American Idol
The Day After
Nine Idols Singing

Some of the contestants improved on their performances of a week ago, some did not, others got worse. As a whole, the show was only slightly better than last week. It just seems like it’s been forever since we’ve had a really outstanding performance by anybody.

This being country night, Bucky and Kellie should own the stage and dazzle us with their country brilliance. Did they do that? Did you read my last line of the first paragraph?

Tonight as it turned out was also, “let’s rehabilitate Pickler night.” Were you convinced? Are we all just a bunch of no good Pickler bashers who don’t know what we’re writing about? We’ll get to Kellie soon enough.

I’m also not buying this bit where some of the singers are out of their element when singing country. That’s just an excuse. There are plenty of country songs that cross over into other genres that makes that argument null and void. Anyway, let’s get started with the worst going first.

Taylor Hicks – “Take Me Home, Country Roads”

As soon as I heard Taylor was going to sing this song I groaned. I remember when John Denver had such a big hit with it and living just a hop skip and a jump from the Mountain State at that time, there was no way to escape it. After having it rammed down my throat for what seemed like forever, I really learned to dislike it. I also find it to be a strange choice for Taylor. I can’t think of any reason he would pick this song out of so many other possibilities unless he owed the governor of West Virginia a favor.

Anyway, I know the song, know what it’s supposed to sound like and it is not supposed to sound like this in any way shape or form. It’s terrible. It’s just not the way Taylor is standing there singing it as if he might vomit it out, he’s also so far off key that I’m sure I hear the citizens of West Virginia praying in the background that he never gives any thought to recording it. Girlfriend Alice Kramden is in agreement with me although she sits mostly silent through the performance. She worships Taylor and it truly pains her to have to watch him fail so completely.

Randy doesn’t like it at all and says it’s just okay. Paula says the song choice didn’t allow Taylor to shine. Simon says it was safe, boring and lazy. I think the key word here is lazy. I don’t think Taylor put any effort into it at all this week but he’s not the only one.

Mandisa – “Any Man of Mine”

I don’t know if Mandisa thinks the outfit she is wearing tonight is supposed to make her look perky or what exactly. I do know that I now have a much greater appreciation of Shania Twain’s vocal ability. And tonight for the first time, utterly and completely, Mandisa puts her vocal limitations out there in the wide open spaces for us all to finally see. I’ve already mentioned in previous weeks how it appeared that Mandisa probably can’t sing in the lower vocal range. This once and for all confirms it completely. If you think there was anything good about this performance, then my suggestion is that you find another program to watch because you’re tone deaf and aren’t really tuning in properly to this one. It was an utter failure in every sense of the word. It was hard to be worse than Taylor tonight, but Mandisa somehow may have succeeded. And this is from a guy who has had her in the top three more often than not. Randy says he liked the last five seconds of the song. Paula says she can sing the phonebook. Maybe she should have. Simon says it was horrible and gets booed for practically saying the same thing that Randy just said. That tells you which opinion is the only one that really matters.

Elliott Yamin – “If Tomorrow Never Comes”

Elliott decides to give Garth Brooks a try. A few weeks back Bucky gave Garth a try with The Thunder Rolls and didn’t do so well. Elliott isn’t totally awful, and probably sounds a lot better just because of what we’ve heard from the previous two candidates. The vocals are okay, but I have to draw Simon’s karaoke gun on him. It doesn’t seem to me as if he’s into the song at all, and a couple of times I think his voice quivers as if he’s unsure of himself. It’s at this point that I put the Dodgers and Braves game on in the little picture in picture box to help ease my pain. The Dodgers are up 4 -1 and are doing better than the Idol contestants so far tonight.

Randy loves the song, and says he brought it down and is hot. Paula gives a speech that I can’t make a lick of sense of. It’s hard enough to decipher what she’s saying when she only speaks a few words, but on this occasion it’s impossible. Simon says it was a good song choice, the vocals weren’t great and that Elliot appeared nervous. Elliot says he was nervous which after this many performances you have to wonder why. Was Paula looking at his crotch or something?

Paris Bennett - “How Do I Live Without You”

Paris is going to sing the song from Con-air which was recorded by LeAnn Rimes, who was dumped in favor of a version by Tricia Yearwood, then was later released as a recording by LeAnn Rimes also. So now we get the Paris version, so she has two country stars she has to live up to. But she doesn’t. Paris crashes and burns faster than you can say Nicholas Cage. She’s totally off key, no clue as to what she’s singing about, and like Elliott seems to be going through the motions.

But, on the good side, I do like her outfit, her hair, and the fact that she toned down her play-baby shtick beforehand and afterwards. So I’m going to force myself to like it even if it did suck just for those reasons. Randy doesn’t care for it, and Paula absolutely positively doesn’t like it. Then Simon spoils everything by saying he loves it. But do you really believe him? I don’t. I think he saw an opportunity to praise a contestant that Randy and Paula were criticizing and jumped on it for that reason. I think that’s why he said he was “really enjoying it.” He also calls it “early Dionne Warwick.” Does this mean Paris has an infomercial in her future selling a Psychic Hotline? Alice says it’s not as bad as Taylor or Mandisa, and probably equal to Elliott’s performance. I think she was off key a lot more than Elliott though.

Ace Young – Tonight I Want to Cry”

Okay, were the rest of the contestants so bad that Ace sounds exceptional tonight? I’m really enjoying his rendition of this song. I think this may be the perfect Ace song. Mind you, it’s not a knock ‘em dead type of performance, but it is good and the best Ace has done since probably Father Figure. Alice is nodding her approval so I know I’m on the right track. This is easily the top performance up to this point but that wouldn't have been difficult to pull off any way. Randy said it was nice but boring. Paula disagrees but Randy is adamant that it was boring and seems ticked that Paula doesn’t think so. Simon thinks he made the right song choice and that it was one of Ace’s better performances.

Kellie Pickler – Fancy

Okay, this is country night. Country is Kellie’s genre. She should be able to bring the house down tonight, shouldn’t she? She should be able to give a performance that we will remember forever since this is her element. And in a way, this is her second country night in a row since she was able to sing about bubbles in buckets last week. She’s going to sing the Holy Grail of Reba songs, Fancy. Okay, I don’t know what an abridged version of Fancy is going to be like. It’s one of those story songs that if you cut it down to just over a minute it loses quite a bit.

But first, we find out that the Fox Producers roam the internet because Ryan is going to try to rehabilitate her reputation. First they bring up the calamari and salmon bit. It’s not very convincing at all. For one thing, it wasn’t just the calamari thing and never was. And when she mispronounces salmon again she has to think about how to mispronounce it in explaining herself. There is no mention of ballsy, tarantula, eyelashes, minx etc. etc. etc. etc., no mention of pageants and previous TV shows, no prom dress picture, or anything along those lines.

But I don’t care because the funny thing is that all the time I’m looking at Kellie while this is going on I can’t get over how exceptional her hair looks tonight. Whoever styled her hair did an amazing job, don’t you think? It’s just absolutely perfect. Of course when you can afford to fly your own personal hairdresser from Charlotte North Carolina just to do your hair, it should look spectacular. She may just be a normal all American-Albemarle girl but she’s a poor hard working roller skating sonic type of All-American girl who gets her hair done for $300 dollars a chop job on a regular basis, and then flies the guy out to California for a one shot job also.

And if you’re interested you can click here to read all about Carmen Cutrona or visit his web hair and spa web site here. And here’s a tip of the hat to Ken at Kick Pickler for leading me to that information. Well, so much for your rehabilitation job, Ryan, and thank you for giving me a good reason to drop that bit of information into this column.

Okay, but she still has to sing. It isn’t Reba, but then who is? It’s okay I guess. It’s not as bad as Paris, Mandisa or even Elliott. But I do notice that Kellie isn’t doing the chorus in the way it’s meant to be done, and it comes out almost as a shout until she brings it down to a lower register so she can handle it. Again, though, she has no clue as to what the song is about. It’s just not a song about a mother sending her daughter off to prostitution; it’s also a song about doing what you have to do to overcome the worst of hardships and how you in the end triumph over that by whatever means possible. That’s the whole point. But Alice likes it, I say it’s not anywhere near as good as Reba (whom I’ve seen perform this live twice), and she says nobody is as good as Reba, and I say yeah that’s true, but this is Kellie’s genre and her type of song so this performance should be a home run and it’s not, and Alice says, yeah but it’s better than Paris, Mandisa, and Elliott. Which is exactly the same thing I said a few hundred words ago.

Randy loves it and says it’s her night, and Paula loves it and Simon hated the song but said she performed it well.

Chris Daughtry – “Making Memories of Us”

Chris and country go together like ice cream and sauerkraut. On the other hand, Chris is determined to make Simon eat his words of last week and show he’s not a one trick pony by singing a ballad. And let me say that if this song doesn’t prove that Chris has a good voice nothing will. In my opinion, Chris positively showed that he can be quite versatile when called upon to do so. I really liked Chris’s performance tonight, and this should put the one trick pony label to bed once and for all. What’s strange about me liking Chris this year is I wasn’t much of a Bo fan last year. Maybe I just like bald rockers better. I think this is easily the best vocal performance of the night and Chris show why he should be one of the favorites in this competition. Randy loves it, Paula loves it, and Simon says it’s good to see a different side of Chris, but ruins everything by throwing in that all the songs for the past two weeks have bored him.

Katharine McPhee – “Bring Out the Elvis”

Wow, between Chris and Katharine, the night has been redeemed. Katherine shows us the difference between being sultry and sexy and just thinking that you’re sexy and sultry or even pretending to be. And no I’m not mentioning names. An excellent performance, and as consistent as Katherine has been her and Chris should be favored to win this competition. Too bad they aren’t. It’s so much easier to write about these good performances, than the bad ones.

Okay Randy loves it, Paula loves it, and Simon thinks it’s a peculiar song. Katharine tells him to just say he doesn’t like country which he does although anyone who’s watched this program over the years already knows that.

Bucky Covington – “Best I Ever Had”

This is easily one of Bucky’s better performances. He’s singing in the spot that I thought would have gone to Kellie tonight. I kind of like Bucky in the Western get up also. I’m still not sure if part of his lyric annunciation is bad or if the band is just playing too loud for this song. After listening to it a second time, I have to say that in this case it’s probably the band. It’s not a knock ‘em dead performance, especially since Bucky has the prime spotlight position tonight, but it’s better than at least four or five others tonight and is very nicely done. The judges seem to kind of like it. Alice fell asleep so I can’t get her opinion.

Okay, so how do I rank them from first to worst?

1. Katharine
2. Chris
3. Ace
4. Bucky
5. Kellie
6. Elliott
7. Paris
8. Mandisa
9. Taylor

Now, who will end up in the bottom three? It would be a lot easier if people actually voted for the best and worst vocal performances of the evening. But that’s not what happens on this show. I am going with Mandisa, Elliott and Paris in the bottom three. No way Taylor is going to be there.

I also think Mandisa has shown she’s the one who’s a one trick pony with two horrendous performances in a row. I was wrong about her being in the bottom three last week. I don’t think I’ll be wrong this week. As a matter of fact, for someone who was a big Mandisa fan for quite a while, the last two weeks have forced me to show her the door. Right this way ma’am and please watch your step as you exit.