"American Idol": Top seven sing twice for glory
(CBS News) This was the point at which it got serious. The "American Idol" contestants had, in their way, been coasting it until Wednesday night.
They'd really only had to sing once a night. Yes, there had been duets. But now they each had to sing two songs. That, these days, is an album. Would that be one too many for some? Or even two too many?
Their first song was to be chosen from the year 2000 until now. The second was to be a soul classic. This was Now and Then.
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Drawing the first straw was Hollie Cavanagh, whom many were surprised to see still in the competition. Oh, but there she was rehearsing an Adele song. In the original auditions, the judges had been driven demented (this is even possible with Steven Tyler) by bad Adele renditions. They were all bad. What was Cavanagh doing?
A friendless Jimmy Iovine noticed that she always seems far more relaxed in rehearsals that she is on stage. Cavanagh thinks too much. This time, she let her hair down. Well, literally at least. Her performance was technically pleasant. But this is such a characteristically Adele song that there is nothing she could possibly add.
Colton Dixon has added a bloody streak to his new blond hair. He wants to show his rocker side. Perhaps the two things were related. He decided to perform a Lady Gaga song. Which might not, to some, have any resemblance to rock at all.
Iovine worried the tempo might be too fast. "When you look in the camera, they vote," he instructed. Dixon, ever the keen student, sang about wanting your love - with an all-girl band, dressed in virginal white. Too often, he seems like a very pretty boy whose fellow boy band members have run off to a strip club and left him at home. This was all palatable. It was a lite version of Gaga in her suit when she tries to look like a chap.
"The key felt low," said Jackson.
"I don't know what I liked more: your outfit, the band or this set on 'Idol,'" offered a typically incisive Tyler. So it wasn't the singing, then.
But what of Elise Testone? To Iovine, "she has a vacation home in the bottom three." She looked a little depressed in rehearsals, as if she knows that she suits this show about as well as custard suits fish. Testone attempted Alicia Keys' "No One." The wind machines blew through her hair. She tried to give the song a little more rasp and soul. It was creditable in its own way. But whom did it move?
Well, Jennifer Lopez, for one. She got her first goosies of the night. Talking of being goosed, Tyler mused: "You sang your little tushy off."
Phillip Phillips decided on Usher's "You've Got It Bad." Iovine loved the practice session. The real thing didn't sound like an Usher song. It was more intimate than the usual rasping Phillips, though he still allowed himself a little maniacal flavor. This was seriously sophisticated and sophisticatedly serious. What on earth was this doing on "Idol"? The judges stood to applaud.
"I feel like a chump up here," said Tyler, any response to which would surely be superfluous. "That was so sexy," purred Jennifer Lopez, who knows from sexy. Jackson offered this astoundingly deep sentence, with no irony: "Listen, you don't need to listen to anybody."
Jessica Sanchez, she who was saved last week by the indulgent judges, also decided on Alicia Keys. This time, it was the highly symbolic "Fallin.'" On 12-inch turquoise heels, Sanchez again was forced to pretend she is a lot older than she is. Largely, it worked. It still feels a little odd to see someone so young contort with so much pretend angst. The audience adored it.
"You have a right to get mad at a song," declared Tyler. He felt that "lost at love" feeling, as if Sanchez knows something about it. "She's just a little baby," insisted Lopez.
Skylar Laine seems 10 years older than Sanchez, even though there's a mere year between them. Hers was the country version of Gaga's "Born This Way." A country fiddle reminded everyone what the genre was here. What's lovely about Laine is that it doesn't matter what she's wearing. (Where was Tommy Hilfiger this week?) It only matters what she's singing. This was real. Even in the Randy Jackson version of that word. Even the fiddle player loved it.
Lopez called it perfect. Tyler called her beautiful. Jackson said: "Yo."
Joshua Ledet, having been in the bottom there, was taking fewer chances than a small town banker. He took Fantasia's "I Believe" and surely was hoping a gospel choir would emerge from the backdrop to carry him along. Within forty seconds, there they were. Ledet does seem a little frightened. But the judges stood with all the unison of the Politburo. Lopez loved his teary eyes and his bulging throat. No, really. She loved his bulging throat.
Breathe now. This was merely half time. Talking of half time, the players of her hometown Liverpool Football Club (that's soccer to you) offered Hollie Cavanagh a video "good luck." What of her soul, though?
She sang "Son of a Preacher Man." This began with more flat notes than a bawdy best man speech at a religious wedding. It didn't get much better. It was as if Cavanagh was trying to get into her house with the neighbor's keys. Mr. Pitchy, Randy Jackson, loved it. Lopez thought she was showing "a new composure."
The second round offered no Iovine preamble. So we were straight into "September." Yes, Colton Dixon was singing Earth, Wind and Fire. What had the tempests wrought? This was an interesting version, one whose melody few could have surely recognized. It was pleasant, but about as soulful as fireplace soot.
Tyler really didn't like it. Neither did Lopez. "I'm not sure that was the perfect performance," she offered.
Elise Testone went all the way. "Let's Get it On" is a song about sex, sex and sex. It has been responsible for more children than any amount of spontaneous impulse or lost thought. But, all too often, Testone can be mistaken for one of those good singers who come on stage in a pub on a Friday night after your third pint of real ale. She can sing, but this was mimicry. At the end, she looked plain scared. Perhaps she's just worried about her dog, who is very sick at home.
"You don't like to show emotion too much," said Lopez. She feels that America simply hasn't connected with Testone at any human level.
The world stopped turning, however, when Jackson declared that this was an Al Green song. The Reverend would surely never sing anything so overtly hip-churning. Testone, sadly, then made things worst by reminding everyone that she sometimes sings in a club.
Phillip Phillips went as close to selling out as he ever has in this competition. "Midnight Hour" is a mere singalong crowd-pleaser. Worse, there he was without his guitar, almost dancing. Would he break his solemn vow and start reaching out to touch the audience's hands? Thankfully, he put his body into reverse, his right arm moving across his torso, as if to protect himself from a pop panderer's impulses.
Tyler called it "brilliantly awkward."
As if to remind all the voters that pretty boys might win, but don't gain success, Kris Allen rose to explain that he would be singing during Thursday's results show. "Who are you?" so many must have mused.
Jessica Sanchez returned with a hairband, purple trousers and a slightly mannered version of "Try a Little Tenderness." Her redemption is that she can really, really sing. Lopez liked the appearance of Sanchez' alter ego, BB Chez. But she worried whether America really connects with either Chez or Sanchez. There is something sad about trying to demand of a 16-year-old that she connect emotionally with songs whose feelings she has very probably little clue about.
Skylar Laine has no such trouble. If they were a country version of Beethoven's Fifth, she would deliver it with twanging verve. She had to settle for "Heard it Through the Grapevine." Even this song, in Laine's hands and mouth, sat very comfortably with her cowboy boots. The truth is that the singers were given a mere 90 seconds for these soul songs. That leaves no room for manufacture. You either have it in the first bar or you don't get a drink at all.
Jackson called her a brand. Lopez said the little girls were into her. "You're like a wild horse that refuses to be tamed," offered Tyler, with consummate vacuousness.
For the fourteenth song of the night, we had Joshua Ledet with "A Change is Gonna Come." The judges stood. "Your voice just climbs inside everybody," said Tyler. Lopez merely worried that America would send him home. Ledet merely offered just how much he admired Lopez's abs.
Would the voters ignore one weak performance and only concentrate on the strong? Would they simply vote their cuddly favorites and ignore how they had sung? One can't expect too much emotionally here. Most of the voters are only 6 years old.
TOP THREE: Skylar Laine, Phillip Phillips, Joshua Ledet
BOTTOM THREE: Elise Testone, Hollie Cavanagh, Colton Dixon
