AI Season 11 - 11 Finalists and A Felon

"With cooperation from law enforcement". . . Ryan is such an ass. He already thinks he's Dick Clark, and now he's trying to throw some John Walsh in there too. Well, Ryan, you're neither. I'll admit you're a fanatically driven man with killer instincts on how to get ahead. So you may develop into a Dick Clark-esque career path. But you're not an original, or any kind of innovator.

Ah, the week of "Songs from the Year You Were Born." AKA "Viewers, Let Us Show You That We're Young (And You're OLD)." Always a treat. Then again, it usually turns into "Let's Find the Remakes and Do Those," so half the time you don't know what year you're in anyway.

I don't remember why Will.I.Am was a fan favorite mentor, but he is a likable fellow. Phillip's rehearsal of "Hard to Handle" sounded off key to me, but hey, they guy was on his way to surgery.

His performance onstage sounds much better. As usual, it's professionally presented and sounds good. There's nothing new except he's sans guitar. He's good. He's not my style, but he's definitely good enough to be someone people go to see.

I hate it when the judges remind you it's a song from the year the contestant was born. I feel like they really want to frighten people. In this case I guess it's clear he wasn't from the year of the Otis Redding version, but he does seem older to me than he'd be if born circa the Black Crowes version.

Hoo boy, Jessica's going to be a crazy not-old song. Oh! "Turn the Beat Around." She's older than I . . . oh, well, I guess not! She's sixteen. Ah, of course, what the hell am I thinking. I never even knew Gloria Estefan covered this. I guess if she was alive for the original, she'd be too old to qualify for the show. God knows, 36 is practically a walking corpse.

I love her pants. The song, eh, I don't think it was the right choice for her. She's doing it well, and it definitely gets tough at times with the rat-tat-tat and the syncopated rhythm and all that. She performed it pretty well, I just don't know that I felt her feeling it like she could have.

Ah! Steven agrees with me on the pants and the song. Jennifer too. "Stir" her in the right direction, Randy? But otherwise, I agree with you.

Did Ryan just plug Swagbucks with his "Swaggernaut" reference? I think he may have been referring to the pants, but who else says Swaggernaut? I've been meaning to blog about Swagbucks. If you haven't heard of it, it's a fabulously easy way to make a few extra pennies each day doing nearly nothing. You just let them track your searches (Google is already doing that for nothing!) and you win points here and there. You then exchange those points for items---my favorite is to use 450 points on a $5 Amazon giftcard. If you do the bare minimum, you get enough points for about one card a month. You can bump it up to two with a little effort doing extra things on their website. But even if you only get the bare minimum, that's $70 extra dollars a year you're getting from doing absolutely nothing. Well worth it. I wish I'd joined up when I first heard about it, but I worried it was a scam or pointless or dangerous, security-wise. It's none of those things. And (hint hint) you don't have to do all your searches through Swagbucks, so if you want to be private as well, you can just search normally. Basically it's just like choosing them as your search engine at your discretion. If any of you nonexistent readers plan to join up, please, please, please use my handy referral link, http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/bluela , as my mostly artsy non-computing friends and Anti-Facebook status has left me with one lonely referral and little chance of many more.

But I digress far, far afield from American Idol! I shall return to Swagbucks at a later date. Jessica Sanchez, America! I mean, now Heejun Han!

Oh, Heejun is singing Richard Marx! I love Richard Marx! We used to go visit my cousin in Florida and I would just listen to his tapes as we drove along the shabby glamour of the mixed deco/'50s-architectured beachline. . . I loved it. I'm so glad I got to spend the time there that I did before they started renovating and updating everything. People have no respect for history. It's sad. Heejun's mom is so cute crying! And his dad looks just like him.

I don't know how the judges are going to feel about "Right Here Waiting." It seems similar to the choices of his they don't like. I appreciate Jimmy and Will being up front about Heejun's accent difficulties. He really has to work on that. It would have been better had they told him it was a "c" in chance than saying "the 's'," but I guess I shouldn't split hairs.

Heejun sounds great at first. I love the breathy. I don't like how the "de line" brings me back to his accent, but it does. Still, it doesn't bother me as much as his changes to "you got me going crazy." The rest is all good, though. Except his stupid lensless glasses! But again, splitting hairs. He sounded pretty lovely.

What, is Randy crazy? I think Randy doesn't understand how Heejun sings with his breathiness. I think that's intentional. But of course Randy didn't like the song choice, Unlike Jennifer, I didn't hear him struggling with the song. Maybe not pushing far enough. I think he could do more.

I wonder if Elise is the oldest. I think she's got better choices than some, being born in 1983. I think I like how she's sounding and what she's doing with "Let's Stay Together." Yes, this is really good. So far, this is my favorite tonight. Is this song from 1983? I always thought it was older. Whoops---she went a little wonk near the end there. But it was easily overlookable with how sexy and smoky and smooth the rest was.

Janis? Is Randy nuts? The fact they both have a rasp is the only similarity I hear.

Deandre is too young. I will kick him. So, ah, good, he's doing a remake of a song from a year he should have been born. Yes, I think the contestants on this show are too young for their own good.

He's singing this too soft and light. He wobbled going into falsetto, I think he was off key on the next "love," and he generally seems to be struggling with the song or his arrangement of it. I'm a little confused. He doesn't seem to be able to dig deep for a good sound, and relies on his falsetto too much, and it doesn't work very well.

I agree with Jennifer also, to a degree. I see why Jimmy and Will thought it was a good choice for him, but I don't think he had the comfort or ability to pull it off perfectly. She was right about the key, but I think he was unsteady with it no matter what the key.

His hair is not dreads, Ryan. Are you stupid?

Shannon Magrane is sickeningly young as well. "Don't Speak"! Aaaaaahh! How can you be born the year that song came out? Instead she's picking a song I don't know, Mariah Carey (a good choice for someone who just failed at Whitney? Hm.) & Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day." She sounded off key on the "day" in rehearsal. She wants to prove Will.I.Am wrong? It seemed like he was just offering her helpful advice.

She's doing much better with this song, but her voice still sounds like it's straining sometimes, mostly when she's trying to get loud and powerful. I don't like those bits anyway. She sounds best when she's light and lilting along. It was quite good. And the gold lace shorts were hot, though slightly heined by the black pantyhose. I wish Shannon didn't make the aggressive faces and bird of prey movements that bother me so much.

Hey, the song was 18 weeks on the top of the pop charts? Not R&B? Well, I was busy at that time, I guess, and listening to lot different music.

I'm glad they pointed out how there are thousands of songs to choose from in a year. I don't know why Jessica claimed her choices were slim! 1994 had a crapload of fantastic songs.

Colton, you and Mike Daughtry had dinner and you both ate dinner? Hilarious and cute in how fanboy silly that description is. But nicely witty with the response he will start taking Mike Daughtry's advice next week.

1991 had a lot of good songs. He's singing some "obscure" White Lion song---given that a lot of kids probably don't know half the songs tonight (since the contestants don't seem to), this could be a time when the chance of doing a song the audience might not know could pay off.

It sounds good, and I like that he's showing more of a rock side than he has before. The song sounds familiar to me (I listened to that kind of thing in those days), but it's definitely not a chart-topper. I think it worked okay, and as I said this was maybe the only week it could have worked.

I totally disagree with Steven. I don't think the song was terribly special, and I think he could have chosen a similar song and done it just as well, maybe better thanks to the song. But it wasn't a song that pulled him down in any way. So I guess I feel more like Randy about it. Maybe it could have been even better with a higher quality song, but it was quite appealing as it was.

Wow, Erika looks old for her age. I don't like the way she sounds singing Bryan Adams, and the timing sounded off to me. Yikes! Will was pretty hard on her.

Why is she timing the phrasing this way? It's gross. And the way she's singing is highlighting the phlegminess of her voice. It's not attractive. Her dress is pretty awesome, though. It would look much better on me. I think I've sung the song better, too (though I don't know if I could now, my voice has been damaged and I am no longer able to practice singing like I used to).

I liked the echoing boo at Steven, but he didn't deserve it. Jennifer, on the other hand, is psycho for comparing Erika to Janis Joplin. But she was right on with complimenting the clothes styling. Randy has it right on with the weird arrangement criticism. It was odd and uncomfortable. It's just wrong that it was intentionally arranged that badly.

So Jermaine Jones has had to go home for lying about criminal charges and having four outstanding warrants. He doesn't seem like a bad guy. It's nice that they gave him a respectful goodbye and played his stage rehearsal. Man, to go out on the song from An American Tail! I love "Somewhere Out There," and his little clip sounded okay, but I don't know how I would have felt about the whole thing. It's a duet, and you really need the beautiful higher bits.

Skylar seems anxious and very different this week. I don't know what would have happened to change her mood or outlook. She's always seemed confident and relaxed, and rightly so. "Love Sneaking Up on You" did seem like an obvious choice, so I understand why Jimmy and Will were suggesting alternatives. I'd like to hear her sing some Melissa Etheridge, and she had some good songs that year (1994---wasn't that when Where the Day Takes You was released? Chock full of good Melissa Etheridge.) But "Hold My Hand"?! Jimmy, get real. And Coolio's "Fantastic Voyage"! That would have been a sight to see.

I'm having a hard time hearing her words, and I'm not into the weird Don Henley All She Wants to Do Is Dance/Dirty Laundry synth-heavy backing music. So I guess I'm agreeing with Jimmy and Will. This was not a good song choice. It's not like she's singing it badly, but there's not much she's doing to notice, and the backing music is too much in the forefront. The end showed he voice off a little, but there just wasn't a lot there. I think she's likable enough to survive this crap choice, but this was a crap choice.

What is Randy talking about that she could have chosen a country song. It may be crossover, but that was a country song. Bonnie Raitt had so much better songs, though! I wish Skylar had done one of those.

It is so cute that they sent Joshua crawfish, but it's a little wasteful they sent so many! I hope they find people to eat them.

Eep. I was looking forward to seeing Joshua wriggle out of the old-fashioned sound he does so well but may have been what landed him in the bottom three guys last week. But no, he's not wriggling out of anything, he's staying right in his talent comfort zone, singing "When A Man Loves A Woman." In this case, since more people know the song and appreciate an old-style delivery of it, they might embrace this. I hope so, because even though he claims he's doing Michael Bolton's version, he's doing a '50s-'60s soul version of it.

He is awesome. He is truly singular, a rare gem. I like that he took his retro blazer off and went a little wild, although maybe it was a little church speaking in tongues wild. But he was incredible. I hope he gets the respect he deserves from that.

I think the judges are trying to be extra obvious in declaring how great he was because they worry about what the voters did last week. Randy brought in a little reality bringing up Percy Sledge, since that was really the song Joshua was singing.

Nice! Last week I said how I thought Hollie was more Celine than Whitney, and this week she's doing Celine. Her parents are adorable. Unfortunately for me, a lot of time when I see an interview with a couple with any accents from Britain, I find myself seeing them as Creature Comforts animals! I think her parents just escaped.

Hollie's dress is beautiful. It gives her a little bulk, which surprisingly this one girl in the world could use. I don't think "The Power of Love" was the best Celine song for her, because it obviously wasn't something within her experience. And she was no Celine---she wasn't perfect, she wasn't over and above the whole song, but she was really good. Comfortable and confident to boot. It was solid.

In ranking, there were some tough choices for me. There were some people I really liked, then some people who had song troubles, then people who . . . well, I sort of wished I could rank by grouping rather than individuals. But I broke it down into what I think is my choice of best to worst.

1. Joshua

2. Elise

3. Colton

4. Hollie

5. Shannon

6. Phillip

7. Heejun

8. Skylar

9. Jessica

10. Erika

11. Deandre

As for who's in danger, I'd say my 8 and 9 are in no danger even though they rank below the others. Many people were "pretty good" this week, so the bottom two who were "pretty bad" stick out. I think the judges have put some power into the idea that Heejun isn't as good as Deandre, so Heejun might be in more danger than he deserves. But if the judges would remember, Deandre was not chosen by America, and Heejun was. Popularity matters in this competition. I hope Heejun still has enough to pull through. I would love to say goodbye to Deandre, but I think realistically, Erika is more likely to go. Her performance this week was bad, and she's another non-voted on contestant.