Final 11: It's Karaoke Time

This is what Idol has fallen to.  A night of Karaoke Klassics sung by the weakest Final 11 yet, while being mentored by a 17 year-old singing Disney automaton.  It's safe to say this night will not go down in the annals of history.

This season is horrible.  There's no getting around it.  The category could be "The Greatest Songs Of All Time" and they'd still manage to find the duds.  Tonight was about horribly over-played songs ruined in all new horrible... and funny ways.  

The one bright spot is that these songs were so obviously bad that the judges had an easy time picking them apart, at one point tearing into sacrificial lamb, VFTW's own Paige Whatshername.  Simon in particular brought his A game tonight, successfully pin-pointing exactly why each performance sucked.  So in honor of Simon, I'm going to bring my A game as well.

Random thoughts, delaying the inevitable re-living of tragic moments in musical history.

-- I enjoyed the Idols' unenthusiastic reception to the mystery guest, Miley Cyrus.  "Oh, hey, it's um, Hannah Montana...  I think.  So um, whoo?"
-- To borrow The Soup's catch-phrase, tonight was a very special episode of "Miley Cyrus, Unexpected Voice of Reason."  She nailed what what was wrong with each of these people, and what exactly they needed to do right.  And she got all this from a five minute rehearsal with each of these people.  This season is like shooting fish in a barrel if you're a vocal judge.
-- When I ask rhetorically, "Why do people watch this show?"  I'm mostly referring to the 20+ million people each and every week who watch this show religiously despite millions of alternatives.  Sure, I understand why people watch the show, but WHY 20 MILLION OF THEM?  Come on people, it's not a good show.  This season in particular.  Put your remotes down and go do some Sweatin' To the Oldies videos or something.  
-- Sure, the main point of Idol is to win the competition.  But a secondary, and equally important function of the show is to go out and put on great performances that sell ITune downloads and establish yourself as a performer that people give a crap about.  Tonight everyone Failed.  Well, maybe not Bowersox.  But we'll get to her later.
-------
To prove these songs are truly Moldy Oldies, I don't even need to mention the performer and you'll know these songs and already be tired of them.  Except for the Fergie song.  So now you'reve been warned.  One of these is a Fergie song.

Lee DeWyze -- "The Letter" or as it's better known, the song that inspired "Vanna Pick Me a Letter" as sung by NOT-Cheech.
Miley's Radical Advice: "Give them some notes they wouldn't expect."
Does Lee Follow Ms. Cyrus' Advice?   Of course not.

Lee sings a note-for-note remake of the oft-covered hit.  I believe Lee was doing the Bob Segar version of the song.  Lee sounds fine, but then he forces his indoor grunge-voice on notes and it becomes unpleasant.  Even though the performance was capable, it was unessential and forgettable.  Lee, remember when you promised to "rock" and then you lied?  But then you promised to REALLY, really rock this week, and you lied again?  Come on, admit it, you're a fake-rocker who really likes to sing pussy ballads.  It's fine.  Daughtry and David Cook make a lot of money doing that crap.  But they at least rocked occasionally on Idol.

After his performance Lee explains "I just tried to be less stiff and nervous."  If merely trying to be less stiff and nervous is your ambition you really are a worthless musical bag of crap.  What happened to the days of Idol yore when people went out and tried to make musical fireworks(and mostly fail.)  Nowadays they're just trying to not screw up ( and mostly failing.)

GRADE: C- == Can we call Lee Faux-try?  Or is that too cute?  

Okay, nobody on Idol ever tried to make musical fireworks.  That was the imaginary Good Idol show of my imagination.
------
Paige Whatshername.  Seriously, I forgot her name and am too tired and lazy to look it up.  Please, don't remind me.  She'll be gone by this time tomorrow anyway because she's singing the Official VFTW Theme song, "Against All Odds" which absolutely guarantees that you're going home.
Miley's Radical Advice: "As long as she watches her pitch she should do great."
Does Paige Follow Ms. Cyrus' Advice?  Nope.  She's going home.

Paige sounds even worse than last week when she had laryngitis.  How is that possible?  This was horrible in many ways and was a truly VFTW-worthy performance.  I can only compare it to the famous, uncomfortable scene in Tin Cup when Costner keeps hitting the balls in the water and it gets more and more painful and hard to watch.  That was PAige's performance but with bad notes replacing bogeys.  And for some reason she can't hold a note to save her life.  

The judge's comments were so hilariously brutal they're worth repeating.
Randy was reduced to babbling incoherently: "Yo, man.  Yo, wow.  That was honestly terrible."
Ellen: "At least you didn't fall down."
Kara: "That's the worst vocal from you."

When the cymbal-crashing monkeys say the performance is bad, you've made a VFTW classic.

GRADE: FAIL -- Sadly for Paige it's nearly impossible to sing this song well on a good day, but she's not even close.  Allegedly this is the Mariah Carey version of the song, but this was like a Mariah after a two week booze and painkillers lollapalooza.  
--------
Tim  Urban -- "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."
Miley's Radical Advice: "Tim's problem has been not having a personality.  Being boring."
Does Tim Follow Ms. Cyrus' Advice?  Yes, but in a monumentally botched attempt.

Tim completely mis-interprets all of the judges' nonsensical criticisms and turned out this Ode to VFTW.  Tim's problem is that he's completely vanilla, so naturally he picks Queen's weakest song, which is a vanilla riff on Elvis songs.  It's deliberately old-fashioned and corny to begin with, and with Tim's nonexistent stage presence, tenuous grasp of "Singing" and general on-stage geekiness, he takes it to a whole new level of Lame.  What does he do wrong?  From the white shoes, to the tenuous "moving on-stage" to the absurd sliding into second base from a complete stand-still move.  To tentatively going into the sea of less than rabid teeny-boppers.  His calculated mincing down stairs was off-tempo.  In one word: AWESOME.

GRADE: FAIL -- Simon called it "Completely and utterly pointless and silly."  Kind of like this entire season, huh, big guy?
Tim responds with, "Up to now I've picked slow songs.  I haven't moved around."  And this performance is why.  VFTW!!!
-----
Aaron Kelly - "That Goddamned Asteroid Song."  
Miley's Radical Advice: None.

Aaron embarrassed admits that, "I've got laryngitis, and tonsillitis... and I'm going through puberty.  Tonight."  He picks the extra boring version of this flaming turd of a song.  He sings it all misty-eyed and serious, and although it was technically well-sung, it was just ludicrous and Idol cheese-tastic.  So in other words, so bad it was funny.

Ellen calls it: "The best song choice of the night."  In Crappy Music-Land maybe.  But in the real world, this was a lame, turgid weepy ballad that could be the most performed number in karaoke bars across the world.

GRADE: D  -- I think Seacrest was joking when he called Aaron "If you want to vote for David Archuleta."  But it's hard to tell because Seacrest is never funny.
------
Crystal Bowersox-- "Me and Bobby McGee"
Miley's Radical Advice: "She's got to push herself a little bit mroe.  She was worried about hitting those big notes."
Does Bowersox Follow Ms. Cyrus' Advice?  Actually, yes.  

Bowersox gives the performance of the night, which would be even more notable if it wasn't the song most likely to be performed by the painfully awkward girl with the husky voice at my local college coffee klatch.  Bowersox also looked the best she has on the show, and was surrounded by sheer, unadulterated mediocrity further highlighting her as the sole stand-out from this season.

GRADE: A -- Bowersox teases us that she has big plans next week.  Simon points out how she even does her own interior decorating with her self-knitted plush rug and her home-made incense.  
------
Muscles Mike -- "When A Man Loves a Woman."
Myley's Radical Advice: "Eye Contact is a big deal."
Does Muscles Mike Follow Ms. Cyrus Advice?  Eh.  Eye contact isn't really his problem.  Ridiculous song choice is.

Muscles Mike needs to stop singing these songs that make me want to vomit.  He dedicates this song to "All Women" and sets his phasers for "Mas Macho Quesedilla."  Mike is trying so hard to be Ruben 2.0, and I can't figure out why?  Sure Ruben won season two (a very weak season) but his career is as memorable as vibrant and memorable as Percy Sledge's second hit.  Yeah, exactly.

Mike gives a flawless but unexceptional performance.  Just to add to his bag o' corniness he's wearing a suede jacket and unbuttoned shirt.  All that he was missing was a nest of chest hair and a handful of zodiac gold chains, because this performance was straight out of 1970s lounge singer-ville.  

GRADE: C+ -- Mike sings the standard Idol ballad.  Slow build up to a treacly chorus and a couple of glory notes with a soupcon of falsetto at the end.  I hate it, but I hope Mike sticks around to continue his Big Ol' Lecher act.  
-----
Andrew Garcia -- "I Heard It Through The Grapevine."
Miley's Radical Advice: None.

Garcia continues his kamikaze dive to the bottom.  He gives a simultaneously over-the-top yet also half-assed performance.  
I will suggest his problem started by singing one of the most karaok-ed song of all time, by one of the all-time great vocalists, and giving us one of the all-time worst renditions of this tired as Kara after Truth Or Dare Night with the City College LaCrosse Team.  

Some more Garcia problems include his literal interpretation of the song "I heard it through the grapevine" and pointing to his ear.  Stalking around the stage.  Making strange hand gestures while wearing a safari jacket and moonwalking.

The judges gave hilarious, dead-on critiques.  
Randy: "It wasn't good, man."  Which means it was putrid.  If he knew what the word "putrid" meant, of course.
Kara: "You don't know what to do up there.  You're really confused."  
Simon: "You sucked the soul out of it and tortured it.  And ruined one of the great pop songs of all time."

GRADE: FAIL -- That was a pretty epic performance.  Simon suggested maybe everybody over-rated his "Straight Up" audition.  Actually I'm on record as calling it mediocre at the time, and in the cold, light of day I should state the obvious, that Paula Abdul songs are not that challenging vocally.
-------

Katie Stevens - "Big Girls Don't Cry" -- This is the Fergie song I warned you about.

Katie gives the typical Idol performance.  It's slow to start, devoid of any emotion.  A bit out of tune and instantly forgettable.

GRADE: D -- Seacrest BFFs her to Miley and Katie declares: "I had fun."  That makes one of us.
-------
Casey James -- "Power Of Love."
Miley Cyrus' Radical Advice: "You've got to push yourself."  And also Casey needs to connect with the audience.
Does Casey Listen to Ms. Cyrus' Advice?  No, not really.  Unless you count standing 20 feet back from the audience and singing a pop-rock song from the Back To The Future Soundtrack, that was instantly dated even back in 1985.

Let's just say that Huey Lewis was in the Godfather of Karaoke movies, Duets, which fits tonight's theme to a tee.  Casey's not bad, but let's say he's too credible singing a county fair-quality song.  
Kara says it's an album-ready performance.  Yes, but unfortunately it's a Huey Lewis album.  

Simon says it's like "watching and listening to an '80s cover band."  And I agree.  Not good.  But cheesy enough to be enjoyable.  It made me think that Casey's probably got some pretty good guitar-rocking original songs, but is clueless in terms of picking songs for this show.  Hint: More country, you idiot.

GRADE: C+ == My favorite Huey Lewis film is where he showed his fake wee-wee in Short Cuts.  Awesome movie, and superb use of a stunt-cock.
-------
Didi Binini (thanks for that one Seacrest.)  "You're No Good."
Miley Cyrus' Radical Advice: None.

Didi sings a decent rendition of the song, albeit a slowed-down cheesy karaoke version with furious faces.  And she was slightly out of tune the whole song.  I think Didi's Rolling Stones cover last week was better, but she's at least doing interesting things vocally.  Maybe she'll give us a good performance or two before she's sent packing.  Probably not.

GRADE: C+ == Simon jokes about how it was a bad idea to screech "you're no good" over and over.  Funny.  Also funny was how Simon had to be reminded by Kara "Who was the girl that went home last week?"  

The other funny moment was when Randy tried to jump in with his train of duds after Simon gave his criticism and the band cut him off Academy Awards Style-- "dweedle, dweedle, Zuh-UH!"  I think that's a joke that could never get old, cutting Randy off mid-joke every week.  Just imagine Randy starts in with, "Yo, Dawg for me-- ""dweedle, dweedle, Zuh-UH!"  That would be another feature of the Awesome Idol Episode in my imagination.
------
Siobhan Magnus -- Superstition

Why did she pick this song, out of the entire pool of "Hit Songs from the last 120 years."  I think an even more pertinent question, though is why the hell she wore what she wore?  It was a torn t-shirt with a multi-colored Sanjaya-esque pony-hawk.  Truly extraordinary.  This girl is so wacky.  It's disconcerting how this beautiful voice comes lilting out of this girl with a horrible haircut and a ridiculous outfit.  They just don't mix.  And her newly patented Siobhan screech at the end of all of her songs is ear-splitting.  She's not hitting a note, she's shrieking.  And it's unpleasant., and she really doesn't have to do it.  

GRADE: D -- Another oddball Siobhan performance that I sadly enjoyed, even as I know it was horrible.   It's like my brain can't accept that something so wrong, could be that entertaining.  Kind of like tonight's episode.
------
The dam finally broke unleashing a torrent of spectacular awfulness.  Tonight's episode was the stupendously bad singing week that we knew was coming.  Yes, it happened.  And now the show needs to find new lows to worm it's way under because this was a historically bad episode.  Hilariously so.

They should probably consider eliminating five or six people tomorrow.  Regardless, I promise not to watch and write about it.  I'd like to thank the Idol Producers for warning us Miley was performing, and so I've planned my TV viewing schedule accordingly.
---Chan