But first, last week's results show. I took extensive notes but didn't have time to blog about it. So quickly, the highlights:
- Randy said the word "yesteryear" an astounding number of times in the same sentence.
- Ramiele Malubay wore some very high-waisted pants that did her absolutely no favors.
- When Jason Yeager was eliminated, there was a quick reaction shot to the Dawg Pound, which showed several other contestants looking concerned/sympathetic and Danny Noriega checking his manicure. No lie - consult your TiVo for this magic moment.
- David Archuleta, on the other hand, sobbed like Elizabeth Wurtzel when Alexandrea was eliminated. Sources says it's because they've known each other since they competed on Star Search and have become quite close. Either that or he had just realized he had cancer.
- Robbie Carrico is apparently dating Jessi Peralta. Yes, THAT Jessi Peralta.
Anyway, onward and... upward, I guess. In most cases. Excluding Luke Menard's.
Tonight on Idol, the guys will be sharing some of their most embarrassing moments with us viewing at home. Luke Menard tells a story about how his older sister used to wish he was a girl and dress him up like a ballerina. Photos accompany. He sings "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," and it is without a doubt one of the worst vocal performances I have ever heard on this show, especially, and punishingly, when he hits the trademark "hiiiiiiiiigh" at the end of each chorus, missing it by less than a semitone each time. He sings like a newly deaf middle-aged woman.
David Archuleta is up next, and he sings "Another Day in Paradise." Okay, I hate David Archuleta, but hearing his voice immediately after Luke's is like applying refrigerated aloe vera gel to a fresh sunburn. Well played, producers. David's performance is what the judges - if he were a girl - would describe as "pageanty." He begins the song playing the piano, and it's a very smart move because the song is way too old for him, and piano-playing is in this case a very convincing substitute for, you know, emoting. About halfway through, he steps away from the piano and starts in with the pageant hand gestures, and it immediately becomes obvious that he's a 17 year old kid who won Star Search singing a song about Serious Issues. Randy and Paula say some unintelligible things about his "vocal prowness [sic]" and "imperfect perfection," and Simon calls the song out for being too gloomy, which is another way of saying what I just said: he's a pageant kid singing a song written by someone older and more wistful than he can pull off. Meanwhile, David pageants on about why he chose the song and blah blah blah, hold on a second, I've got to go vomit a rainbow.
Gratuitous shot of Denise Richards in the audience. She's clapping, but her face says, "Eff you guys, I sang better than this in the highly underrated Drop Dead Gorgeous, while dancing with Jesus."
Danny Noriega's embarrassing moment involved falling down, in front of his crush. Thank you, Danny, for lifting that little anecdote straight out of Seventeen magazine and not even trying to entertain this stupid idea for an interview segment. He sings "Tainted Love," and I could make the obvious play-on-words joke there, but it's just too easy. Like all of his performances, this is kind of... good in spite of itself. This is what fascinates me about Danny Noriega - for all of his obnoxious tics that say Novelty Contestant, he can't help being better at singing and performing than half the people still on this show. This is a fact that continually surprises everyone. Except Danny, who remains utterly nonplussed that yes, he's great at this. He's like the anti-Archuleta. Needless to say, Paula loves him, calling him both "sensitive" and "spicy," causing Simon to remark, "rather like a chicken wing."
At first I think David Hernandez is going to tell us how embarrassing it was for the whole world to find out, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that as of just last fall he used to be a "fully nude dancer" who gave lap dances to men. But it turns out D-Nandez has something even better up his sleeve: he once did an entire photo shoot unaware that there was a giant booger hanging out of his nose - a booger he goes on to describe as "the size of a walnut, and flaky." Curiously, also an apt description of every guy I dated in college. D-Nandez sings "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," and he either has really bad diction, or he's about to request that we hold his weggy weggy lishes (...I wonder if that costs extra? Yeeah, jokes!). It's probably his worst performance so far, but the judges like it fine and assure him that he'll still be around next week. Which pretty much guarantees that he won't be.
Michael Johns once got the crap beaten out of him while dressed like a kangaroo. He provides context for this, but it's unnecessary. He sings "Don't You Forget About Me," and I guess it's okay. I don't know. It sounds like Pearl Jam covering the song, and you know, with something like that you either like it or you don't, but there's no way to objectively determine whether or not it's good. When Randy mentions that Michael hit some "bum notes," I giggle thinking about David Hernandez.
David Cook and his combover join us next to sing "Hello" by Lionel Richie, and then Simon joins us to talk about how he was at Whole Foods with Lionel Richie just the other day - he bought carrots and Lionel Richie bought cereal. Simon knows this offhand because he's brought his moleskine Lionel Richie Journal along for easy reference. And thank God for that, because otherwise we would all be uncertain about what Lionel Richie was buying at Whole Foods yesterday. So thank you, Simon, for sparing the American psyche such anguish. Ryan tries to make some veiled innuendo about what Simon and Lionel Richie did after buying groceries, and not only does this joke make no sense, but we all know that if Simon had something like that in his moleskine Lionel Richie Journal, we'd all have read it by now, so... what the hell show is this?
Jason Castro was told last week to lose the guitar, and he does so, on exactly the wrong song: Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." You may know this song as Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah," or if you're younger than that, Rufus Wainwright's "Hallelujah," or, heaven forbid, "That Song Imogen Heap Sang When Marissa Cooper Died." Which demonstrates something you need to understand about this song: every artist famous for having recorded it has done a version so utterly distinct and personal that it becomes almost a brand new song, with its own associations in its own time and space. It is so easy to play, so easy to sing, so malleable that once it's recorded, all it IS is whatever personal business the artist has put into it. Jason Castro doesn't get any of this. At all. So he sings a version that sounds like a half-conceived hybrid of the Cohen/Buckley/Wainwright takes, lifting affectations from all of them, and copying Jeff Buckley's ending riff note for note. It is an utter waste of time, because he's not as good as any of them and the song is not musically interesting enough on its own to survive such an uninspired reading. I hate it. I would rather sit through an entire hour of Luke Menard singing the greatest hits of Wham! than watch this performance one more time. F minus.
Chikezie performs pretty much as an afterthought.
My favorite of the night, by far, is Colton Berry, who sings "Oh Yeah" as made famous in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. His performance is simply captivating, and spare - in a single spotlight, accompanied by strings. For the first time tonight, we see a performance in which you can tell the singer really means what he's singing.
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