And Then There Were 3

Well, wasn’t that an odd night on Idol? One major redeeming quality: Dreadlocks Jason is finally gone.  Too bad so many actual talented people had to leave before him.  If he wanted to go so badly, he should have sabotaged himself much sooner and saved a few others.  

 Three songs each: Judges’ choice, singers’ choice, and produces choice.  I’m not sure which of the three was worse.  None, however, was great on a night when they should have been.  The producers picked lousy songs for the singers, almost trying to see what adversity they could overcome.  At first blush, selecting Longer by Dan Fogelberg for Young David and I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith for Rocker David might seem like great choices, but alas, not really.  And Rhianna’s version of Hit Me Up from Happy Feet is bad enough.  Sayesha’s version was no better.  It’s almost something you’d expect to hear from Miley Cyrus.   The singers’ own song choices were not much better.  Young David’s odd choice of Chris Brown’s With You couldn’t have been anymore out of place than if Sayesha had broken out into We Are the Road Crew by Motorhead.  But it was pretty humorous hearing him say “My Boo”.  Obviously (and unfortunately), Rocker David didn’t learn his lesson last week when Baba O’Reilly was compressed and ruined because of it.  The same thing happened to him again last night with his choice of Dare You to Move by Switchfoot. 

 I’m going to rank this a little different than usual.  I’m going to go by song instead of performer.  Then I’ll do overall performer.

 1)       Rocker David – Did a great job with Roberta Flack’s First Time, Ever I Saw Your Face.  We’ve been waiting to hear him do something different to see what he does with it.  He mixed raw emotion with some serious edge.  I know I’ve made this comparison before, but I can’t help but think of Rudolph Schenker, the lead singer of The Scorpions.

 2)       Syesha – Continued to improve for the 3rd straight week, but probably still not good enough to land in the finals.  Was very good on Alicia Keys’ If I Ain’t Got You.  Still hasn’t found herself completely, but clearly is finally starting to have fun.
 3)       Young David – Was his typical boring, methodical self, singing And So it Goes, by Billy Joel.  I am actually not familiar with this Billy Joel song, but Young David did a pretty good, if not predictable job with it.  His voice was clear and he appeared to stay in tune throughout.  I can’t believe that out of nine songs, this is third best.  Not a good night.
BIG GAP
 4)       Syesha– Tried to reenact her campiness and Broadway-ish charms that she was able to pull off during Andrew Lloyd Webber week when she sang One Rock n’ Roll Too Many.  Too bad she couldn’t quite do it last night.  Her version of Peggy Lee’s Fever just wasn’t snappy enough.  Or as Judge #2 (Daughter Nikki) said, it was missing Pop.  She hit it on the head.
 5)       Rocker DavidDare You to Dream by Switchfoot.  As mentioned above, this probably would have been much better if he had more time to sing it.  It seemed to stop in the middle.  One of the few intelligent comments that Paula made this season.
 6)       Rocker David – Tried a shortened version of Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, and nearly pulled it off.  The biggest problem is that like when the female contestants attempt to sing Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston, they have to be PERFECT, and he wasn’t.  He was just good.  And for a song like that, when a guy is singing Steven Tyler, good isn’t good enough.
ENORMOUS GAP
 7)       Young David – Tried something a little different than his usual ballad and with his choice, sang With You, by Chris Brown.  Certainly an interesting choice, if nothing else.  And he get’s points for originality and guts, which is why he’s not lower.  But, please.  Let’s make an attempt to be real here.  OK, you want to try something different than a ballad.  Good for you.  How about some nice Matchbox Twenty or Creed, or something like that? 
 8 )       Syesha – Very immature version of Rihanna’s Hit Me Up, which isn’t a good song to begin with.  
 9)       Young David – Dan Fogleberg?  Come on!!  What else were they thinking of?  Wildfire by Michael Martin Murphy?  How about Summer Breeze by Seals and Croft?  If he wins (and I sincerely hope he doesn’t), I think they should re-write Mandy by Barry Manilow for him as his winning song.
Overall for the night:
 1)       Rocker David

2)       Sayesha

3)       Young David

 GOING HOME:  SAYESHA  Young David just has too big of a fan base.  It’s going to be the David vs. David finale, just like everyone has been saying for the past several weeks.