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American Idol Top 8 – Season 7, April 8, 2008.
By PopSavant | April 8, 2008 | 
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Hi again everyone, and welcome to the top 8 performance show of American Idol season 7, from April 8, 2008. (We have a bit of alliteration going on there: top 8 on April 8th of ‘08. But I shall refrain from further numerology.)
Last week we got rid of the last remaining truly weak contestant when America gave Ramiele the ol’ heave-ho. Who’s next? Popular opinion seems to be Kristy Lee Cook.
I don’t think she’s terrible as a singer, but she has made some truly awful choices when it comes to performing and, particularly arranging, and that can kill you. We’ll have to wait a bit longer than normal for the results… tomorrow is Idol Gives Back, and then we’ll get the results Thursday.
My favorite remaining are David Cook and Carly Smithson, with Brooke White not far behind and Michael Johns coming up fast.
Tonight’s theme is “inspirational songs” … not to be pessimistic out of the gate, but this could suck mightily. Wind Beneath My Wings, anyone?
Michael Johns is up first with Aerosmith’s Dream On. Michael has had two blockbuster nights the last two weeks, and this song sounds like another winner from the first note. His voice is perfect for the rock thing, and he does Steven Tyler justice, even reaching up for the high “dream on” notes near the end. It’s good; not as good as last week or the week before, but good. Randy accuses Michael of pitch problems and says he doesn’t buy Michael as an Aerosmith singer, going on to inquire why he chose Dream On of all possible songs; sorry Randy, I know you’ve worked with every recording artist since Thomas Edison, but this is a great song unlike some of the throwaway pop dreck some of your artists have put out. Paula, on the contrary, says it was a “perfect song” and says that because of the high notes he hit that her chihuahuas might join him on stage; I bet you couldn’t possible have imagined Paula would be into chihuahuas. Simon “thought it was a very good performance… but I don’t like it when you do an impersonation of a rock star,” preferring the blues thing from last week. Simon thought it was a bit “wannabe-ish.”
Syesha Mercado gives us I Believe by Fantasia… is this the first time we’ve had a full-circle Idol performance? After the first verse I realize she’s made a mistake; she’s going to run out of time for this song, it needs more build up before the big pay off. She gets through the beginning without much direction and hits the chorus, where she sounds better that she really ought to because of a kick-ass choir and horn section backing her up. Her voice is good enough, but there’s nothing that will make you remember this performance. Randy says “you took on another tiger this week” but that Fantasia has a special connection “that I didn’t find with you.” Paula thought “hands down, this is one of your most shining nights.” Simon believes that “technically, I believe you sang it very well,” but it was “missing that big, big wave of emotion” that was present when Fantasia sang. Simon points out that she’s now done Fantasia and Whitney, but he wants to know who Syesha is.
Randy seems to have predetermined that he wants to throw some heat tonight; he’s not just being critical, he’s coming down on the Idols.
Jason Castro is up third tonight, with a ukulele version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. The runs aren’t great (”Where dreams come tru-ooo-hooo!”) but the performance is… compelling. I quite can’t decide if it’s good or bad – I’m leaning towards good, in a gimmick-song kind of way, but it is definitely memorable. Randy says “I tell you what, Jason Castro is back in the hunt.” Paula says that “you have the most definitive sound, I love that version of the song, you did a great job.” Simon says “Fantastic”
In other news, Paula looks completely naked when they show the head-and-shoulders shot.
Kristy Lee Cook will sing Anyway, by Martina McBride. I’ve never heard any country artist say anything but nice stuff about Martina and yet I pretty much hate everything I’ve ever heard by her. We’ll see if Kristy can win me over tonight. The answer comes early: it’s a no… the song itself is utter crap. However, Kristy’s performance is quite nice; her voice has just the right tone for country, and she’s easy on the eyes on stage… not unique, but pretty in a blonde-country-singer kind of way. Her problem again is material, why she would choose this song is beyond me. Randy says “there were a couple little pitch moments, but it was good for you.” Paula thought “you outdid yourself, this was your best moment by far.” Simon says “I thought you were very, very good indeed. Tonight… you look like a star tonight Kristy…. Smart. You’re appealing to your audience.”
David Cook takes the stage, and I’m expecting great things… we’ll see. He’ll perform Innocent, by Our Lady Peace, which is quite an ambitious choice for American Idol. The beginning is really rough; he seems out of rhythm, he mumbles through the lyrics, and he ends up screaming a bit. I love David Cook, but this performance was all wrong, and seemed completely self-indulgent. After the last two weeks it’s no wonder he feels like he can’t do anything wrong, but at some point you have to honestly evaluate what you’re about to do in front of a few million people. Or maybe you don’t… the biggest rock stars can carry through on attitude alone, but it had better work, and this didn’t. At all. Nice touch at the end where he flashes a “Give Back” message that he’s written on his hand with a Sharpie. Randy says “Yo baby, I’m a huge fan of yours… but I’m not sure this was one of your strongest weeks, it fell a little short for me.” Paula says “you are it.” Simon “didn’t like this performance very much at all… it was a teensy-weensy bit pompous. It just wasn’t anywhere near as good as the last two weeks.” Paula points out the “give back” on his hand. The show must be running long, the judges cut their comments short on this one.
Carly Smithson will sing Queen’s The Show Must Go On, and for the second performance of the night I’m expecting good things ahead of time. The first one let me down, I hope this one is better. I predict Simon will says something like “of all the Queen songs you could choose…” Carly tells us how she watched Freddie Mercury perform during Live Aid when she was little; I remember that performance very clearly as well, so Carly and I will have something to talk about over martinis one day. Her performance, honestly, is a little slow and plodding; she feels like she’s consciously hitting her marks rather than just flowing through the song. She looks absolutely fantastic, once again; her top looks like something Freddie himself might have worn, but Carly fills it out much better than he ever would have. Her rock yell is the best on the show, but she misses one high note and in general this may be my least favorite Carly performance this year. She doesn’t look happy herself as the song ends. Randy says “a little pitchy in the high notes… it was just okay.” Paula thinks Carly’s voice is “pretty perfect” but “I didn’t feel engaged with you.” Simon: “You look good. I thought it was an unusual choice of song tonight… I thought you oversang it… you lost control of it. It came across as quite an angry performance” which he thinks is out of sync with the evening. Simon thinks “you might be in a bit of trouble tonight.” Carly blames any difficulty on the fact she happened to glance at Simon during the performance.
And now here’s David Archuleta. After he presented us with John Farnham’s The Voice a couple of weeks ago, we can do nothing but shudder with anticipation of what he’ll consider an inspirational song. He’ll sing Angels, because “no matter what you’re going through there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel.” <Insert your own joke about that light being an oncoming train here> The song starts too low for his voice, treating us to a little hint of what it would be like if Kathleen Turner ran wind sprints in a cigarette factory, but is good during the mid parts. The song comes alive during the chorus… though he blows the high note. He needs to stick to the mid range. He tries to give it a bit of soul/blues at the end, and that doesn’t work, either… it doesn’t seem heartfelt. David’s sweet spot is bubblegum pop and he should play to it for all he’s worth. Unlike me, the audience seemed to really like the performance. Also unlike me, Randy loved the runs at the end and said it was David’s hottest moment of the whole season. Paula says “that sums it up for me.” Simon says “best song choice of the night so far…. One of the best pop songs ever written.” Simon thinks the song was a bit nasally at first and got better, but predicts David will “sail through to the next round.”
Brooke White closes the show with You’ve Got A Friend by Carole King; the choice reaffirms all my impressions of Brooke. I don’t like Carol King andI don’t like 1970s mellow rock, but about ten seconds in I think we’re hearing the song of the night. Brooke is radiant, her eyes reaching right out of my low-def television and making believe she means what she’s singing. Vocally she’s dead on for both the song and what she wants to do with it, giving it a very intimate quality and wisely not trying to turn it into a barnburner. Excellent from start to finish. Randy says “for me, I don’t think it was your best performance. It was okay… all right.” Paula says Brooke was “definitive… you’re definitive” whatever that means. Simons says “was it original? No. Was it pleasant? Yes.”
Summary/Conclusions
Wow. I think it’s safe to say my prediction was correct… this was a night of awful, awful performances. In fact, I don’t think anyone was great tonight, it all comes down to who was the least bad. Let’s recap:
Michael Johns: did pretty well, and wisely picked a sing-in-the-shower type song.
Syesha Mercado: her voice was quite good, but she did the opposite of Michael and sang a song nobody could grab onto.
Kristy Lee Cook: also sang well, but seems determined to lose on choice of material alone.
Jason Castro: very wisely chose a well-known song and gave a performance that was quirky enough to be memorable but not so quirky to be alienating.
David Cook: who is IMHO one of the two best on the show, quite frankly sucked tonight. Bad song choice, bad performance.
Carly Smithson: the other of the top two didn’t quite suck tonight, but she wasn’t good either. Decent but not outstanding song choice, decent but not outstanding performance.
David Archuleta: bad song choice, barely adequate performance, but is probably safe on sheer audience good will.
Brooke White: Wisely chose a song everyone knows and also had a decent performance.
Best of the night: Overall? Brooke.
Bottom Three: Tough call this week since they all were pretty bad tonight. The absolute worst from the evening, David Cook, may be safe sheerly because he’s been so incredibly brilliant in the past few weeks. I’ll go with Carly, Kristy, and Syesha. Who leaves? I’ll go with Kristy Lee Cook.
We’ll see Thursday night. In the mean time, tune in tomorrow for Idol Gives Back. See you then!
Topics: American Idol, TV | 2 Comments »
April 9th, 2008 at 8:03 am
I think Ryan has a crush on Rami. He never mentions the voted off idols but he mentioned her. And what is she doing in New York? I hope to goodness it doesn’t have anything to do with singing.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I hope David Archuleta is the next to go. He seems like a cute kid and all but the boy just cant sing.