American Idol – Lennon & McCartney Week

Eh. George was blatantly the best Beatle.

So now I know these people in a little bit more detail, I’ll be saying a little bit more about them. They’re real people now, not just semi-finallists anymore.

Syesha “Manteef” Mercado : I don’t think she could have biffed the start of this song any harder. She just about managed to recover but overall… eh. I also noticed for the first time this week (alright…it had to be pointed out to me this week) that she’s a total Beyonce clone vocally. But at least she has more personality than Beyonce. Possibly too much personality actually. Like, the mugging kind. She also needs to stop doing songs that could potentially be interpreted as about stealing somebody’s husband. That shit ain’t nice.

Chikeze “Jacuzzi” Eze : He was actually officially “not bad” this week, and he seems like a nice guy, so maybe I do have some use for him after all, even though his presence does seem to make Seacrest behave wildly inappropriately. If I thought he was going to last too much longer I might start speculating on some sort of secret love there, but… I doubt there’s much point. On the plus side, he was wearing an argyle sweater, and all the best singing talent show contestants wear argyle sweaters, as Daniel Boys fans will tell you.

Ramiele “Rameeliemoolieboolie” Malubay : I still don’t really get her. Is she just the one who sings nicely and sweetly and that’s kind of it? I am struggling to find any other sort of personality for her, apart from the obvious “Friend Of The Gays”. She’s kind of really dull every single week and she’s not really got enough about her to make up for it. Erm… She’s super short I guess?

Jason “Moppy” Castro : I am establishing something of a rota amongst the “boys from genres I cannot stand” of liking them all for one week and one week only, and hopefully that will be enough to take me through the competition. Week 1 it was Archuleta, then Week 2 I really liked Yeager for some reason (don’t ask), then last week David Cook suddenly became really likeable and I don’t know how or why and it scared me. This week I fell a little bit in love with Jason Castro. I mean the whole Jack Johnson/Jose Gonzales/Newton Faulkner thing generally bores the crap out of me, but this really worked this week. Next week : Michael Johns is MY American Idol

Carly “That Irish Girl” Smithson : OK, so this was awesome and belty and had tonnes of attitude, although she’s still connecting with the floor diagonally in front of her, rather than the audience or the material or anything like that. But what really needs to be discussed is how she can come across as less scarily desperate. Because she totally reeks of it, and it’s REALLY off-putting. Her face when she was compared to Kelly Clarkson was something to behold. She might be my number two choice if not for that.

David “Word-Nerd” Cook : So clearly “Hello” was a blip, because this was as disgusting as everything else he’s ever done. Bellowing, smug, grinning, stupid, unsubtle crap, taking a hammer to all the subtlety and loneliness and quiet ache and slight sinister campy musical hall edge of the original, with stupid hair and even stupider clothes. I absolutely hated this without qualification. Even more than “Happy Together”, which I barely thought possible.

Brooke “Overlord” White : I love Brooke. A lot. But it’s because she’s total propaganda. She’s just this cute Aryan, strawberries & cream, babies, beauty school girl sat with her guitar or her piano, singing really f’ing intensely and joyously about something only she can see, and which would probably terrify us all if we could see it as well. She’s kind of like the “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” scene from Cabaret, and for all the talk of Kristy’s Confederate roots, I would be less than not surprised if some Grand Wizards started dancing around in the background during her performances. Still, she am the best one.

David “Gay-Ass Stripper” Hernandez : I’m never one to get into much talk about “passing” within the gay community because it’s always a really depressing discussion, but when he speaks David Hernandez could totally pass. Especially with such spectacular euphemisms as “pizza bistro” (Try The Meat Feast! It’s Extra Spicy!). But the instant he starts singing it’s clearly he’s taken all his mannerisms from his day-job and just cut out the bits involving teabagging. That he ended up with such an aggressively hetero song was really unfortunate, because he deserved better than 12th. On the other hand, this was a totally ludicrous spectacle of a thing.

Amnada “Boomhauer” Overmeyer : So this week she looked her age for the first time ever, although I honestly still could not tell you one word in three that the poor girl sang. She’s better than I thought she was going to be, but all that means is that she’s too good for me to laugh at, but not good enough for me to care. Of all the singers she’s the one who I could honestly not tell you what song she sang this week, and that surprises me more than words can say. It was alright enough I guess, but that’s not what I wanted her here for.

Michael “XXXX” Johns : Michael Johns however was clearly here for a purpose. To make me angry. “Across The Universe” is in my Top Three favourite Beatles songs, and, whilst he didn’t do anything grossly wrong, he still bellowed it through, removing any trace of legitimate emotion out of it, and permenantly stuck in his Chris Martin as Crazy Frog dancing mode. It was no David Cook, but then Across The Universe is immeasurably better as a song than Eleanor Rigby, so in the end they about balance out in making me physically viscerally sad terms.

Kristy “Lee” Cook : OK so with every singing reality tv show there is one contestant (almost always a girl) where I legitimately cannot tell why she’s supposed to be crap. Nobody can stand them, every performance gets picked apart as self-evidently hopeless, and I’m always sat there thinking “why? What exactly was wrong with it?”. And obviously this go round that contestant is Kristy Lee Cook, because alledgedly this was one of the worst performances in Idol history, and I floved it. I thought it was fun. Incredibly cheesy fun, and fun where she slid off the rhythm a few times, but she sung it flawlessly and it made me want to hoe-down. The scary faces were just a bonus…

David “Moon-Boy” Archuleta : Now this was crap. He forgot the words at least 4 times, to which he just mumbled through rather than coming up with plausible cover-ups. He didn’t seem to know or care what the song was about, grinning through it like Coltonberry through Suspicious Minds. He bopped around like a particularly athletic gran doing a Seniors Exercise Programme, and he’s still doing the lip-licking (he’d better be moisteurising, or take it from me that shit will give you scabs like you won’t believe). I guess for “America” he’s still coasting on Imagine and Another Day In Paradise, but I hate those songs so much that he’s still running on residuals from Shop Around for me, and whilst that was great, it wasn’t as great as this was bad. He really should have gone home I think…