Idol thoughts - top 8

Time for the annual "Make Scott Feel Old" week, also known as "Songs From the Year You Were Born."

1) Danny Gokey: "Stand By Me" - This was a nice vocal performance, but I hated the arrangement and I was pretty bored by the whole thing.

Danny has reached the point in the competition where all he has to do is not screw up, and he will advance. Now, that mindset is not enough to WIN the competition, but it will keep you around. Danny is good on a pretty consistent basis, but he does not have that one big blow-you-away type performance yet, in my opinion, and he needs to pull one of those out if he wants to derail the Adam Lambert train.

The judges are pretty embarrassing in their overly enthusiastic praise of Danny, other than Simon who was dead on as always. Randybot even broke out the dreaded "It's a SINGING COMPETITION" falsehood that always makes me scream at the TV and throw things.

2) Kris Allen: "All She Wants to Do is Dance" - Again with the guitar you can't hear? I don't get it.

I did not like this song choice, or the arrangement. I guess he felt he needed to go up-tempo? He sang it OK, except that there were several of the high notes in the chorus that he did not quite reach and stayed a little under the pitch.

Randy actually got one right here...the band was distracting. Bad song choice, arranged badly, performed OK. Kris may be in trouble.

3) Lil Rounds: "What's Love Got to Do With It" - I think Lil has totally lost the thread mentally at this point. Like I said last week, I think she has become WAY too caught up in "Winning American Idol" and she is just out-thinking herself every week. Or maybe she's just not that good in the first place.

Anyway, this performance hit all of the low points...pitchy, flat, she was off rhythmically (I think because she was over-enunciating her words on the verses). She sounded pretty good on the glory notes, but the rest was just dull and flat.

And the judges are SOOOO done with her, too.

4) Anoop Desai: "True Colors" - Man, I enjoy him so much more when he is doing stuff like this than when he is bouncing around the stage pretending to be hip-hop. THIS is his wheelhouse...soulful ballads. I don't know that I would buy a whole album of this, but I know I would download this song. I thought it was a great choice, sung beautifully, and he seemed really genuine, unlike last week's Hip-Hop Karaoke.

5) Scott MacIntyre: "The Search is Over": COPY/PASTE:
As a singer, he's not that talented...average at best. Great pianist. Picks the most corny, boring, white-bread song available on a weekly basis. Seems like a great guy.

I will add that this, to me, was his worst vocal performance so far. Just painful to listen to at times. I still really like him, and hope for good things for him, but he is totally out of his league here and it's time to go home.

6) Allison Iraheta: "I Can't Make You Love Me" - Anybody else uncomfortable with a 16 year old (SIXTEEN!!!!!) singing about "turn down the bed" and "lay down with me"? Just me? OK then, moving on....

I absolutely love this song, and I thought it was a really good song choice for her. I think she "needed" to do a ballad to keep from being repetitive, and a Bonnie Raitt song is a good choice for her voice and her style. Her voice was awesome as always, and I think she changed the melody up just enough that it didn't sound copycat. Great job.

7) Matt Giraud: "Part Time Lover" - Dude...when are they going to learn that you don't sing songs that have been made famous by the masters?

I mean, if you know that you aren't going to be able to top the original then why try?



That's right...stay away from Chicken Little, if you don't want to be compared to him!

Seriously...this was a great choice for Matt, I thought, and he sang it pretty well, but man...can he sing just ONE note straight without going off into a series of riffs and runs? I think that's a crutch that a lot of people lean on if they don't have a great voice, and Matt falls into that category. His voice is good, and pretty unique, but not great, and he covers up unnecessarily by going off into riffs and runs all the time that would make Mariah blush.

8) Adam Lambert: "Mad World" - Wow, why are Ryan and the judges talking so fast? Anyway, looks like Adam is going to slow it down again, give us another tender performance, and the lighting is...HEY!!!! WHAT THE %$&!#? WHERE'D THEY GO?

Yeah...they went long last night. WAY long. I had my DVR set to tape 3 minutes past, and I still didn't get the last 3-4 minutes of the show. Luckily, I also record Fringe, which comes on right after that...

This was yet another virtually perfect performance, gorgeous song, perfect choice, blah blah blah. Seriously, isn't it a foregone conclusion at this point? I mean, SIMON gave him a standing ovation...I honestly don't remember that EVER happening before the finale.

Only one little nit to pick...I think he decided at the last minute to jump up to that last note (in the taped rehearsal we see when they are flashing the numbers, he ended on a lower note that I thought sounded better), so he had a MINOR little wobble getting up to it. But that was like Cindy Crawford's mole...it was almost necessary to confirm that we were watching a human.

PREDICTIONS:
Who SHOULD be in the bottom 3: Scott, Lil, and...Matt, I guess?
Who WILL be in the bottom 3: Scott, Matt, and Kris

Who SHOULD go home: Scott
Who WILL go home: Scott

Now, once again I am a little spoiled, having seen the DialIdol predictions. They have Kris pretty solidly at the bottom. I'm hoping that's not true, but if it is then I predict that the judges will save him.

Here's why:
- Kris has had a very consistent run on the show, and was (in my opinion) the best of the week last week. This is the first week that he has not been great, and the judges may decide that one bad week is not enough to have him go home.

- They only have two more weeks after this week to use it (can't use it once we hit the top 5). If they were saving it for Adam or Danny, then it's not going to be used...those guys are going nowhere near the bottom until we are well into the top 5. Only other person I can see them saving it for would be Allison, who has been in the bottom 3 a couple of times (inexplicably), which is the only reason I can see for them NOT using it on Kris (if it comes down to that).

Thoughts?