Huh. I seem to remember when it got down to the final three that the contestants each sang three songs. The show was larger than larger-than-life. The self-promotion was nauseating. The show would leave viewers with the general impression that the planets were going to stop dead in their revolutionary arcs to watch this episode.
This year? They went small. The production level was somewhere in between junior high musical and Waiting for Guffman. And the judges decided to act like SNL charicatures of themselves. Fortunately, the guys singing put on a pretty good show on their own (with just two performances).
Danny Gokey
Danny started with Paula's choice, Terrence Trent D'arby's "Dance, Little Sister," which amounted to little more than a high-energy waste of time. Contrary to Simon, I did like his little "Danny duels the saxophone" shtick in the middle, because it showed off . . . I don't know, Danny's pitch-perfect reedy resemblance to a saxophone? His second song, "You Are So Beautiful," was more of a showcase for Danny's non-woodwind-related talents. Will it be enough? I don't know. Something tells me he'll be in the bottom three.
Kris Allen
Let me take one moment to point out that Kara is officially a total waste of space. It may have taken her all season to come out of her shell, and now I'd be willing to pull my eyelashes out if it would cram her back in it. Back to Kris. He inherited a song that sounded exactly like the type of song he would sing, and the very judges who thought One Republic's "Apologize" sounded like him lambasted him for not singing it differently enough. My opinion? He did a good job. His second song, Kanye's "Heartless," was (and I hate to admit it) frickin' awesome. And here's my theory: will anyone vote for Adam and Danny? I don't see that happening much. I can see people liking Kris and Adam or Kris and Danny . . . but I have a hard time imagining much overlap between the Church of Danny and the Adam Bar.
Adam Lambert
Simon chooses good songs, which is why he can get away with wearing Hanes on national television. Adam was pretty phenomenal vocally on Mary J. Blige and U2's "One." Yeah, you heard me, he stone-cold ripped off Mary J.'s version. Don't get me wrong, he did a great job of ripping off Ms. Blige and Sir Bono (I mean, come on, is it even possible to go further over the top than Bono?), but the judges' ridiculous raves about how he "made it his own" were embarrassing. He gave it his own flair (78 points of it, by my count), but it was still a ripoff. His choice of Aerosmith's "Cryin' (phase one in the Cryin'/Amazing/Crazy self-ripoff trilogy)" was a classic case of becausehecanitis. Why did he drench an already syrupy song in rich Southern fried vocal gravy? Because he can. And it sucked. Let me put it this way: if a gymnast can stick his head up his own keister, does he deserve a gold medal if he does it on the pommel horse? Yeah, it's a talent, but nobody wants to see that. I needed to listen to some Patty Griffin afterward to cleanse my ears.
I'm gonna try predicting this dude's exit just one more time . . .
