Idol Final 11: Like a Visitor Who Just Won't Leave, It's Beatles Night Part 2.

It's like the producers are punishing us for liking their show.

You’d think after Idol dodged a bullet, getting through Beatles week unscathed , that they would move on to a less cherished songbook to destroy, but oh, no. Not Idol. If they can beat something to death then they most suredly will.

And this was definitely a beat something to death week. Mainly I wanted to beat the judges to death for their idiotic over-praise of these thoroughly mediocre to poor performances. I don’t know how Simon, Randy and Paula can live with themselves after all the shameless whoring for “The Best 24 Singers in America.”

Two words to describe this week’s performances: “Awkward” and “uncomfortable.” And pathetic. Okay, three words.

This whole show was awkward and uncomfortable. With strange pauses, odd responses from contestants and weird performance choices. Paula even said the same, and she’s oblivious to everything but shiny lights and catnip.

---------

Since nobody rated better than a C this week I’m just going to give Idol a big fat FAIL and then point out the Musical Crimes these “Greatest Singers in America” committed this evening. Halfway through the show Simon wondered if Beatles Week Part 2 was such a good idea. Even the mouthpiece to the producers admitted this whole thing sucked like Kellie Pickler in a pig’s feet factory. And that goes double from me. Speaking of Pickler, she’s back tomorrow to perform, and to show the Idols how to REALLY stink up the stage.

---------

Amanda Overmyer

Song: “Back in the USSR”

Musical Crime: Singing the Amanda extra-mumbly version, with bacon grease.

Notes: Amanda gives an umotivated performance and was flat for most of the song. Her rusty razors and mush-mouthed delivery was in evidence but there was no thrill as she mumbled her way through a 4 word song. Or rather three words and an abbreviation song.

Randy gave it 7 out of 10. I give Randy 7 out of 10 on the stupidity meter. Simon gets on Amanda for giving us the same thing week after week and how eventually that will become boring. Kind of like 7 years of crappy karaoke singing and two straight weeks of Beatles cover atrocities, huh Simon?

GRADE: C -- Amanda redeems herself though by dismissing Simon’s request for a sensitive ballad from the booze and broken-glass voiced one. “Ballads are boring... I want them to say this chick is fun. And I want to go see that show.” Amen, Amanda. You move to the head of the class for that one.

-----------

Kristie Cook

Song: “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away”

Musical Crime: Singing the slow and ponderous version with extra emphasis on the out of tune glory notes.

Notes: Kristie is begging to get sent home after another musical suck-parade. This time it’s a painful, slow slog through a riotous Beatles sing along song. Who hasn’t sung the “hey’s” along with the chorus? Kristie wanders around aimlessly and blats out approximations of all the notes. If she was any flatter, she'd be singing a completely different song.

GRADE: I can’t give a bigger FAIL. Simon rightly calls it musical wallpaper... but more like mysteriously stained, peeling wallpaper in a 9 bucks an hour motel room. Kristie continues to earn my hatred by innocently declaring: “I’m kind of new to the whole Beatles thing.” No you aren’t. You’ve been singing these songs for two damn weeks. Get a clue. Also, the Idol producers have hired the best collection of session musicians that money can buy. They’ve hired personal stylists and professional vocal coaches. Could you do us all a favor and hire a goddamn choreographer for these people? All of the performances were strange and gawky. Good singers or not they all jerk and stagger around like Paula after a two week quaaludes and Night Train bender.

Seacrest warns us to “dial carefully” and I will, so I don’t accidentally vote for this pathetic hack.

-----------

The Archulater

Song: “The Long and Winding Road.”

Musical Crime: Singing the Clay Aiken version of this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COMsKPeWAsw

--For amusement check out Ringo’s look of stupefaction at the :30 mark, which is my exact reaction to watching David’s performance.

Notes: Somehow a song is never the same after David wipes his grimy vocal cords all over it. This was a weepy elevator version of a typical bit of McCartney-corn. The teeny-bopper girls squeal on cue but I’m not buying it. Archuleta has all the sexual attraction of a Randy Jackson work-out video. Paula apologises again for David sucking.

GRADE: Would be a C but only compared to all the other dreck tonight. Simon calls it a “Moster Closs” of schmaltz-singing. Gee, I wonder who the Producers want to win Idol?

---------

Michael “Damn, I so want to be Jim Morrison that it HURTS” Johns.

Song: “A Day In The Life”

Musical Crime: Johns hits a weird, off-key trill thing on a glory note which was bizarre and painful.

Notes: Why are the Producers making such a big deal about doing Beatles songs? Taylor Hicks did his take on this song two years ago and it blows Michael’s week-ass crap out of the water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwSK8T7S9d0

Johns does his Jim Morrison drunk staggering dance and it’s out of place here. He just doesn’t know what to do with his body.

GRADE: Would be a C if I’m being generous -- Just to piss me off further the Idol flying jib camera goes for a world record spinning around Johns’ head for a full 18 minutes. The highlight of the show comes when Paula defends Johns because "it's hard singing while listening to the monitor ear-pieces in your ears."  Except that show-off Johns wasn't using the ear-pieces.  Whoops, now who looks like an imbecile? Oh, wait.  Never mind.  Just when you think Paula is making a sober point she proves herself wrong.

-----------

Brook White

Song: “Here Comes The Sun”

Musical Crime: Pushing fuzzy cuteness into a whole new realm so that it becomes teeth-grinding, skin-quivering agony.

Notes: Mark this down as the week I started hating Brooke White. Brooke declares this song has the perfect melody, then proceeds to grin and stagger around in a horrible yellow coffee-filter dress and smile through a two, maybe three note song.  How old is this woman? Too old for rainbows and fuzzy bunnies, I’m thinking. There’s adorably vanilla, and then there’s damn woman, get SOME edge. Any edge. Any even slightly un-nerdy amount of hipness would be great.

GRADE: D -- Brooke defuses the judges by agreeing with all of their criticsms in a strange and awkward moment that continues tonight’s theme. Simon harps on song choice, AGAIN, even though he KNOWS that they all got a list of maybe a dozen Beatles songs to choose from and any decisions on who gets dibs on a song is decided by a coin flip. “Song choice” THIS you schmuck.

----------

David “No, I am the Lizard King” Cook

Song: “Day Tripper”

Musical Crime: Use and abuse of about 20 different musical influences, all of them BAD!

Notes: Each week David Cook morphs into Daughtry at an alarming rate. Daughtry took a whole season to evolve into the self-important egomaniac who tattoos his goddamn name on his back jerk that we love to hate. David is getting there in record time. David cites Whitesnake’s version of the song as influence, but the whole thing was a noisy mess. David runs through affectations culled from a variety of sources, such as Prince, Pearl Jam and even rips off the horrible vocorder usage from Peter “Freakin’” Frampton (yeah, I know it was used in the Whitesnake version but come on, you all were THINING Frampton). David says he learned how to use the damn thing only the day before. Then why use it at all? Oh right, because he’s becoming a smug asshole.  Even Simon calls him on it. And if there’s one person that can smell an asshole it’s Simon.

GRADE: D -- Hey, you know know who did a pretty groovy version of this song? The Beatles. Feel free to try it out next time, Comb-over Boy.

------------

Carly Smithson

Song: “Blackbird.”

Musical Crime: For taking a two minute song with two verses and making it feel like it’s an hour long.

Notes: Carly takes her Celine sledgehammer approach to pop singing, and booms this sucker out from moment one. It kind of sounds like Cher doing her musical criminality on the song. But wait, then Carly gets into the wailing refrain straight out of Celine’s textbook of over-singing and ham-fisted emotions.

GRADE: D -- Carly shows off her new tattoo, the number 7 on her ring finger. She explains it’s for season 7 of Idol but I just think she mis-counted her fingers.

----------

It was at this point in the show that Seacrest announced there were still 4 more singers. BIG GROANS in my house. So looooong. So boring. And Amanda already went so I knew nothing exciting was going to happen.

Also, at this point I completely skipped Jason Castro. How could I do that? Oh right.. zzzzz!

----------

Jason Castro

Song: "Michelle"

Musical Crime: Singing an extra dorky version with goofy grinning and junior high level French words. And I don't mean "excuse my French", French, which would've been awesome.

Notes: Jason without his guitar is almost Kevin Covais-like in his awkwardness. Jason sings the song decently, and skates by with his aw-shucks charm. But this was a bad performance. Instead of doing anything with the second verse he just sings it again in a bland, disinterested manner.

GRADE: C -- One of Jason's worst moments on Idol. And that includes his glory note squoink on "Halleluiah."

----------

Syesha Mercado

Song: “Yesterday”

Musical Crime: Taking an all-time classic song, then doing the Whitney over-emoting all over it and strange phrasing which makes me think Syesha can’t count to four. There are four beats in a measure, girl. One-two-three-four, and they fall in the same places EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Notes: Syesha is clearly feeling the heat after last week’s Bottom 3 Appareance so she unleashes her Globes of Splendor, and a dress that’s low-cut to her knees. Syesha tries to make us FEEL this song. She tries so hard to inject random squeaks, trills, high notes and still misses by a mile.

GRADE: C, only because she’s better than all the other girls this week.

---------

Chikezie

Song: “I’ve Just Seen A Face”

Musical Crime: For doing a Hootie and the Blowfish version of the song with a horrible, unnecessary harmonica solo.

Notes: Chikezie must've figured that he had to spice up every song he does to follow up last week’s triumph. This time he does a weird jug band version of a Beatles song. I saw where he was going, but I don’t think he ever got there. I actually liked the slowed down first verse, which showed off Chikezie’s Vandrossian vocals, but as soon as he busted out the harmonica it was over. Awful.

GRADE: D -- Chikezie falls on his face after an excellent showcase last week. Chikezie was trying too hard and it was painful and awkward. Also, calling something “Achy-Breaky Heart” like Simon does is NOT a compliment.

---------

Ramiele

Song: “I Should Have Known Better”

Musical Crime: Doing a weird, mincing walk around the stage, and being out of breath from that minimal exertion.

Notes: Ramiele spends half the tune being off-tempo and the other half out of tune. Moving and singing isn’t really her style. Also, her weird corset thingie makes Ramiele look like she was stuffed into a sausage skin. The Idol dressers must’ve been playing a joke on her, because they hate Asians.

Grade: C -- About par for Ramiele, who seems to be everyone’s BFF in her bio video. Friend-cheating on Danny already, you slut?

---------

In an attempt to salvage the horrific episode, Simon claims that everyone “chose mediocre songs.” These aren’t mediocre songs, dude. Maybe they’re just mediocre singers.

--Chan

Questions, comments -- vftwchan@gmail.com