American Idol Top 7 Recap

Woo, the top 7.  In my few years watching the show, I can never remember being this UNexcited about an episode.  The days of Carly Smithson are over, my friends.  Yes I’m still bitter.

Enough with the past, let’s move on tonight’s waste of an hour of my life.

The theme tonight is Idols at the Movies, and Quentin Tarantino is there.  Gah, I can’t stand him.  He takes Ryan’s job as saying “This is….. American Idol”, and it’s just obnoxious and horrible.  Ryan introduces the judges (glad to see they aren’t doing those corny walk ins) and we find out from Simon that tonight only two judges will talk after each performance.  Bummer.  But I doubt they can hold that together.

They play a stupid little video about Quentin Tarantino’s career, and I am suddenly less enthused than ever.  Can’t stand the guy and I don’t know why.  Can we just get on with the singing please?  Thanks.  First up is…

Allison Iraheta singing “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith.  How cool, she’s my favorite on Idol left and this is one of my favorite songs ever.  Except the beginning is being weird.  It’s kinda choppy sounding?  I don’t know, but the beginning is weird.  It gets a little better, but something is still off.  Wow, she just NAILED that high note.  That was awesome.  Well the end was great!  She really pulled that all together in the end.  That was great!  Paula thought it was really good and put her up there with Adam Lambert, and Simon said she has a chance of winning and is the only girl that has a chance at anything.  Awesome!  They’re finally giving her the credit she deserves.  Next up is…

Anoop Desai singing “Everything I Do” by Bryan Adams.  As I said last week, these kind of sappy songs that are kind of slow are Anoop’s strong point.  And as much as like his attitude and lack of stage prescence, this is good.  I’m not going to lie.  I think if he’d lighten up and have fun he’d have a much better chance on this show.  But this performance was quite good.  He didn’t really “rough it up” like Quentin suggested, but it was good!  I don’t think the “roughing it up” would have made it better, either.  So good job Anoop!  Randy says he’s rocking the house right now and Kara thought it was one of his best.  Next up is…

Adam Lambert singing “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf.  Oh gosh, this has the potential to be an utter scream fest.  And right out of the gate, Adam is being vocally absurd again.  The punk rocker look is back, too.  I have to give his range credit because I’m pretty sure he just discovered a ninth octave.  That’s ridiculous.  Some parts toward the beginning were shrieky and scratchy weird, but in the end he hit some pretty ridiculous stuff.  Folks, we have our winner right here.  I’ve never heard the audience cheer so much.  Paula thinks he is great and takes all of the risks, blah, blah, blah.  Simon thinks the audience is either going to love it or hate it, though the vocals were “incredible”.  He prefers last week’s performance.  Next up is…

Matt Giraud singing “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” by Bryan Adams.  Matt’s back on the piano tonight, which I think is where he is most comfortable.  The beginning start out pretty good, with the exception of the obligatory wonky run that marks the beginning of all of his performance.  It’s going pretty good for about the first half, but when it starts speeding up toward the latter half he starts to lose it a little.  He has a struggle getting the second part back together, and ultimately it ends with a decent little high note thing.  I think he was just trying a little too hard to infuse soul.  Randy says he lost more parts in there than won, and Kara says he took away some of the core melody when he added all that to it.  I think he may be in trouble.  I think it’s been his time for a while.  He’s just so awkward on stage that it’s almost painful.  Next up is…

Danny Gokey singing “Endless Love” by Lionel Ritchie.  Gah Danny is my least favorite contestant this year.  His personality is just horrible and he’s always so smug.  He’s a decent singer, but it’s not my style.  This week, he’d doing something a little slower.  What is that huge harp doing there?  The song is slowed down and it’s pretty good.  He’s not having to employ that rasp nonsense we usually have displeasure of hearing.  I actually kind of like this performance.  I loved it copared with all of his other crap.  His voice was a little crackly at the end, but he still pulled it together.  Good performance.  Paula thought he pulled it together from the middle to the end, and Simon was disappointed in the weird harp and thought it was boring and a disappointment, though he was a brilliant singer.  Next up is…

Kris Allen singing “Falling Slowly” from the movie Once.  Kris couldn’t decide whether or not to play the guitar, but it looks like he went with no guitar.  The beginning is nice, it’s really slow though.  Towards the middle it gets really good, though.  This is really good.  I think Kris is really relevant and has potential to be really big.  Very good performance.  My second favorite of the night, behind Allison of course.  Randy didn’t think it reallyclicked and thought it was pitchy from note one.  What was he listening to?  Kara thought it was one of his best moments on the show.  Next up is…

Lil Rounds singing Bette Midler’s sappy anthem, “The Rose”.  This is performance is going to sum up everything I don’t like about Lil.  Can she never pick a nonpredictable song?  Something obscure maybe?  That would more than likely send her packing, but I would enjoy it more.  And that’s the goal of the show.  I can’t listen to this and not think of Napolean Dynamite.  Impossible task.  I actually preferred the non-yelling beginning of the song to the second half, which is unlike me because I usually like the bigger notes.  She just really doesn’t have the voice for that.  Carly Smithson, however… Never mind.  I need to move on.  This was actually the song I like most out of Lil’s long list of over done karaoke tunes.  Paula said something I didn’t understand, and Simon though it was all wrong.  He went on to say that she is not the artist they met at her audition and that he is getting frustrated.  Lil had to have her little diva back-talk rant, that totally erased the fact that I didn’t necessarly hate this performance.

Scoreboard- Top 7

• Allison Iraheta- A
• Adam Lambert- A-
• Kris Allen- B+
• Anoop Desai- B
• Danny Gokey- B-
• Lil Rounds- C
• Matt Giraud- C-

That wraps up tonight’s show everyone!  What did you think about tonight’s peformances?  Who was your favorite?  Who do you think will be leaving us tomorrow night? Leave your comments below or e-mail us at theconservativejournal@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading!

Rick

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