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American Idol Top 7 Performances – Season 7, April 15, 2008
By PopSavant | April 15, 2008 | 
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Hello everybody, and welcome to the latest in my series of American Idol live blogs, this time for the top seven performances of April 15, 2008 – Mariah Carey night.
Interesting results after Idol Gives Back last week, with Michael Johns leaving, which very few people expected. A couple of the remaining Idols, namely Syesha and Kristy Lee Cook, have to feel like the hourglass is running out for them. We’ll see what happens next.
8pm, and the show starts. Extra loud ovation for Ryan tonight… hopefully that bodes well for the energy in the room tonight. Randy has a gleam in his eye as Ryan introduces him… I wonder if that means we’ll see the Evil Randy or the Nice Randy tonight; either way we’re sure to get “Pitchy Randy.”
Ryan just announced it’s Mariah Carey night, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to having an Elvis Presley .357 moment with my television. I’ve got nothing to lose, it’s not even high def, and everything to gain… specifically an hour free of Mariah. I know she’s a pop goddess and all, but I’m not a fan. I think she’s got a heck of a voice… which she consistently uses to bludgeon songs (and eardrums) into submission with run after pointless run, never giving full expression to her lyric. And worse, I blame her for convincing a generation of singers the impression that’s how you should sing. And all that ghetto-fab Mimi stuff… doesn’t exist in a much better parallel universe.
David Archuleta says it was “scary” to meet Mariah Carey, because he’s “not worthy to be in her presence.” I think it’s time to remind David that Mariah is just a Long Island girl that dreamed of attending beauty school; not exactly rarefied company there. They show a tender clip of Mariah exercising all that beauty training, biting her thumbnail as she gives David the advice not to be afraid because anything he does will be “real and authentic,” which is the important thing to her. It’s downright mean of her to give the kid that advice… as if you can’t really, authentically suck and go down in roaring flames in front of the American public. He sings When You Believe, giving a squinting performance that makes him look a bit like the love child French Stewart and Charles Bronson never had. Mariah told him he should use a bit of falsetto, and he does… which he breaks short because his voice starts to crack; he then drops down into some low tones he lacks the bottom range to pull off. Randy says “you can sing anything… that was the bomb!” Paula thinks “Mariah was beaming… you made her proud.” Simon said it was “very, very good” and manages to pimp himself by saying he was involved with a #1 version of the song in the U. K. Usually at least one of the judges gets it right, but they’re just smoking crack on this one, it wasn’t very good.
Carly Smithson tells us how weird the week has been without “MJ” – meaning Michael Johns, as opposed to that other MJ, who’s made a career out of being weird himself. Mariah’s advice to Carly is to just “do you” … of course begging the response that if she won’t, I certainly will. Carly will sing I Can’t Live (If Living Is Without You.) Carly starts lower than Mariah ever would, but proves she’s got some range of her own, and her voice has a wonderful full quality that really fills a speaker. Now, it’s no secret that I love me some Carly, but this overall the performance is lackluster, and not helped by overly repetitive lyrics. Randy says that, all in all, it was “pretty good.” Paula liked that she “showed vocal restraint… then swelled… then soared.” Simon doesn’t think Carly pulled it off. Randy’s being a bit charitable… it was more “adequate” than “pretty good.” (And I’m a Carly fan.)
Syesha will sing Vanishing, which Syesha says Mariah encouraged her to “make her own.” It’s paradoxically accompanied by a video clip showing Mariah walking Syesha note-by-note through a run she wants Syesha add to the song. Syesha apparently listened, because her performance is all runs; the approach doesn’t result in a very interesting song, but it does reveal that Syesha has extremely good range and control. Randy says Syesha picked the toughest song of the night, and that she did a good job “all things considered.” Paula said “this week, I think you’ve been extremely smart” – apparently she’s previously been a blithering idiot in Paula’s estimation – and her genius tonight was in picking a relatively unknown song. Paula goes on to say the night was “unbelievably magical for you.” Simon says it was technically very good, but that in contrast to Randy and Paula, he thinks it was a bad decision to choose a song that not many people know. Simon’s right… you don’t want to be compared to Mariah, but you need to give people something to grab hold of, and I’m afraid Syesha didn’t. Still, for what she had to work with, I think she did a good job.
Brooke White missed her sister’s wedding to stay on the Idol set. Tough call, but you’ve got to think long term here. Her sister should have put the wedding on hold. Mariah’s advice to Brooke: “be real.” Are you sensing a bit of a theme with the advice yet? Yeah, me, too. Brooke sings Hero, playing the piano by herself much like we’ve seen before… except she’s wearing shoes this time. It’s unremarkable for a bit, but gets more interesting when she gets to show off during the bridge. All in all, though, it’s not a good night for Brooke… the song is bigger than her voice, which is more suited to mellow 1970s rock. In her defense, she tried to turn the song into just such an animal, but it didn’t really work. Randy, like me, noticed the singer-songwriter vibe, but unlike me he hated the bridge, overall thinking Brooke was “pretty good.” Paula channels Mariah and says “every ounce of you is totally authentic to who you are.” Simon said “I don’t think you had much choice other than to do what you did…” but that it was a bit like “ordering a hamburger and only getting the bun…. I don’t think your voice is strong enough” to pull off that song. This may be the first time on the show Randy has used the word “condiments.” Brooke looks hurt, and almost snaps at a fan who yells out her love, choppily offering an “I love you too” back without making us think she really does. This was by far her weakest night to date.
Kristy Lee Cook sings Forever, which I don’t know. Kristy’s version sounds very 1960’s musically, a bit of country mixed with a bit of Unchained Melody. Kristy is solid throughout, which doesn’t surprise me. Singing hasn’t been her problem, it’s just been selection of material. On a night when everyone is constrained to the same set of songs, that ought to be an advantage for her. Randy says “I’ve gotta tell you, I didn’t think that was amazing, there were a couple of pitchy parts… you hit that note at the end.” Paula says “Kristy Lee Cook, oh my God, I’m like blown away” and thinks she’d have a hit in the “country western world.” She feels the need to add that this proves Mariah can still appeal to “young fans,” which is probably going to send Mariah and her label into fits. Simon says “you weren’t jumping for joy when you heard it was Mariah Carey week, were you” … “it just wasn’t great.”
Ramiele makes an appearance. Yay.
David Cook says he’s going to take a step outside the box this week with Always Be My Baby; we’ll see if he’s back on his game, since he completely sucked last week. His voice manages to be gruff without being truly bluesy, and he mumbles his way for a few verses and then hits a chorus that he doesn’t really sell out. He goes for one big note successfully, but it’s an island, unconnected to the rest of the meandering, pointless performance. Randy says “You’re ready to make an album… I’ve never stood up yet this season, that was the most brilliant performance yet <and he stands up, applauding.>” Paula says that she can here David’s version of the song appearing in a movie soundtrack; if you look up “faint praise” in the dictionary you’ll find a compliment very much like that. Simon says it was like “coming out of karaoke hell into a breath of fresh air” David is crying as Ryan does the post-interview; either he was completely rattled by his first bad week last week, or maybe he didn’t think he did well this week either and is overwhelmingly relieved by the judges comments. The sad thing is that I think David could have been onto something here, but the execution was terrible. Maybe he needed more time to work on it.
Jason Castro will close the show with I Don’t Want To Cry. Mariah calls his version “interesting and different,” – possible code for “trainwreck” – and looks forward to seeing if Jason “chose to use any of the little ideas I had.” Jason offers us a contrived, overly-soulful performance that leaves him looking a bit like a constipated John Travolta. He again goes for the acoustic Spanish thing, which is great but which I’m tired of hearing from Jason; he desperately needs a new trick. Still, it’s what he does, so he might as well do it. All that being said, it’s good. Randy says “For me, I didn’t really love it… I felt like I was at a weird beach luau and somebody put on some music in the distance.” Paula says “I’d like to be at that luau, listening all night long.” Simon “is going to have to agree with Paula. It wasn’t the best vocal of the night… [but] it was a cool version.” Simon thinks the guys were better than the girls tonight. Paula makes a point of interjecting “he wants beef!” several times which leaves everyone looking uncomfortable.
And that’s the show. Summary/Results:
Best of the Night: Jason Castro.
Worst of the Night: Brooke White. Who’s in danger? This is the hardest week to predict so far, the night was so weak start to finish any of the Idols could conceivably be on the hot seat. We’re in the business of making predictions, though, so here you go: Bottom three: Brooke, Kristy, Syesha. I’ll go with Kristy to leave, not because she was bad… but ask yourself if you remember her performance.
We’ll see tomorrow night… see you then!
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