That's interesting. I don't really buy into the whole conspiracy theories either, but I think they can make it a bit tougher on some contestants and grease the wheels for some others. Ultimately it's us voting and they can't really control that.
If you are going to make statements that Venke Knutsen is hot then the burden of proof is on you.
FROM THE USA TODAY COACH's CORNER...
ON WHAT EACH CONTESTANT MUST DO TO WIN AND THEIR ULTIMATE PREDICTIONS AS TO WHO WILL TAKE IT ALL.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-05-15-idol-coaches_x.htm
Coaches' Corner -
1. Taylor: It's his contest to lose
Elliot: The fact is that Taylor Hicks is a hunk of burning love machine. The audience loves him, he loves them back and it's a circular lovefest. They forgive Taylor's awkward dancing on Elvis' Jailhouse Rock because Taylor makes people feel alive and great. While he sang the song well, but not spectacularly, his enthusiasm was off the charts, and pushed him to the top two, and rightly so.
You can't discount how an artist makes someone feel; it's a critical part of the success equation! Then, when Taylor sang In the Ghetto, it reminded the audience the man can truly sanctify a song and sing with some serious soul.
Taylor is the guy to beat at this stage of the game, and it might prove impossible because his charisma factor is so huge and potent. If he can inhabit two songs that combine his joy at singing and his soul, he'll be the next American Idol, you'll see.
Martini: I thought Taylor was best at channeling the King from Tupelo on Graceland night, and with his easy smile, loopy dancing and obvious respect for the material, he's back to riding the lead horse in this race.
Once again, Taylor chose one goofy tune and one serious one, and it shows the best of his talent. Even though In the Ghetto always struck me as some weird through-the-looking-glass trip that Elvis was on when he sang this Mac Davis tune, Taylor connected to these '60s lyrics and came across as heartfelt, which was all it took to melt Simon's icy jabs.
Heaven forbid that Simon is the judge who picks Taylor's tune this week; Simon's never been so wrong since he told Kelly Clarkson she "wasn't Idol material." America gets to decide what is or isn't its material, and if they want loopy and fun, they'll get it. It'll be interesting to see what tune Clive Davis, who's had a hand in everyone's career in the music biz from Tony Bennett to Janis Joplin to Bruce Springsteen, picks for Taylor; preferably something from Taylor's roots.
I'm hoping that Taylor's been saving Joe Cocker for dessert, and to top it off, maybe a dollop of Otis Redding. Taylor's in the catbird seat now that his main competition has fallen off the bus, and in order for him to win this competition, he just has to want it more than Elliott or Katharine do.
Sculatti: Where "Love Songs Week" or "Standards Week" may have belonged to some other finalists, Taylor clearly owned "Elvis Week." (In a way, it's fortuitous for him that such a beneficial theme came this late in the eliminations; it enabled him to outshine his competition at a critical point in the process.)
None of the others could have gotten close to Jailhouse Rock because they lack the sensibility; excitable-boy-meets-exciting-rock 'n' roll song was a natural fit. Simon's dismissal of the performance as "karaoke" shows his lack of appreciation for the genre; i.e., the only way he can conceive of someone doing this material is in the modern/ironic mode: as a karaoke move.
In the Ghetto may have been better than Jailhouse. Taylor personalized it, even took what I thought were interesting liberties with the melody in spots, which is pretty daring. He played it straight, eschewing histrionics.
His ace in the hole has always been heart and soul, and he's best when what's called for (by theme and song selection) isn't technical prowess but rather genuinely felt emotion or uninhibited fun. That, together with his naturally affable, unpretentious personality, shows why voters have continued to keep him in the game. Now, he just needs to make sure he doesn't shoot himself in the foot, which may or may not suggest he limit his terpsichorean moves.
Waller: Tommy Mottola had the right idea to elevate the key. Like Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops, Taylor's voice gains character when he's forced to sing at the top of his range. Jailhouse Rock is a difficult song to pull off — an uptempo blues is tough for any singer, owing to harmonic simplicity and (other than the stop-start breaks featured here) lack of opportunity to play with the phrasing — because it's all about attitude. Taylor's take wasn't particularly original (and why would you want to mess with perfection?), but it wasn't embarrassing — albeit lacking in genuine abandon.
In the Ghetto always was — and still is — a hopelessly square bloc of shlock, but it did allow him to showcase his ability to sing like he was Dan Penn cutting demos for a Muscle Shoals session, which is really what he does best — and that's just what he did.
Given this week's Chinese menu — one song of their choice, one song chosen by the judges, and one song from music mogul Clive Davis (honcho of the parent record company to which Idol winners are contractually bound) — versatility or, more accurately, realizing how not to overstay your welcome, is going to come even more into play.
Taylor's going to have to put more emphasis on pure singing as opposed to putting on a show. His distinctive tone gives him a very real edge, as does his ability to communicate a lyric, but he needs to toss in just enough vocal pyrotechnics to keep the audience off-balance. He must continually ask himself, "What would Ray Charles (or Van Morrison) do?" Oh, and dress sharp, tuck in his shirt and lay off the barbeque for a couple of weeks. For his own pick, I'd suggest a driving, rock 'n' soul number — because you know Clive is going to pick some kinda inspirational power ballad.
2. Elliott: Relax and respect the song
Elliot: If you'd been in the Idol studio audience last Tuesday, as I was, you'd have experienced up front and personal the absolute home run Elliott hit, bringing everyone to their feet after both of his songs, cheering wildly. Hands down, no competition, it was Elliott who really delivered what his fans had long been hoping for. And, he did it with both Elvis tunes that he sang.
Elliott was much stronger than Chris or Katharine or Taylor, no contest. Clearly, many Idol fans who disparaged Elliott's talent begrudgingly got on his bandwagon belatedly and dialed those magic numbers in support.
Elliott was passionate, confident, and might I say to his detractors who claimed he has no personality, sexy to boot. Confidence makes guys sexy! And, Elliott is upfront about how he loves his mom! That'll get him the women's vote!
Elliott bought himself a ticket to the finals and was authentically humbled by the audience response to him. (You can't say that about Chris and how he responded to being eliminated!) If Elliott can pick songs that fit him to a T just one more time, get comfortable in them, keep his body relaxed, and his eyes on the prize, it'll be E and Taylor at the end of the day.
Martini: Elliott deserves credit for turning in another couple of solid performances of completely forgettable tunes. The entire show he's chosen songs because of their quirkiness, and he's taken fairly obscure titles and presented them in an earnest heartfelt way. But even though his renditions of If I Can Dream and Trouble showed off his new confidence, I wished I cared more if he could dream trouble.
Maybe it's just harder to emotionally connect to songs that he's not emotionally connected to. That being said, I've noted Elliott is the curveballer in this pitching duel, and now that Chris is no longer crooning, Elliott's got a real shot at going all the way — but he'll have to outduel Taylor and Katharine's chops in order to waltz away with the Idol prize.
With only a handful of tunes left, my advice is to sing showstoppers with a new take on an unforgettable song. Elliot could steal some of Taylor's thunder by singing a Joe Cocker tune like You Are So Beautiful and knocking it out of the park.
Sculatti: Elliott really seemed to come from behind this week, as Katharine had the previous week. Trouble did not, despite its lyric, put him in the right place: He's hard to believe as a macho bad boy (Daughtry wouldn't have been; it's his only move), and he tacked an unnecessary melismatic move onto the ending. He was more convincing on If I Can Dream; even if it's a bathetic song, it has a message, and Elliott read it, though he wobbled in a few places.
Song selection will be critical for Elliott next week, more so than for anyone else, because he lacks the general wow factor — and Taylor's specific fun-guy persona or Kat's radiant sparkle. The right song could tell us something more about him and suggest an as yet undisclosed Elliott narrative, the way listeners read something autobiographical into Frank Sinatra's That's Life or Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy. Clearly the sleeper finalist.
Waller: More schmaltz in his delivery than in my grandma's chicken soup. If I Can Dream is not an easy song to sing — and it's just about impossible to touch Presley's show-closing performance on the famous '68 comeback TV special — but, just as Mottola warned him, Elliot wound up concentrating far too much on hitting all the notes instead of delivering the message.
Riding a big-band arrangement straight from the soundtrack of King Creole, he proved capable of delivering a solid, if rather stiff blues vocal, strongly reminiscent of mid-'60s English soul-shouter Chris Farlowe (whose general yobbish demeanor helped make him a footnote.) But Trouble's badass lyric was too much of a hard sell for Nice Guy Elliott.
If this guy had access to a decent record collection — or Taylor's performing savvy — he'd be dangerous. He's a crooner; never gonna be a mover 'n' groover. Put him in a sleek dark suit and tell him to knock off all the excess vibrato and pointless melisma, respect the melody and just hold the notes. His own pick should be something jazzy, but not finger-snapping, because no way are the judges or Clive going to let him flex those chops with their choices.
3. Katharine: Show some restraint
Elliot: If I could whisper something in Kat's ear it would be the words "restrain yourself, sister!" You've got the whole package naturally, just calm yourself down and sizzle simply instead.
I'll admit it here and now: I am a huge Katharine fan, and American Idol or not, I believe the woman is destined for a significant career in show business. I'd love to see her win, but I don't think it's in the cards based on her incredibly uneven performances both last week and over the course of the last few weeks.
Hound Dog/All Shook Up was just too aerobic; Can't Help Falling in Love should have been a slam dunk, but was over the top instead of understated and elegant. It's been the consistency that's been missing with Kat in recent weeks.
If Katharine can pick the right songs and make them about passion and sensuality rather than histrionics and being a whirling dervish, she just might knock Elliott out of the game, and we've got an unexpected horse race again. Kat needs to temper her performance.
She's got the whole enchilada going for her! The talent, the looks, the grace and gratitude in addition to a fan base that's rabid. I want to hear Katharine's voice and see her singing for a long time to come.
Martini: Katherine's charisma was in short supply during her trip to Graceland.
Just after we got a chance to see Idolmaker Tommy Mottola lecture her about connecting to her material, she went out and ignored his advice, which put her right next to the sunglasses-less Chris. Admitting that she'd flubbed the words, and getting kudos for "hiding it" from the ever-gushing Paula — by the way, anyone notice that Paula begins the shows normally and by the end is gushing, either verbally or with tears? — Katherine didn't help her case by muffing, when she needs to knock each song out of the park.
Combining Hound Dog with All Shook Up was a mistake, if only because it's hard enough to do one Elvis tune and score, let alone remember lyrics and choreography on two. Now she has to climb over either underdog Elliott or greyhound Taylor in order to stay in the hunt, and unless she can really nail something the way she did with Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, she's going to find herself warming up for the Idol tour sooner than she thinks.
This week she'll have a chance to have some fun with Aretha, Janis, or even Whitney, and if she nails them the way she's capable of doing, she's still got a chance to snatch away the crown.
Sculatti: This seemed like Kat's worst week, a noticeable retreat from a relatively solid showing the week before. I'm afraid Simon's appraisal was right-on: She came across as an overeager local auditioning for a spot in some community-theater musical.
Not only did she bungle the lyrics, but the Hound Dog/All Shook Up arrangement was too jazzed up, entirely inappropriate. Can't Help Falling in Love was the wiser choice, as sincere balladry has always been her strength. But even here, she turned a simple declaration of love into a smile-a-thon.
She frequently seems too concerned with pleasing an audience (the subtext of most of her performances seems to be "Gee, I hope you like me!"), which means she often forgoes connecting with the material — and, in fact, giving the audience anything that's genuinely her. I think the pressure will really be on Katharine next week. Unlike Elliott, the key may not be so much song selection as interpretation — instead of mere presentation.
Waller: Good song choice with Hound Dog, because it was originally recorded by a woman (Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton), and Katharine's sassy, hair-tossing, hip-swinging performance — redolent of a young Tanya Tucker or everyone's favorite rockabilly filly, Wanda Jackson — was head-snapping, but then she transitioned into All Shook Up, lost her place, and never really recovered. Presley's recording of the song compresses all that energy into a diamond-like 2 minutes and 15 seconds, so why she felt compelled to "improve" on the concept is a question best-asked of her handlers, who constantly encourage her to go for baroque and inevitably end up leaving her artistically bankrupt. She's always over-reaching, and always making mistakes.
And then she again fell victim to her worst tendencies by taking a tender song (Can't Help Falling in Love) that — delivered with the appropriate restraint — could've melted hearts from Maine to Mexico and turning it into an over-the-top, power ballad filled with so many bum notes I thought she was auditioning for a remake of the Elvis '67 "summer-of-love" vehicle, Clambake.
Ice princess skated by on her looks this week. She simply must stop trying to sing material that's too difficult for her. So keep it simple, keep it intimate, make lots of doe-eyes at the camera — and try to refrain from reflexively smiling inappropriately at the end of every other line.
She should pick either a pristine country ballad, an uptempo soul tune, or even a melodic rocker, because we know Clive's going to serve her up some big, fat, gooey cream puff on a silver platter. And get thee out of those bourgeois Valley Girl outfits and into a little black dress.
Bonus general commentary from Rich Martini
As the dust settles on the news that the powerhouse Chris has unexpectedly gotten off at the last bus stop, it's time to re-evaluate some Idol "no-no's" for the remaining three.
1. Golden Rule: Never wear sunglasses while performing a song. Bo Bice did it, and was voted into the bottom three for the only time. As soon as I saw Chris perform Elvis in Elvis sunglasses, I knew he was toast. Well, my wife said he was toast, and I reluctantly agreed with her.
2. Do what you did to get you here — have fun, show that you're confident and that you want to win, and connect emotionally to the material; don't oversing or overthink your songs.
3. If you have a lucky hat, wear it.
Thankfully there are no more lucky hat wearers on the show; just thought I'd throw that in.
4. Sing every song as if it's the last one you'll sing on this show or it will be. Oh, and note to Ryan; Try not to sound so happy when you're sending someone home. He makes it seem that saying, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" with glee is appropriate. Hence the gob-smacked look on poor Chris' face.
Bonus commentary from Don Waller:
On Elvis night: Far better show than most we've had to endure this year, thanks to (generally) better song choices and (generally) better performances.
As far as Elvis Presley goes, like no one other than the Beatles, he changed the world. That said — and I'm not sayin' 50,000,000 Elvis fans can be wrong — it's undeniable that he was a tremendous talent, who — thanks to the second-worst management in the history of the music business — all but squandered his considerable gifts for virtually his entire career.
And considering Presley's catalog reflects the entire sonic spectrum of American music (blues, country, pop, gospel), there's absolutely no truth to the concept that a female vocalist is somehow operating under a disadvantage in covering Elvis, because it's actually easier for a distaff vocalist to put her own spin on one of his classics.
On Chris's exit: Chris caught a big break by getting to perform Suspicious Minds— certainly Presley's best '60s single. Didn't really give it the blue-eyed soul interpretation it deserves, but it was Chris's best vocal performance to date. But that's not saying much, because — and this is why he was sent home — either Taylor or Elliot would've buried him alive if they'd sung it head-to-head. Expressionless delivery — coupled with wearing sunglasses, which make it difficult to achieve eye contact with the audience — failed to convey the dark clouds of paranoia, jealousy, desperation, etc. that lie at the heart of the lyrics.
A Little Less Conversation is no one's idea of a vocal showpiece. (That's a riff, not a song!) Again, monochromatic facial expression — what did Mottola tell him about practicing emoting the lyric by singing in front of a mirror? — combined with the already minimal melody, did him no favors. Shoulda done a ballad, dude.
He'll be OK. He sings well enough to front any number of second-string rock bands. What he should do, however — once he gets off the obligatory Idol tour — is get his band together and hit the road hard for a year, then take whatever tunes worked best in live performance, put out an album on his own independent label, and build a real career.
On Tommy Mottola: His background as a failed singer — as Ken Barnes has previously noted, he made a couple of lame records under the name T. D. Valentine before becoming a fairly successful manager and a mega-successful record exec — actually served him well, and his advice was surprisingly spot-on. Unfortunately, most of the contestants seemed to let his words go in one ear and out the other — and paid the price for that.
The Coaches' rankings
Rona Elliot: Elliott, Taylor, Katharine
Rich Martini: Taylor, Elliott, Katharine
Gene Sculatti: Taylor, Elliott, Katharine
Don Waller: Taylor, Elliott, Katharine
