Grand Ole Opry Night: "It Left Me Confused... And Kind of Happy."

Grand Ole Opry Night

I love how Idol shoots itself in the foot in it's mission to create viable pop stars by forcing them into ridiculous genres.  Although Grand Ole Opry turns into a de facto country night and not "Songs from established country stars of yesteryear like Hank Williams, Boxcar Willie or Binkly Brothers' Dixie Clodhoppers."  And really only Sarver and Grace sounded the least bit country.  It hurts my head to suffer through Simon and Randy making idiotic comments about "wrong song choice."  These buffoons don't know anything about country music, but yet they're paid untold millions to opine on it.  At one point Simon says: "There are millions and billions of songs you could have chosen."  Oh really?  Name one.  Yeah, exactly.  He couldn't.  

Apparently the Grand Ole Opry is limited to Garth Brooks, Martina McBride and Carrie Underwood.  Oh, and Randy Travis showed up but nobody sang his music.  Randy T. was pleasant and amusing and has a new album coming out, which explains his hour-long participation with Idol.

I was pretty amused by the bad performances tonight.  

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Roughneck Michael Sarver - "Ain't Going Down (Until The Sun Comes Up) by Garth Brooks -- AKA Kara's Theme.

Mealy-mouthed Michael chooses a mile-a-minute song to sing.  I agree with Simon that I didn't understand one word Michael sang.  All of the judges compliment Michael on his "Lot of words to memorize" but I wasn't as impressed.  Michel doesn't sing badly, but he's completely paralyzed and awkward on-stage.  Gokey may have bad moves but Michael has no moves.  So he just exchanges the mic from hand to hand.  

Michael rightly defends himself against Simon's asinine comments, though.  Man, if he keeps talking back he'll become our worst.  Not really.  Simon gets pissy though, because he can't handle anybody correcting him on his stupidities.

GRADE: C  -- I actually downgraded Michael, thinking he started off the show well, but nearly everyone else after out-sang him on his favorite musical genre.  And he's probably going home.

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Allison Irehata -- "Blame It On Your Heart" by Patty Loveless

I'm not going to pretend to know this song.  I thought Allison did a decent job, showing once again that she's a strong performer.  But this performance didn't excite me.  Allison sounded good in parts and disconnected in others.  Kara opines: "You could sing the alphabet."  Actually, you mean phone book, Kara.  Everyone can sing the alphabet, they have a song for it.

My only question is, did a professional actually style Allison's hair and slather on the hooker make-up?  The girl is 16.  Lay off the eye-shadow and curlers, allegedly Professional Stylist Person.

GRADE: C+

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Kris Allen -- "To Make You Feel My Love" by Bob Dylan, but attributed to Garth Brooks.

Kris sits on a stool and sings the song pleasantly, like a less country John Denver.  I agreed with Simon that we actually saw Kris' star power for the first time.  He's cute.  He sings pretty.  He can sing weepy songs.  I smell a winner.  Not an American Idol winner, but somebody that can do well in the competition.

Paula's on the heavy stuff tonight, like Southern Comfort and Horse Tranquilizers, because the poor woman can't. get. a. complete. thought out.  Jeff Conaway on "Celebrity Rehab" is more coherent.  Kara likes Kris' version because it sounded modern... leaving unsaid that "it didn't sound like all that Grand Ole Opry crap."  

GRADE: A

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Lil Rounds -- "Independence Day" by Martina McBride.  AKA Sean "Dillweed" Hannity's theme song.

Lil likes Randy Travis' selection to slow the song down.  Because "I get my licks and riffs in."  Randy complements Lil by saying, "She's got really, really great pipes.  I mean, really great pipes.  And I'm not talkin' about her voice, either."  

I thought Lil needed more licks and riffs, or something because this was pretty bad.  She was flat for the dreary first part of the song, and then when it got dramatic she wasn't really on-point or on-tempo either.  Simon blatantly insults Lil by refusing to say her name properly.  Hmm, the cracks are showing in the Lil Rounds express.  All you conspiracy theorists weigh in on Lil Rounds' fall from grace.

GRADE: FAIL -- I give Lil credit for trying something new, but Idol doesn't ever let you get out of your niche once you're in it.  And Lil's niche is good singing.  So she Fails this week.

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Adam Lambert -- "Ring of Fire" the Turkish Bath-house version.

This was just awesome.  When Adam told Randy Travis he was going with an Indian sitar version of the Johnny Cash standard I thought Travis' head was going to explode.  He wasn't amused.  The whole segment was awkward and unpleasant in the best-worst Idol tradition of awkward celebrity meet and greets.  

Adam's performance was on another world.  It was hysterically funny, what with his high-pitched (in-tune) keening, general suggestiveness and perversion of the classic song.  Kara said: "It left me confused, and kind of happy."  Because she's lustfully attracted to Adam, but can't understand how he doesn't like her... but happy because she feels she'll still bone him.  Simon calls it "trash" and Randy compared the performance to Nine Inch Nails and calls it "contemporary."  This just suggests to me that Randy is a big, fat idiot.  It sounds nothing like Nine Inch Nails, and I don't recall hearing too many NIN songs on the radio these days, dufus.

GRADE: A+ for Awesome.  And also brilliant.

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Blind Scott -- "Wild Angels" by Martina McBride, as sung by a young, blind Michael McDonald.

Kudos to the stylists for giving Blind Scott a rocking leather jacket for such a wussy song.  To his credit Scott defends himself and says he lost several coin flips to get stuck with this song.  Although it was slow, Christian and schmaltzy.  I assumed they were going to just plunk Scott down behind the piano to squawk and play nicely week after week.  But Paula wants Scott to ditch the piano, because she's an idiot.  Simon corrects her, and says he liked the performance.  Because Simon loves syrupy goop songs.  

GRADE: B- == -- Scott does his thing, and I thought he was pretty good.  It's tough going after Adam's awesomeness.  Ryan super-teases us and says: "Tune in next week to see what Scott does (whether or not he plays his piano.)"  That's actually the only reason to watch the Results show, to see if he falls off the stage in the group dance number.    

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Alexis Grace -- "Jolene" by Dolly Parton, the Enya arrangement.

Alexis does a "clean" performance tonight.  Actually I can't really tell when she's being nasty to be honest.  The arrangement was pretty awful, sounding new-agey as Alexis tried to play along and sing "country."  Well, she approximates blues-country, but she sounds pretty good.  Too bad she's going home soon.  I'm not sure who's picking her in the finals.  Now that the Finalists are developing their fan bases I don't know what base is out there for "Not very nasty nasty skank with the body of a 12 year old boy Fan Club."  

GRADE: B-

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Gokey -- "Jesus Takes The Wheel" by Carrie Underwood, of course.  What a pussy.

So Gokey won the lottery to win this suck up to Idol song.  Gokey is wearing a white dentist coat and sings terribly for the slow intro to the song.  He's out of key and just bad.  He gets into his raspiness during the dramatic crowd-pleasing chorus, but the damage was done.  The judges give him a slap on the wrist, but the crowd cheers (because they're coached to do this before the show.)

GRADE: D -- Maybe Gokey is ready for a tumble.  It would be funny to see him in the bottom this week.  Can we dream about him being sent home?  This awful performance warrants it.

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Anoop -- "Always on My Mind" by Elvis, but credited to Willie Nelson.  As sung by David Hasselhoff.  (Just kidding)

Anoop picks the absolute perfect song and does an awesome job.  He displays his nice control, sweet vocals and connection to the song.  See the dude isn't the least bit tongue in cheek.  He really loves this stuff.  If Anoop keeps singing like this I'll love him more, too.

GRADE: A -- Anoop goes from last place to maybe not going home.  I'm not convinced the fickle Idol voting blocks are ready for Anoop-Dawg to go far, but I'd like to hear more songs like this from him.

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Megan Joy Cock-Ring -- "Walkin' After Midnight" by Patsy Cline and numerous others.

What is it about these prehistoric songs that Megan's attracted to them?  She picks the oldest song of the night (1957) and does her awkward Megan dance, while consciously toning it down, which made it even more uncomfortable to watch.  Apparently she had the flu, as she snots all over the place after the song, but she sounded good to me.  Maybe not as hilarious as "Rockin' Robin" but not bad.

Paula and Kara compliment Megan's dress, but only because it's bright purple and makes her bosoms look ginormous.  

GRADE: B- ==-- No VFTW love tonight, but maybe she'll bring it next week.

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Matt Giraud -- "So Small" by Carrie Underwood, of course.

I'm torn.  On one hand Carrie Underwood and her gross Idol-produced songs have become the go to country artist on Idol.  On the other hand we didn't have to hear that goddamned Leann Rimes "How do I live."  So I guess it's a net gain for the viewers.

Matt gets the pimp slot.  Why can't Idol performers put together a solid 90 second performance.  The first part of the song was slow, boring, badly played on piano and generally dull, and then Matt kicks it into gear with the big dramatic chorus (yup sounds like an Idol produced song.)  I wasn't as impressed as the judges.  Kara horndogs: "There's nothing small about you, Matt."  Then there's awkward silence as everyone looks at each other with "how do I follow that up?" faces.  

GRADE: C -- Simon mumbled something about a "hot pisser" and I still have no idea what he was talking about.  

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Country week always amuses me.  Results shows never do, though.

Oh, and check out my blog where I handicap March Madness in my own special way.

http://mysteryclubadventures.blogspot.com/

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