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Idol Recap 3/25/09

So it's Motown night... early favorites before the show... Danny, Matt, Lil, who all have a ton of soul in their voice. Tonight's format could hurt Allison who already doesn't have much of a following. And it could hurt Megan. Mostly because she's the least talented of the remaining ten. Anyway, on to your live-blogging recap...

So what do the Idolists do with their extra day? Go to Detroit. Fantastic. Talk about a great prize. The luckiest person was probably Scott MacIntyre, who couldn't see the urban blight. Or Sarver who had the flu and didn't have to make the trip. Kwame Kilpatrick - the new Mayor for life (no disrespect to Mayor Marion).

Smokey Robinson is our guest judge tonight. He's going to be vanilla.... we won't hear any Randy Travis-like comments about performers likely to tank.

Oh, and I do have to address my horrifying performance last week not nailing a single member of the bottom three. What can I say... even the best bettors have bad nights.

Matt Giraud (Let's Get It On):
A pitch-perfect performance but he probably should have stayed at the piano, as the performance started off better than it ended. But exactly as I predicted, Matt took advantage of a night that is perfectly geared towards his vocal strengths. Generally speaking it was a hell of a performance that did justice to a classic and that wasn't karaoke, which I suspect we'll see some of tonight.
Verdict - SAFE.

Kris Allen (How Sweet It Is):
Motown meets boy band is what we get. The kid has a good voice and the non-threatening good looks to win it all and get every girl age 9-13 in America to vote for him. Just not impressed at all with what he did with the song, not to take anything away from his singing, which was fine. It was a very safe performance aside from the end when he decided to scream the last note.
Verdict - SAFE.

Scott MacIntyre (You Can't Hurry Love):
Another week, another AWKWARD moment between Ryan and Scott. "Good to see you, Scott. "Good to see you too." I wish I could post my screencap of the look Scott shot Ryan as he said that. Seacrest may rig the results so the pain ends between them. Anyway, on to the performance. I'm mixed on it. I don't think this is a song that a guy should really ever take on. It was good for Scott's standards. It was far, far, far below Kris and Matt. The piano playing was actually very, very impressive (I disagree with Simon). I'm not so sure that Scott has the full vocal range that a contestant will need to win this competition, and I find that many of his performance sound alike at the end. But I do think Scott did enough to survive for another week because evidently he has a big following.
Verdict - SAFE.

Postscript - we get TWO awkward Ryan-Scott moments in one show! "How do you know they're pink?" Nice, Seacrest. Tactful. I guess he's just trying to keep up with our President's "Special Olympics" joke on Leno.

Megan Joy (For Once in my Life):
I couldn't even wait until she finished singing to start reviewing. Ouch. This was really painful to listen to. And to watch. Okay Leona Helmsley, enough with the eye makeup. The background singers were way, way, way more on pitch than the lead singer. Not a good thing. Last week was the flu as an excuse. This week, sorry. Horrifying performance.
Verdict - DANGER

Anoop Desai (Ooohh Baby):
Wow, what a stellar, incredible, sparkling vocal display. At the upper ends of the vocal range, one of the highest degrees of difficulty of any song any Idolist has ever sung. All in all, insanely good vocal control and Anoop's voice is starting to catch up to his personality. I mean, this was incredible tonight. I just hope the fact that it was a little bit of a slow song doesn't hurt him. I'm still not sure he will win it all, but he's really come a long way from the horrifying Michael Jackson week.
Verdict - SAFE

Michael Sarver (Ain't Too Proud to Beg):
What the hell was that at the end of the song? And probably not a good idea to totally disregard Smokey Robinson's advice about the meaning of the song and how to perform it to make it jive with the lyrics behind it. I mean, we just got a decent wedding singer's version of a classic Motown song. It was an upbeat performance but fell far, far, far short from where it needs to be. And Michael falls into his trap of continuing to try to talk and rationalize his poor performance when he gets criticized. Just be quiet and hold up a few fingers to symbolize what number we shouldn't dial.
Verdict - DANGER

Lil Rounds (Heat Wave):
I thought for a second that I had been switched over to the in-house network on Royal Carribean's Sovreign of the Seas. I mean, I was truly disappointed by this performance. Lil has just a great voice but this was just not really her best way to tribute Motown. She tries to sing ev-e-ry sin-gle word of ev-e-ry sin-gle song. It doesn't work. And did anybody else catch Kara shooting her the total stinkeye during her performance? As in "what the hell are you doing??" Bottom line is she's had too good of a total package to be in danger and I'm sure she has a huge voting following.
Verdict - SAFE.

Adam Lambert (The Tracks of My Tears):
If people want to know about a "defining moment" for a contestant on Idol, you just saw one. Think David Cook doing Hello or Always be my Baby. This was positively incredible. There's so much that I'd love to say about how he came out with the Buddy Holly look tonight, but it's just dumb. I mean, this was fantastic. And I think our readers know that I'm not a big Adam fan, to say the least. I'm out of adjectives and superlatives.
Verdict - SAFE.

Danny Gokey (Get Ready):
I mean, just a solid performance by Danny that's going to be more than enough to get him through. He's appealing to a lot of people and even on a not-perfect night he comes through in the upper half of the pack. Dancing with the background singers, some of his riffs, just very corny. But that said, I'd bet just about anything he'll be in the top five. And seriously... if he put on some dreadlock extensions, he's Adam Duritz. Go back, watch your DVR, take a good look. I'm not making this one up.
Verdict - SAFE.

Allison Iraheta (Papa Was a Rolling Stone):
That was a terrific performance. Aside from a few diction problems getting the words to the song across, she just brought funk, soul, and energy to the stage and should definitely get people back to the phones for her this week. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Simon's practical joke - drawing the Guido mustache on Paula was one of the funniest things to ever happen on this show.

PREDICTED BOTTOM THREE:
Megan Corkrey
Michael Sarver
Scott MacIntyre

FINAL THOUGHT:
I think in the end, we'll put the top 5 of this season against the top 5 of any prior season. Once we get through Megan, Scott, and Michael, who clearly don't have the talent to contend, anybody... really, anybody, can win. Normally at this point the top 3 are very, very clear and it's almost preordained who they will be. This year, not at all.

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