caberet-ish, then seems to get a bit lost in modulation before making his way to a solid ending.
Mandisa starts off a bit flat, but kicks into high gear once she gets to the higher notes. (See, this is what I mean. Most people don't have Stevie Wonder's range, and it's ridiculous to expect them to.) Better than anybody else so far, but I hope this isn't as good as it's going to get.
Oh, good. Bucky makes an excellent song choice, if a comparatively safe one. I still don't much care for his raspy voice, but this is the first successful performance of the night.
...holy crap, that is Jessica Simpson's hair. Observant fellow, that Simon.
Melissa is barely hanging onto some of those high notes, but manages it. Not an outstanding performance by any means, but a competent one, better than the first four performers.
...she forgot the lyrics? Oof. I'm not familiar enough with the song to have noticed.
Lisa is flat. And not very good. Pity.
Kevin is doing "Part-Time Lover"? Oh, my. [long pause] HA! [long pause] ...the kid is fun, what can I say. If he's the novelty act, at least he's playing it up well. He's totally safe this week.
Katharine is okay on the low parts, and actually pretty good on the high parts. The best of the women so far.
Taylor is taking on one of my favorite songs... putting aside the cognitive dissonance of it being sung by a very white guy, and the unavoidable extreme abridgement, he's doing it pretty darn well. Props.
Paris is okay. Not great, not terrible. Okay. Has the raw ability, but isn't keeping my attention... but then I was admittedly editing another entry at the start of it, having belatedly noticed that this week's result show is at 9:00, not 8:00.
Chris just isn't grabbing me. Not sure why, really, but he's not.
My pool predictions'll be in a comment to the previous entry shortly, although I'm not even sure where to start this time around.
This is the thread for predictions following the Top 12 show. You can leave comments here.
(Note: "here" means on babeltower.org. Do not leave comments on the "idolannex" LiveJournal feed. Thank you.)
Oof. I meant to write this up over the weekend, but never got around to it... welcome to the third annual Shmuel's Soapbox American Idol Annex pool!
The rules are the same as last year's, and go as follows:
1. Ace
2. Bucky
3. Chris
4. Elliott
5. Katharine
6. Kellie
7. Kevin
8. Lisa
9. Mandisa
10. Melissa
11. Paris
12. Taylor
Putting aside the fact that there are better ways of making your predictions than going by alphabetical order, this would mean that if Taylor were to leave the show this week, thus coming in at #12 overall, you would get a point for having predicted that. Similarly, if Paris were to leave the show next week, thus coming in at #11 overall, you would get a point for that. This would similarly apply to the remaining 10 predictions, up to getting a point if Ace turned out to be the American Idol at the end of the season.
Next week, you'd get to do the same thing again, that time ranking the eleven remaining contestants to make eleven bets. And so on until the final week, with the final two predictions. This allows for a mixture of short-term and long-term planning: you can pick up points either way, and you can have a lot of points riding on the results of the final few weeks. In fact, 22 points could be at stake between the Idol and the first runner-up, with 11 weeks of predictions riding on each.
The winners of the first two pools did so in entirely different ways. Heather (2004) picked up a few points here and a few points there, hedging her bets so that just about any outcome toward the end would guarantee her a decent placement. Pam (2005) chose Carrie as the winner in the first week, and stuck with it all season long, leading to a massive payoff when she turned out to be right. (Had Bo won instead, she would have come in dead last. A similar gamble on LaToya led to my downfall the year before.) I take this as a sign that the rules work; I wanted that kind of flexibility, rather than boxing competitors in to one strategy.
Further examples can be found in last year's explanation of the rules, and you might find it helpful to go through the archives and see how it's been done before.
Good luck!
Spoilers ahoy!
On the distaff side, Kinnik came in last. Her datstaff equivalent was... Will?! Aww. I was looking forward to weeks of Brady Bunch references!
Ah, well. Gotta keep on movin'...
Back to the women. It's down to Ayla and Melissa. Hmmph.
Ayla goes home. Can't say I'm totally shocked, but I thought she'd make it further. So did she; never thought I'd see her tear up.
And the last two men on the edge are Bucky and Gedeon. Simon thinks Gedeon is gonna go.
And Simon is right. Naturally, Gedeon is still smiling.
Next week, the finals! Whoo-hoo!
Just finished watching the tape. Had I seen it live, I would have voted for Mandisa and Katharine. (I usually vote for only one person, but I've managed to convince myself that then two contestants are leaving, it's okay to vote for two people. I'm not sure this actually makes sense.) Paris and Kinnik were at the bottom of my rankings, with Lisa not far behind. Now to see what happens...
Pace Randy and Paula, I don't think this was a great week for the boys. They were all competent, but nobody excited me this time around. I'm voting for Kevin, who gets props for successfully managing the song that wiped Clay out, and for Will, because, what the heck, he's Peter Brady. Perhaps not the most lofty of criteria, but it's not as if anybody else gave me a better reason to vote for him.
With any luck, I'll watch the tape of the top 8 women before the results show tomorrow night.
There be spoilers after the jump. Yarrr.
The bottom three girls are Brenna, Heather, and Kinnik.
First out is Brenna. Yay! After viewing the tape, I so wanted her gone.
Heather is out next. Hmmph. Unlike the judges, I quite liked her performance.
The bottom three boys are Sway, David, and Kevin.
David got the lowest number of votes. I'm okay with that.
Simon predicts that Sway will be leaving, because vocals will not be the deciding factor tonight.
Simon is right; Kevin (who seems uncertain how to take Simon's assessment) is safe.
Chris was easily the best of the bunch this week. I voted for him, and also tossed a vote in Peter Brady's direction.
Thank goodness I swallowed my Diet Pepsi just before Kevin made his bid for the ladies in the pre-song video clip, or I would have spewed it all over my computer.
Finally, Ace is Constantine gone wrong.
I haven't actually seen this one yet. In theory, I was on my way to trivia, where I go every Tuesday night. In practice, this was an exception to the rule and I was asleep. Either way, I'm hoping to watch the tape tomorrow evening before seeing the top 10 men when that show is actually aired. Meanwhile, I'm open for comments below.
Oh, and if I haven't mentioned this here before, the pool will be returning for a third year in just under two weeks, at the start of the finals. Those of you who have been in the past one or two know the drill; for everyone else, the rules will be reposted one of these days.