[silent_jonny]

(((American Idol Ping)))

This is a low-volume list.
Names are pinged only on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, coinciding with the live AI shows.
If there’s an AI related story or thread that you think would be of interest, please post a link or an excerpt here on this thread.
Thanks.
And as always, if you want on or off this ping list, just let me know.

[texasflower]

Hi everyone! Here's an interesting picture I found the other day.....

[mystery-ak]

reporting in...master

[EmilyGeiger]

Hello Mr. jonny! I see you are already picking on my man Bo's song choices....I am deeply saddened. :( He will be cool don't ya know? Thanks for the ping! Will try to be here but must tape show and all. Have fun.

[tiredoflaundry]

Made it! Evening folks!

[maggief]

Here!

[TheMom]

Vonzell is a bit off key tonight.

[Ciexyz]

The judges are getting in little digs at Vonzell, trying to ensure that the competition comes down to Bo and Carrie.

I'm voting for Bo, but I think Vonzie is beating Carrie so far.

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

We've reached the point in the competition where I really, really have a hard time picking a favorite each week. I like all three of the remaining contestants, for various reasons:

1) Carrie has a killer voice, and she seems like such a sweet young lady. But she also has a tendency toward the "robotic" (as Simon loves to say), and I find her just a tad ... ahem ... well, boring. Sorry.

2)Bo has a limited range and his voice, while pleasant, is nothing to write home about. But I must say that anytime he is on stage, he just owns it. It's his, his stage, all his, and that's just all there is to it!

3)Vonzelle also seems like a very sweet young lady, and when she really hits the notes (which I must admit she does not always do), her voice is just terrific. Also, my husband has a crush on her! LOL! I never find her boring, but she does have a tendency toward the insipid, and she seems to want to be liked just a little too much, leading her to be smiley when the song does not call for it. Clive Davis nailed it when he pointed out the inappropriate "hint of a smile" on her first song. I don't see real passion in her singing very often. (I also don't see it much in Carrie's singing.)

I finally decided I should pick my favorites tonight from the songs they chose themselves, rather than the ones foisted upon them. And using that criterion, I had to choose Bo and Vonzelle. Bo made a bold and 99% successful choice with his a capella song. (The 1% I didn't care for was the very, very end of the song, where he seemed to lose his way a bit and wander into an unrelated key.) (Also, I have to say I was very amused by the "mother ship" lighting for his song!) Vonzelle really got into "Chain of Fools" -- I thought it was her most successful song tonight and sounded great. It was not as gutsy as the original, but I thought it was darned good.

By contrast, I was disappointed in Carrie's Air Supply song. It did not suit her persona, but more important, it really did not suit her voice. She was "pushing" with her voice in many places throughout the song, resulting in a powerful but unattractive sound. Reaching for volume and power with your voice can be problematic: you are trying to concentrate the air flow and maximize the resonance in your head and chest to produce a lot of sound (hopefully an attractive sound!), but if you *push* the air too hard, it starts to have a forced quality to the sound. I was really getting a lot of that from her tonight. I was especially disappointed because I thought the beginning of "Crying" sounded just terrific! But by the end of that song, the excitement had dissipated. However, I hoped for good things from her next song ... and didn't get it. (The Shania Twain song was well done, I suppose, but again, I found it boring.)

Boos to the sound engineers tonight!! WHAT was their problem? Levels were all over the place. Very unfair to all the singers.

All that said, I think Vonzelle is gone. I had a great deal of difficulty getting through to Bo's line, but I was able to vote for V multiple times with no sweat. Oh, well.

[kevkrom]

Three songs in 6 days, and two of them chosen for you. Can you deliver three solid performances and show the improvement necessary to be the next American Idol?

At this stage of the competition, it's pretty much all about the nit-picks, so before any of y'all say I'm nit-picking, I am. My scorecard:

1. Bo -- My biggest criticism about Bo all season is that while he's a great "performer", I didn't think he had the vocal chops. Well, at least for tonight, Bo put the lie to that. I thought the first song could be trouble on range... no problem for Bo. The second song, done a capella, was a nice risk, though I will note that without the band for reference, it's harder to tell if he stayed on pitch -- I think there were some pitch/key problems toward the end of the middle third -- he also ran out of steam on the very end. There were some minor technical problems on "Satisfaction" (muffed the opening note with the big entrance, lyrics issue at one point), but I thought he did very well... my only real problem with the performance is that it is impossible not to compare that to the original, and I don't care who you are, you're going to come off a little badly in the comparison.

2. Carrie -- I've had two consistent technical criticisms of Carrie: stage presence and the ability to sing strongly in the lower register without getting muddy or swallowed up by the band. She left some room for improvement on the former, but the latter was a big improvement this week. "Crying" was a little too reserved, but very nicely sung. The middle song had issues with being a little "over-sung", and Carrie fell back into her two-step shuffle in lieu of any real "performance". Finally, the transformation from "Sandra Dee" to "Sandy" was completed for "Man, I Feel Like A Woman" -- better movement, good work in the lower register, could maybe use just a tiny bit more energy. The fact that she did so much better on the songs chosen for her underscores the issues she's had with song selection recently.

3. Vonzelle -- Inconsistency has been her bane all season... when she keeps it in control, she sounds like the second coming of Whitney Houston, when she doesn't, it's more like Sam Houston after a night of binge drinking. Not surprisingly, she was a little inconsistent last night. She had the pitch surrounded, but not quite captured on the first song, and as is her habit, she tried to cover it by over-singing. "Chain Of Fools" was a much, much better performance... she looked good, sounded good, was in control... the Vonzelle I thought could win it all five or six weeks ago. "On The Radio" was an interesting judge's choice -- it let her go out and "perform", but it really didn't let her show off her voice to it's fullest.