Dancing Paul is back!
Paul opened up the show with his brand new suit, a black counterpart to the white rose suit he wore a few weeks ago. The suit was featured in a news item a while back, so I was disappointed that it did not show up last week. I think the suit was begging for a matching sombrero.
Paul’s movie song was not from The Three Amigos — instead, it was Old Time Rock and
Roll from Risky Business. I will say this about Paul’s performance –although it was spazzy in places, it was not as drunkenly aimless as his previous ones. This one appeared to be choreographed, as there was a set path he had to follow, and being able to interact with the sax player kept him from shuffling about as well. So it wasn’t as completely whacked out as, say, his Elton John week performance.
At one point as he danced around the judges’ table, I couldn’t tell if Paul was looking into the audience or caught himself almost falling into the audience.
Banging his tambourine into his chest like he was having a heart attack and was trying to defibrillate himself (while still singing), Paul was much more relaxed without his guitar than he’s ever been.
The singing, on the other hand, wasn’t that great, being merely on par with his past performances. I guess I’m expecting something more emotional and intimate delivered with that wispy, strangled voice of his, but his tendency towards selecting frat party anthems is a disappointing waste of his talents.
Paul made some real stank faces during the song, like he had taken lessons from Casey.
Between the faces and the dancing it was an entertaining enough way to kick off the show, but you’ve got to wonder if he really has the vocal chops needed to stay on the show. After Pia’s elimination, I think that more voters are going to be voting on vocals over performance tonight. And I don’t think Paul holds up one end of that bargain well enough to stay out of the bottom three.
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Paul ended his song with a Michigan J. Frog style high kick. All he needed was a top hat and cane.
Is that Courtney from Survivor on sax?
And one random SAB before we finish up.
Chris Kattan & Paul
Man, how cold blooded are Jimmy Iovine and Will.I.Am? Iovine totally disses Miley Cyrus in front of Lauren, and the two of them go on about “snatching up” Pia’s votes. She handled it pretty diplomatically, but why are the producers showing this? Pia’s grave isn’t even cold and they’re conspiring on how to swing her votes Lauren’s way.
Lauren tackled The Climb, and as the saying goes, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. This is one of those irredeemably shitty songs that isn’t challenging enough for Lauren, and it’s hard to tell if Lauren’s performing this well or not because I’m plugging my ears to not have to hear this song. The song sucks so hard I wonder if Kara DioGuardi wrote it. The only time I ever listened to this song is when Haeley Vaughn butchered it past all recognition last season. That was a special, special moment for me. She was awesome.
To me, Lauren is the best singer left in the competition with one caveat — like a first round 
QB, she has all the tools in the world but doesn’t know how to put it all together yet. I get a sense that Nigel is crafting this season’s Idol like last season’s So You Think You Can Dance. Back then, it was country bumpkin and tweenybopper favorite Kent versus tweenybopper runner up and versatile dancer Lauren for the title of America’s Favorite Dancer. While it looked like Kent had it in the bag throughout the season, he got so much pimping and glossing over faults that a backlash started and Lauren was able to pass Kent for the win. I can see this same scenario playing out between Scotty and Lauren — Lauren will grow and improve as the season goes on while Scotty will stay the course and be consistently overpraised. In the finale, Lauren gets votes from people sick of Scotty and wins it. The only hitch to the scenario is, Lauren the dancer was a mature professional. Lauren the singer is not, and she
may not ever deliver on her potential. Especially when she picks songs like The Climb, a song so easy even Miley Cyrus can do it.
Steven said that Lauren “moved me beyond tears”, said with practically no emotion. I guess it was so beyond tears that it came full circle to apathy.
Lauren loves that zebra print, doesn’t she?
Our resident bug-eyed alien skipped anything from E.T. soundtrack to select The End of
The Road (note that Heartlight isn’t from any movie soundtrack — it was written and performed by Neil Diamond as an homage to the movie, but Spielberg sued him anyway). Randy said that it was “the perfect song” and his “best vocal to date”. Really? What was
different about this performance versus anything else he’s done? They all run into each other — the same overbaked runs, the same melodramatic delivery, and the same face — that’s every Stefano performance in one picture. I don’t know why I even bother writing anything about him — I should just copy and paste from previous blogs.
The End of the Road is a perfect sing off song for the results show, no? Like, they couldn’t have planned it any better.
And speaking of one trick ponies, Scotty decided to ditch Everybody’s Talkin’ from the movie Midnight Cowboy. You know the one — the X rated Best Picture winner about a gay hustler and his scum of the earth friend. Sure, that might have been a factor, but it’s probably more like Scotty chickened out of doing something out of his wheelhouse. Scotty said that he “wanted to get back to (his) country roots this week”. Uh… when did he stray from them? Like ever?
Scotty did Cross My Heart by George Straight from a movie called Pure Country. Come on man, the kid isn’t even trying. Interesting that Randy told him, “if it ain’t broke, don’t even consider fixing it”. Isn’t this
the same guy who kept getting on Pia about the ballads? This may be part of the overpimping backlash I was talking about and the Scotty zombies will finally wake up. Or maybe Randy is just a hypocritical idiot. Randy also said that he was “a huge ginormous fan”. I think he was referring to Scotty, but he could have been talking about deep fried Snickers bars.
Scotty botched a couple of the notes that were a bit out of his range and frankly, I found the performance to be boring. At least he was entertaining working the stage last week. This week, he just sat there like a lump.
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Yes there were a couple of scary faces. And I was a bit put off whenever he made affected guttural noises. But on the whole, Nature Boy was my favorite performance of the night, and probably my favorite performance of the season, and the only performance I would be willing to listen to again. Perhaps Casey’s voice isn’t good enough to give me goosebumps, but he knows how to sing and perform, and this out of left field performance (for Idol anyway) was as cool as anything I can remember being done on Idol.
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Decked out in his Thurston Howell III outfit (which was just missing the hat), Casey took the stage with a white painted bass and old timey microphone to complete the retro jazz feel he brought to the number. As Randy and J. Lo pointed out, between Michael Buble and Nora Jones, contemporary jazz artists can sell records. Unfortunately, Idol voters have typically disliked jazz singers. So we’ll see how this pans out for Casey. Speaking of jazz singers, the “Esperanza” Casey was referring to was Grammy Award winner jazz vocalist/bass player Esperanza Spalding.
After taking a weed whacker to the hair and beard the week after being saved, Casey groomed himself even further this week by trimming back the unruly beard into something like a Spenser Pratt fleshbeard. With the closer groomed look, Casey resembled former Meathead Rob Reiner, who happened to be in the audience tonight.
Holy smokes — after doing a passable job last week, Trainwreck Haley was back in full force this week, stomping around the stage and sticking that arm out and squatting and making what were supposed to be coy, seductive looks that came off so unsexy they made me throw up in my mouth a little. I knew it was going to be bad the moment she launched into the song with an over the shoulder gaze that was about as convincing as a drag queen with a mustache.
Haley is about as alluring as Shawn Johnson on Dancing With the Stars.
Except that Shawn can actually dance. Haley seems to have learned how to dance by watching The Little Kicks episode of Seinfeld one too many times.
And she can’t even wink right. Seriously, what is wrong with her? Was she delivered with foreceps?
As if the desperate attempts at moving sexyily weren’t bad enough, Haley wore the shortest dress I’ve ever seen on Idol. She was one accidentally hiked skirt and deep squat away from a wardrobe malfunction.
The thing is, it was actually a great dress. It kind of looked like a Tiffany lampshade, and it worked well with the boots. The only problem with it was it was so short it was distracting.
Then again, perhaps the plan was to use the dress to distract you from her singing. Haley started off the song by missing most of her notes, and this has got to be the pitchiest performance since the advent of in-ear monitors. She was just not hitting the notes and growling like she was trying to clear her throat too often.
BTW, is it just me or does Haley’s speaking voice sound more and more hoarse each week? She sounds like a two pack a day smoker now.
It’s too bad she didn’t have a lamp base for feet. At least then she wouldn’t move around — to my horror! But if she really wants to stay on, instead of a short dress, may I suggest something a little more likely to attract votes in this years sausagefest?
Oh yeah, she sang Call Me. I mean, does it matter?
Jacob decided that Bridge Over Troubled Water suited him and his beliefs just fine, ie it’s not a song about doing the nasty. Jimmy Iovine picked the song for him and took the time to scold Jacob for his idiotic and self-important comments from last week. Jacob appeared appropriately chastened, but it sounded like they edited out the part where Jacob tried to defend himself, as that would have probably led to his ouster.
There were a couple of notes that got away from Jacob, but one of the qualities I find unpleasant about his voice is that he sounds like he’s singing underwater when he comes from the back of the throat like he does frequently. And I didn’t like the sound of last glory notes — a couple were scooped, and one didn’t quite hit the note.
Wearing a rumpled tan suit, Jacob said that “I’ve needed someone to lay down low for me”. Then he talked about needing to be covered by the Lord, at which point Ryan blurted out, “nationwide coverage”, thus turning Jacob’s ramblings about God into a product placement for AT&T.
Steven used the phrase, “Holy shit diggles” to describe Jacob’s performance. I don’t know what “diggles” refers to, but Jacob does act holy and talks a lot of shit, so maybe diggles was something equally uncomplimentary. But probably not. Steven doesn’t say anything uncomplimentary.
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Walking into the producer session wearing a wife-beater, trucker hat, and sporting the beginnings of a beer belly, I wasn’t sure if I was watching James Durbin or Kevin Federline shaking Jimmy Iovine’s hand. And then he pulled a face. So I knew it was James.
James wanted America to “give metal a chance” and even suggested they make “armbands” to help the cause. I’m thinking he meant wristbands, but I’m not sure because that doesn’t make much sense to me either. But still, armbands make me think of mourning a loved one or a Nazi uniform, so I’m going to completely rule that one out.
Durbin’s choice of heavy metal song was Heavy Metal, from the eponymous movie. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but the song Heavy Metal isn’t actually a “heavy metal” song. Sammy Hagar is hard rock, not metal, and it’s pretty clear the makers of the movie had zero idea what heavy metal was, as the artists on the soundtrack include Devo, Cheap Trick, Donald Fagen, and, believe it or not, Stevie Nicks.
Still, Durbin metalized the Hagar version pretty good, and while it may not have been his best vocals, it was an entertaining and high energy way to close the show. I don’t know if James will be able to leverage that performance for votes — I think he deserves to get support from the same people who voted for Chris Daughtry in season 5 (assuming any of them are still watching), but it’s also quite possible that some viewers who have been avoiding the season may decide to tune in because they heard someone is rocking it out this season.
METAL SPOON!
At one point in the performance, Durbin bent so far backward his head disappeared. At least it didn’t fall off on to the stage.
