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American Idol Top 9 – Season 7, April 1 2008
By PopSavant | April 1, 2008 | 
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Hello again everyone, and welcome to the liveblog of the American Idol top nine performances for April 1st, 2008.
It’s Dolly Parton week; your trivia fact of the day is that I’m actually very distantly related to Ms. Parton in a by-marriage kind of way, so I’m clearly eminently qualified to pass judgment on these performances. The fact that I don’t own a single album is beside the point. I’ve been to Dollywood too.
Dolly’s tricky; she’s one of a handful of artists who’s transformed themselves from musician into
true cultural icon, to the point where people forget just what her place in music history is:
over the course of nearly 50 years she’s had 26 number one singles, won seven Grammy awards, and been nominated for over forty. Despite that, she’s also not someone who you immediately think “Wow! I’d love to cover one of her songs!” … although Whitney Houston and the White Stripes, among many others, proved it can be done very well. (I Will Always Love You and Jolene, respectively. Expect to hear both of those tonight.)
When it comes to our Idols, two thoughts lead into tonight. First off, I hope that Kristy Lee Cook was on her knees every night since last week thanking the heavens above for this turn of events; She recovered from a series of awful performances by pulling out the ringer Proud To Be An American last week, and a Dolly Parton night SHOULD be right up her alley. If she can’t knock one out of the park this week, she never will.
The second question on my mind is how much deeper David Archuleta will go in the competition. I like him, but quite honestly he’s been getting worse instead of better as the weeks go by. Whether it’s a combination of age and pressure or whether he just doesn’t hold up well with more screen time per song as the number of Idols dwindles, I’m not sure. He’s still got his voting bloc out there, but he’s on shaky ground.
American Idol is coming up at 8pm Eastern time tonight. Join me here for a liveblog summary of the events, and join in and add your own comments.
All right, here we are!
We lead off with a fairly lame April Fool’s Day joke about the show being canceled because of action by the American League of Vocal Coaches, being replaced with an episode of Moment of Truth starring Simon. I’m not sure it fooled anyone in America. A quick intro of the judges, and Ryan gives us a bit of history on Dolly Parton. In the video interview segment they shoot her kind of Barbara Walters soft focus style, but she still looks good. (As Dolly herself might say, she ought to with all the money she’s spent on herself.)
Brooke White is up first, looking a bit like Kate Hudson tonight and singing Jolene (no props to me for predicting it, it was obvious.) She’s accompanied by musicians similarly to Katherine McPhee’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree performance from a couple of seasons ago. She’s using an acoustic guitar rather than a piano, and she does a fast-paced, earnest-faced version that lands quite well, but probably isn’t an Idol performance for the ages. Randy thinks it “wasn’t stellar for me” … “but it was all right,” and thinks she could make an album of songs like this. Paula likes her “emotional connection” with all the songs she picks. Paula and Brooke exchange compliments on each others hair. Just to be contrary, Simon thinks the song lacked genuine emotion, and also criticizes the accompanying musicians.
David Cook is next, and he very humbly gives credit to a number of people for the dynamite arrangements that he’s used over the last few weeks. Tonight, however, he’ll be using one he came up with on his own, of Little Sparrow. He’s set a high standard for himself over the last couple of weeks, we’ll see if he can keep it up. The answer comes quickly; he absolutely can. There’s not a trace of hillbilly about it, he gives it a bit of falsetto, and it generally sounds like an indie song that’s hot off the presses. Randy thinks he showed “unbelievable range… another hot, consistent performance.” Paula likes his haircut (again with the hair from Paula) and thinks he showed strength and well-roundedness. Simon thinks “if you can make a song about sparrows good -which you did – congratulations.”
Ramiele Malubay follows David, and Dolly calls her sweet and cute – proving that for all her talents, Dolly is no judge of people. Ramiele’s choice is Do I Ever Cross Your Mind. Ramiele fights the band the whole time, never really standing out. The arrangement has a strong beat and almost gospel feel, and Ramiele never quite finds the rhythm, her voice is all over the place, and at one point she looks a bit like the Chicken Lady from the Kids In The Hall sketch. Randy gives it a “six and a half out of ten.” Paula is “proud of her… you had a great minute and thirty seconds.” Simon says “we’re not going to remember this in ten years time, are we?” and compares it to a cruise ship performance. She gives a confused post interview that leaves even Ryan with no response other than to just cut to the phone number announcement.
Commercial break and they’re showing the promo for Hell’s Kitchen, coming up next. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and stay tuned. It’s good.
Ryan introduces us to Jason Castro’s stalker, who’s sent him a mailbox full of postcards saying how relaxing his singing is. Jason will be singing Traveling Through. True to his form so far, he comes out and does his mellow acoustic thing again. If they ever have a 1970’s singer-songwriter night, I have him picked to do Gordon Lightfoot. His performance is… adequate, but absolutely nothing special. The crowd seems to dig it, though. Randy thinks “it was pretty good… you worked it out” (and he also dropped the “singer-songwriter” label, much like mirrored my comments last week. Randy must be reading along when the camera is off.) Paula liked it, and Simon admits that he may be about to “lose his pass to Dollywood,” but “if this had been the first time I’d seen you or heard you, I wouldn’t get it. Sorry.”
Speaking of stalking, Carly Smithson comes up next, giving us Here You Come Again She looks amazing as always, making even some hideous red leggings look reasonable. Did she get hair extensions for the night? Irish and country music aren’t unrelated, and Carly takes right to the song. For some reason the performance reminds me of Dolly herself mixed with a smidgen of Karen Carpenter. It’s very good… I can almost close my eyes and hear/see it playing over the credits of some weepy personal growth movie as a car heads off into the distance down a lonely highway. Her voice is the best I’ve heard it in weeks. Randy says “I do believe that will be one of the better performances of the night.” Paula calls it “glorious.” Simon “thought it was good, didn’t think it was great.” and that “You need to have a word whoever’s dressing you at the moment… at this stage, you’ve got to start looking like a star.” I hope a sandbag falls on Simon.
Commercial break again.. The Ace of Spades! The Ace of Spades!
Ryan’s doing his man-in-the-crowd shot again… crowd surf Ryan! Classic early 90’s! C’mon!
David Archuleta’s going to do Smokey Mountain Memories, which apparently did quite well in rehearsal with Dolly. He looks a bit like a young, confused Charles Bronson, but he does pretty well until the high note near the end, which he doesn’t quite make. He gets past it, though, and pulls off a big enough ending to make you forget the misstep. You won’t be humming it in the car in the morning, but I think it’s safe to say David undid a lot of the damage he did to himself over the last few weeks. Randy says “I stand corrected, that was the best performance of the night right there.” Paula compliments his marvelous tone. Simon says “Absolutely on the money.”
Kristy Lee Cook is performing Coat of Many Colors, which is a big song in Dolly’s repertoire. I’m not sure it’s current enough to really resonate with the TV audience beyond the hardcore country crowd, though… we’ll see. Kristy goes for the small-town-girl-out-for-the-night look, and delivers a very faithful version of the song. Her performance is great for what she’s aiming for, but I don’t know that it’s the kind of thing that’ll bring in the votes. Randy again agrees with me – even going with my baseball metaphor – saying “country music is definitely your wheelhouse – this is Kristy Lee week” Paula calls it “a beautiful performance… your best performance.” Simon calls it “pleasant but forgettable.” Ryan compliments her pedicure, which I suspect is not unlike his own.
Syesha Mercado is going to perform I Will Always Love You, saying she was “able to find an emotional connection” with it; you and the rest of the English-speaking world, Syesha, but let’s see what you do with it. She looks dynamite in a bright yellow dress. Syesha performs with a glint in her eye, giving just an air of humor but also sincerity as she sings. She wisely forgoes the Whitney-style, “Aye-EEE-Aye will always love you” and does a more controlled version, instead putting more emphasis on the “love” part. Good move, otherwise you’re just setting yourself up to be compared with Whitney. Randy says “you took on the biggest tiger of the night… and you did pretty good.” Paula compliments her “velvety tone… you’re growing and growing and growing, and connecting with the audience so much more.” Simon thinks it was “good” not “fantastic” and thinks the middle paled in comparison with the Whitney version.
Micheal Johns goes last tonight, telling Dolly that she performed the first concert he ever saw, in 1986. He chooses It’s All Wrong But It’s All Right, and gives it the deep, deep blues treatment. It’s a showstopper. I was unimpressed with him at first, but after the Queen song the other week and this, he goes neck-and-neck with David Cook as the frontrunner, it was that good. Easily – EASILY – the best song of the night. Randy called it “blazing hot.” Simon calls it “the best I have heard you sing throughout the competition.”
Summary Conclusions:
Best of the Night: Michael Johns. I love David Cook and Carly, but Michael takes the prize tonight. He’s turning into a rock star before our eyes.
Bottom Three: I’ll go with Ramiele, Kristy Lee Cook, and Jason. Voted off? Tough choice. Ramiele deserves to go, but Kristy didn’t do herself any favors with the traditional country performance. Still, Kristy actually was good for what she was trying to do, and that’s got to count for something. Plus, she has Vote for the Worst in her corner. I’ll go with Ramiele to leave. What do you think?
We’ll see tomorrow night!
Topics: American Idol, TV | 1 Comment »
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
If Ramiele doesn’t go tonight I’m going to have to start muting the TV during her performance. And I wish Ryan would stop having her talk—she has to be the dumbest person on the show.