American Idol moved to the big stage with the Top Twelve, and the theme for the week is the Rolling Stones. This looks to be a rough week for many of the contestants.
Michael Lynche
Miss You
I thought this could be a tough choice for Big Mike, but the R&B version of “Miss You” actually works. I don’t love it, and he’s not as good as he’s been the last few weeks, but it’s not the train wreck it could have been.
The Wife says that she’d like to see Michael do something different. His performances are starting to all sound the same.
Yeah, I remember that Danny Gokey sounded unique and interesting at first as well.
Didi Benami
Play With Fire
Real pitchy start on the low notes. The higher parts of the song were better.
Then she forgets the words. She really missed some notes after that. Her confidence was clearly shaken.
The Wife pointed out that the song never went anywhere.
Surprisingly, the judges don’t slam her for forgetting the words. They praised her for quickly pulling it back together. Perhaps they were watching a different performance than I was.
Casey James
It’s All Over Now
Casey turns It’s All Over Now into a very cool southern rock song. Both the Wife and I really liked it, although he managed to distract himself a bit with his guitar playing.
Lacey Brown
Ruby Tuesday
Very pitchy on the first verse. This is our first really bad performance of the night.
The Wife didn’t like the arrangement. It just didn’t work for her.
Andrew Garcia
Give Me Shelter
I really liked the opening of the song, but he was pitchy on the chorus. His voice just wasn’t big enough for this song.
The Wife says that this is not his type of song. He looks and sounds weird singing it.
Katie Stevens
Wild Horses
A little sleepy, but a nice enough vocal. I liked it more when she opened it up on the chorus.
Good, but not great. The Wife said it was better than she thought it would be.
Tim Urban
Under My Thumb
I actually liked the reggae version of Under My Thumb, but the vocal was just not very good. It reminded me of sitting at the all-inclusive resort on my honeymoon drinking fruit drinks.
The Wife was just glad that he finally cut his hair.
Siobhan Magnus
Paint It Black
This was the obvious song choice for Siobhan, but can she do anything with it?
The opening was very Alice-in-Wonderland-by-Tim-Burton, and was very cool. She then jumped into an Adam Lambert mode for the second half of the song.
I really liked it, but the Wife said it wasn’t her favorite performance of Siobhan’s.
Lee Dewyze
Beast of Burden
Lee did a simplified pop-rock version of Beast of Burden. It wasn’t great, but both the Wife and I liked it.
I think Lee still has potential, but he has yet to put it all together.
Paige Miles
Honky Tonk Woman
My first thought was that the song was too big for her, and that the performance was rather karaoke. The Wife thought that this was pretty good for her.
Then we find out that she’s got laryngitis. Ok, that considered, she did really pretty well.
Still, we have no idea what Paige really wants to be as a performer. That’s a problem this far into the competition.
Aaron Kelly
Angie
Interesting song choice. One of my favorite Stones songs.
It was a good performance, but didn’t blow me away. The Wife doesn’t like the way he holds his mic.
Crystal Bowersox
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Once again, she’s solid from the first note. Not really her best performance, but still very good.
I thought Soibhan Magnus was the best of the week, but quite a large margin. Crystal Bowersox and Casey Jones were two and three. The Wife thought Casey’s performance was tops, closely followed by Crystal.
The worst of the week was Lacey Brown, by far. She’s been fairly week since we got to the live performances, so she’s probably going home.
If not Lacey, it’ll be Paige Miles. She’s got the sympathy factor, but she’s also lost the VoteForTheWorst.com backing (which is exclusively on Tim Urban now). And I suppose it’s possible that Andrew Garcia gets sent home, but I don’t think that will happen.
Remember, if you’re downloading from iTunes, there will now be two versions for each performer. One will be a video of the live performance. The other will be audio of a studio recording.
Sometimes the studio version is much better than the live version. Many of LaKisha Jones’ songs were this way.
So, you’ll want to listen to the sample and read the comments before purchasing, I imagine.