American Idol Top Three Reaction

American Idol 5/12/2009 Reaction

This year's American Idol will undoubtedly be historic. Not only is the competition going to be extremely close but they will break the pattern of every other, male/female winners. After Allison got voted off last week we knew that the competition between the top three guys was going to be intense. And they sure did deliver tonight! The format this week was unique to this season but one that we have seen in the past before. Each contestant sings two songs. The first being chosen by one of the judges and the second being their own personal preference. There was no excuse for a bad song choice this week as the table had been set to fit the strengths of each of them.


Danny Gokey
The first song for Danny was Dance Little Sister by Terence Trent D'Arby which was picked for him by Paula Abdul. This was a great song for Danny! The judges main comments stemmed around how the song fit Danny's voice perfectly and I completely agree. Danny is at his best when his voice is straining a little bit. This strain is not the uncomfortable I can't quite reach that note strain, it is a very tasteful powerful strain that really highlights the cool undertone of raspiness within his voice. The performance was full of energy and really seemed to get the crowd going. Kara ripped Danny a little for his dance moves and it seemed that at one point before the sax solo he messed up one of the lines. Fortunately he picked it up and continued right into the next line. Most of the audience probably didn't even notice. Again I am no music expert but I gave Danny's performance a B+.

Danny's second song and personal choice was You Are So Beutiful by Joe Cocker. This was THE PERFECT SONG for Danny! His rendition of the song was a softer version. With a string quartet accompanying him on stage Danny made me put my lighter in the air while I was on my couch. This song really showed Danny's range. His rendition was filled with moments which allowed Danny to really show his stuff. Simon put it the best when he called Danny's last performance, "A vocal master-class!" I think he meant masterpiece but we all understood what he was trying to say, Silly Simon! I spent my ten minutes after the show calling 1-866-IDOLS-01 and 1-866-IDOLS-04 to support my choice for the competition, Danny Gokey. I would grade this performance by Danny a nice solid A+!


Kris Allen
The first song that Kris sang was the choice of Randy and Kara. They chose Apologize by OneRepublic. By no means was Kris' performance of this song bad, but compared to his past performances, it was about a half a step in the wrong direction. There is a rendition of this song that was done by Silverstein that would have been a much better fit for Kris at this stage in the game. There was one note that, Paula pointed out to the world, that Kris missed and missed bad. Unfortunately for him the crowd was silent and the camera was right in his grill when he tweaked the note. Kris put himself in a tough position with this song and needs a big performance for America to forget his stumbling through Apologize. Compared to the other songs tonight, I would give Kris a B- on this song.

Kris' second song caught me completely off guard. He chose to perform Heartless by Kanye West. This caught me off guard A.) because it is a rap song, B.) because it doesn't necessarily fit his voice, and C.) because he was performing it with an acoustic guitar. Yet Kris continues to be the dark horse in the competition and knocked this one out of the park. This was one of the freshest unique renditions that this show has seen since Blake Lewis beat boxed his way into the finals of the sixth season. I do have to say that the verses in his song were much stronger than the chorus but overall I think that Kris really made up some of the ground that he lost in the first round of the night. Kris gets an A+ for his song. This will be one of the songs that people will be talking around the water cooler about tomorrow!


Adam Lambert
Adam's song fate was left up to Simon Cowell this week. I think that secretly, Simon has a slight biased towards Adam as he thinks that he is not shy about telling the world that Adam is the best performer in this competition. That aside, Simon called up his buddy Bono and picked One by U2 for Adam. I think that this was a good song choice for Adam but I think that he took it too lightly and kind of coasted through this song. When Adam sings softly like he did for the first verse of this song, I really kind of like his voice. But he just can't keep it in that range and he's so easily excitable that he gets pumped up and it's all down hill from there. You get the screams, the shrieks, and the thrusts which are simply not my cup of tea. I surely would not agree with Kara saying that the song was "unbelievable." Adam's performance here was good not great. I would give him a B+ with his first song.

Adam's second song was a long time coming. Since day one people have been comparing him to Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. He chose to sing Cryin' by Aerosmith and gave it another solid effort. This song fit Adam's voice perfectly but I didn't feel as if it was any better of a rendition than the original song was. In this competition you are supposed to do your best to adjust the song so that your version fits your voice better than the original version would have fit. I didn't get that vibe from Adam tonight. People will like this song because he finally tackled an Aerosmith song, but I have heard better performances from Adam. I give Adam another B+ for this song as it wasn't great and he didn't take any sort of risk with this song.

Predictions
Well, I think that the votes will be skewed a little bit from what they would have been and maybe should have been because of Simon's preventative "Daughtry syndrome" speech he gave America at the end of the show. If you remember it has been much assumed that the fifth season's favorite Chris Daughtry was voted off of the show because people "assumed" that he would be safe. Well Simon did his best to make sure that this does not happen to Adam in season 8. In the long run I don't think that it would have made much of a difference since there were two noticeable botches made tonight by Kris Allen. Even though he was the most consistent throughout the competition and even though his rendition of Heartless was ridiculously awesome, I think that next weeks finals will see Adam Lambert and Danny Gokey facing off in the finals. I mean...Adam continued his stretch of sounding the same every week tonight and because of his uniformity and Kris' creative genius we will see Danny and Kris hash it out for the championship. Still yet...Danny lacks the stage presence that both Adam and Kris possess. Because of this Adam and Kris will dance their way across the stage to next week's final...Moral of the story here, I don't really know what is going to happen on tomorrow's result show! This will honestly probably be one of the closest votes of all time. Because I am so torn I am going to go out on a limb and make a prediction that the final two will be Danny Gokey and Kris Allen. How's that for out of the box?

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