If it comes down to performances at all, at least. Blake started the evening well, with a reprise of his unique cover of Bon Jovi that is his "signature performance" for the season. Jordin countered with a surprisingly uptempo and aggressive Christine Agulera song. Blake was clearly the better performer, Jordin the clearly better singer. Round 1 to Blake, narrowly, on the strength of performance.
And here's where it started to fall apart for Blake... his second number was kind of dull and fairly mediocre in terms of the vocal ability; no real pizazz to the performance either. Jordin, fortunately deciding against doing "I Who have Nothing" yet again, goes with Martina McBride's "Broken Wing" and knocks it out of the park. Round 2 as a solid win for Jordin.
Finally, the songwriting competition song... first off, if this is the best entry they got, I'm going to enter next year. Next, what the h*** was Blake thinking? If any song needed the "Blake Lewis treatment", this one did, to give him any kind of chance to do it well. Instead, he sings it "straight", and while I liked the opening, by the time the first chorus rolled around, I was already mentally congratulating Jordin for winning. Jordin didn't do a great job with the song either, it was probably her worst performance of the night, but that was still miles better than Blake, and when she broke down crying at the end of the song, you could tell she knew she just won. Round 3 to Jordin, almost by default.
Overall, Jordin wins 2 out of the 3 rounds, and those 2 wins by much larger margins than the round she lost. Jordin stands out as the clear winner of the night, and should take the title.
So... what happened to Blake? Did he tank it on purpose because he doesn't want to be tied to the winner's contract? Did the producers sabotage him by telling him he couldn't remix the contest song? Was he too busy daydreaming about Chris to pay attention?
Probably :)