With the theme for yesterday’s episode of American Idol being Mariah Carey’s songs, one would expect the girls, not the boys, to deliver exceptional performances. However, all situations can sometimes throw up pleasantly surprising twists, and that was the case last night. It was the boys who excelled and not the girls.
Except for one girl, none of the girls could make the impact all felt they would. While the boys came up with refreshingly individual takes on the songs, the girls could not live up to the promise, primarily because their being girls meant automatically an exchange of notes among judges and viewers about how close they came up to the original versions.
That kid with the fabulous voice and cute looks, David Archuleta, was the first performer for the night, and he set the ball rolling with a vocally perfect but sometime too-succulent rendition of When You Believe, originally a duet with Whitney Houston. As he has done many a time on the show, he set the bar really high and it was delightful to see some of the others sing on par with him.
The next singer, Jason Castro, has a distinctive voice, but his performances are somewhat erratic. While he did a fair job with his rendition of I Don’t Want To Cry, it was certainly nowhere near the level David Archuleta had set earlier.
David Cook has been one performer who has been delivering knockout performances week after week, whatever the genre may be. It was no different this week around, as he shifted gears from his rock star image to deliver a fabulous performance of Always Be My Baby.
Carly Smithson sang I Can’t Live (If Living Is Without You), and she sang it beautifully. No rock histrionics or high pitched screams from her; just a wonderful performance that was clean and came through really well.
The other three girls, Syesha Mercado, Kristy Lee Cook, and Brooke White were the ones who failed to deliver what was required of them. Brooke was still ok, but Syesha and Kristy were not as good as one would have wanted them to be.
At this level of competition, it is about how well you can control your voice and adapt to genres. In the case of Syesha and Kristy, despite having great vocals, they were today somehow unable to exercise the control that such songs require.
However, who will be going home this week remains to be seen. Purely on singing merit alone, the ouster should be between Syesha and Kristy, but this is American Idol, and we have had a few strange ones from the audience in the past; so there is no telling who will go home this week!
AI 4-15
Thank you for this succinct and accurate evaluation of the programme. I personally thought that David Cook did very well since he was the only one to inject some tempo into his performance and Jason Castro stood out because of his overtly laid-back style and even after the show I was humming his performance song, "I'm not gonna cry." The men outshone the women yesterday.