Replies

Blake goes tomorrow. People can get eliminated just for doing a popular old “chestnut” like Gina did a few weeks ago with “Smile” and Blake did with “Imagine” tonight. Gina’s was beautiful, Blake’s just so-so, with no particular personal stamp put on it, and this clinches my feeling that he just doesn’t get that the real imperative now is to SHOW-OFF and outdo everyone else. On that basis alone, I think he will go tomorrow-—he’s just too cool, though I admit he started very well a few months back, and really looked “different” THe beat-box thing, though very compelling at first, had to be shelved permanently, but it still won’t make any difference: he goes tomorrow.
LaKisha did a fine job with that song, and what I have heard of this Fantasia person I DO NOT LIKE-—I think she is a BAD singer, and LaKisha is WAY better. But the judges seem to want to keep up the Fantasia “legend” they helped create, so they had to dump on KiKi gently again. Still, she stays.
CHRIS, I was pretty sure was through after last week. But he redeemed himself completely with a fine reading of one of my favorite songs of the last decade , Clapton’s “I would rule the world”/. The judges agreed, even Simon didn’t seem to hold a grudge from Chris’s dumbass behavior last week when he lectured him on the great traditions of “the nasal style” of singing.
PHIl: it’s clear the judges want him to stay a little longer. I thought he was good, but not as good as last week. There is something a little monotonous though about his singing: good chops, but little surprise in the delivery, little texture, and really lacking in passion that a listener needs to feel. I am sure PHIL feels the passion, but the listener has to also.
MELINDA-—great as usual, just a wonderful singer who can do anything. She and Jordin will be in the bottom two, and I thought she might win when I heard her early in the show do her number, but waited until the end when Jordin sang, which confirmed my feeling of weeks ago, that all things considered, Jordin will win, probably in a VERY CLOSE RACE.
It’s not that Jordin is a better singer, it’s that she is everyone’s dream of a kid who wants to launch herself into a singing career, and appeals to the audience’s personal feeling that they are helping do just that: at 17, she has shown herself to have more of a future than Melinda: Jordin will not be around in 10 years, competing on this kind of show against another 17 -year- old Jordin, in other words. That’s the best way I can put it. They will both record, Jordin stands a far better chance of still recording and performing 10,20,30 years hence: so I think the public will vote as if they were a record producer, and Jordin will win. SO: tomorrow my first choice to go is Blake, 2nd Phil, 3rd LaKisha, and that is also your bottom three.

StrictTime’s Rankings:

1. Melinda. Great gospel song. Putting it all in God’s hands, not Bono’s or Simon Cowell’s. And what else can you say about her performance skills? Nada.

2. Jordin. It was okay, but she has to learn how to control the crying when she sings. She will falter if she keeps doing that.

3. Phil. Not the best song he could have chosen, but it was a stupid theme and not the worst of the night. He sang well, but I missed the modern look (outfit) from last week.

4. Chris. It was a good, contemporary version of Clapton’s bluesy single. (And for all y’all’s information, Clapton sings the word “change” in three syllables, too.) In my opinion, it was a little too safe, actually.

5. LaKisha. I thought that was a mess. Who on earth chooses a craptacular single to sing at this point in the competition? Poor choice and flat, flat, flat.

6. Blake. Sucky song. Sucky vocal. I can’t help but think this guy wants to sound like Morrissey (bland, soft, effete English dude from the Smiths). I hope he leaves but soon.

Who should go: Blake
Who will go: LaKisha