American Idol 2012 – Hollywood Round, Part 3

10 of the soloists and groups that made…the last half of Hollywood week. Those that remained conscious long enough to do so, anyway.

679: First of all, good job on having the commercial nous to give yourself a band-name made entirely out of numbers, like legit music industry LEGENDS 411, 5678s, 801, 60/40, 54-40, 20/20 and 3. Truly we will never forget. I’m sure Brielle von Hugel’s mother was behind this stroke of marketing genius, as she showed a real knack for making her daughter endearing and viable for the mainstream audience via her own WACKY ANTICS. I mean Brielle herself was no better or worse than any other polka-dot dress Kenley Collins affected jazz-voice style contestant to hit the stage, even when sitting around reminiscing to everyone about the time she shared a stage with world-famous diva and superstar Pia…Whatserface. So thank goodness Brielle’s mother swept in to pull stank-face at and then ladle insincerity over poor departed Frat Face and proponent of the White Boy Shuffle Kyle Crews. And also randomly…woop and cheer obnoxiously every time Brielle sang/moved/managed to not actually wet herself. Because what really pushed Randy and Steve and Jennifer over the edge into putting Brielle through was the simple fact that, hey, her mom thinks she’s cool. Also, apparently Shannon Migraine was involved in this somewhere, so well done Shannon on participating in only the second worst mangling of “Hit ‘Em Up My Style Hoops!” or whatever that song’s called.

Area 451: So I looked up what Area 451 is, and apparently it’s a car-accessories company that specialises in cruise-control. Which would suggest a group blanding through Group Night with little passion or soul or commitment, just content to slide in to Vegas Week (whatever that is) on a bland performance of a James Morrison gravel-voiced modern standard. Right? WRONG! Well at least in the case of the show’s first ever ZOMBIE CONTESTANT Imani, who died possibly before Hollywood Week even started, but who WOULD NOT BE STOPPED. Shuffling, moaning, groaning, falling over, fluttering her eyes everywhere in a terrifying fashion, making Seacrest SWEAR and SHOVE WOMEN that’s how terrifying she was. Sadly it was not to be, as the producers decided that America is not yet ready for its first Undead Idol (no, Kris Allen does not count, werewolves are not undead and also they’re just lame). It’s like how they sabotaged Adam Lambert just for being gay all over again AM I RITE?

Colton Dixon: How the audience refrained from actually shouting out “OI! COLTON! WHERE’S YOUR SISTER? WHERE’S YOUR SISTER COLTON?!”. Anyway, he seems like the sort of guy who gets hyped and then gets dropped at the first possibility come the live shows because there’s nothing really much too him, except maybe his hair? The same thing being true of his spiritual twin, Colton Berry. Although Jennifer will probably give him a Wild Card anyway, and then just notice he’s standing there in the final and say “yeah that was cool Phillip Phillips and Random Country Girl but I JUST NOTICED COLTON IS STANDING THERE, GIVE US A SONG COLTON OMG *panty poof*”

Jen Hirsh: I feel I can confidently say that Jen Hirsh had a very good Hollywood. Not only was she part of the unpleasantly-named Groovesauce (also featuring Reed Grimm, Creighton Fraker, Aaron Marcellus and Nick Boddington) who quickly got the show back on the round with their expertly-rendered version of ‘Hold On I’m Coming’ (fnar) after The Bettys set rather a poor precedent with a pisspoor take on ‘Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)’, but when it came to the solo performance round, she absolutely NAILED ‘Georgia On My Mind’. Overwrought but perfectly controlled and absolutely beautiful to listen to, she quickly went from someone whose name I was vaguely aware of to someone I could totally see myself supporting to win this thing. (Of course, around this time last year I had the same epiphany about Pia Toscano, so make of that what you will.) While there were many, many, MANY performances of that song over the course of the episode, no one even came close to Jen’s effortlessly cool take on it, and if she can keep up that presence and power in the rest of the competition, she’s definitely one to watch.

Joshua Ledet: Steve has probably just tried to persuade you that the previously Under The Radar breakout this episode was Jen Hirsh, but that is…just so misguided. Obviously the breakout star of the night was Joshua Ledet, who is basically Jacob Lusk but much better looking and much less terrifying and off-putting. I mean…it’s not THAT hard to make Georgia On My Mind sound amazing, and at least 3 people managed it in this episode, but it takes some chops to make Jar Of Farts listenable. And Joshua Ledet managed it, yes he did. Of course he won’t win, or make it much further than the early Live Shows, but what a voice!

The Make You Believers: More like the “Make You Bereavers”, amirite? I’m still laughing at Seacrest describing Jacquie Cera’s fainting fit as “the unthinkable happening” when a good half of the contestants had already passed out at least once by this point – and given that the show had just show Jacquie hubrising “the only thing I caught was a positive attitude”, the only person who wasn’t expecting her to have some sort of health-related calamity was a man in Alaska who’d just emerged from spending twenty years in a cave and was switching on his television for the very first time since the 1990s. Anyway, with “Patient Zero” (lol) Amy Brumfield on board, they were doomed from the start, and their performance of ‘More Than A Feeling’ was pretty painful – though credit to Mathenee Treco for managing to rise above these unfortunate circumstances and deliver a decent performance and survive group round. Meanwhile, it’s back to that tent in the woods for everyone else.

MIT: I can’t remember if we were actually told this in the last episode or not, but the group name stands for Most International Team. Quite who is contributing to the “international” side of things apart from Heejun Hanh, I’m not quite sure, but I guess they know what they’re doing. At least, I hope they do. Anyway, the actual performance here was immaterial: by far the most interesting thing about them was the epic hatemance between Heejun and Richie Law, the latter of whom apparently saw fit to stay behind in the confessional after everyone else exited and do some vague trash-talking. Their performance was woeful, and I’m officially over Phillip Phillips at this point as his metamorphosis into Taylor Hicks is now complete, but the judges panicked at the thought of having to lose several of their woobies/ringers in one go and decided to put everyone through “based on previous performance”, and boy howdy, it would have to be. Still, there was one excellent parting shot from Heejun, who earnestly told Richie after the performance that he had “talked some craps” about him to the cameras, and he would have to check that out “on season 11″. Heejun <3.

Reed Grimm: I genuinely don’t know if this guy is an actual whackchop or whether he’s just trying really hard to be “zany”, but he really came across as a proper douchenozzle in his solo performance. Having been told by Nigel that he wasn’t allowed to do an acapella performance, he was sent off at the last minute to rehearse a song he could do with the band, along with vocal coach Peisha McPhee, who was visibly running out of patience by the second. You could almost see her thinking “bitch, don’t think I won’t kick your ass. I kicked Katharine’s for far less than this, and we’re family.” Anyway, Reed went off to phone his mom to get validation over his decisions, revealing in the process that he is one hell of an ugly crier, and then played the drums during a fairly shitty version of ‘Georgia On My Mind’ (see, I told you there were a lot of them), while Randy observed that “we’ve got another Casey”. Dear Randy: (1) just playing an instrument doesn’t automatically make you Casey Abrams, and (2) ANOTHER CASEY WOULD NOT BE A GOOD THING. Kind regards, Steven.

Shannon Magrane: Chris has already covered her work in 679 (where I didn’t think she was all that, but the judges obviously disagreed), but I guess she deserves a mention for her solo, although I’m pretty much basing this on the fact that she looked very nice in her lovely sequinny gold top. I wasn’t that sold on her performance, given that she was the second person of the night (after Creighton Fraker) to just completely mangle ‘What A Wonderful World’ all out of shape to the point where it was barely recognisable, though my main complaint with her performance was that it was boring rather than actively unpleasant. Assuming she’s in this for the long haul, and I’m guessing she is because the judges seem rather smitten with her, I hope she livens up a bit.

Those Girls And That Guy: Remember how Bitch-Cop Alisha moved heaven and earth to force the show to allow her to sing “Stuck Like Glue” (yes, yes, or Holidays Classic “Joy To The World”)? Wouldn’t it have been better to completely tank your show-edit over a song that you could actually sing? Anyway, Performance Episode Alisha turned out to be much more palatable than Rehearsals Episode Alisha, not that that would have been hard. I do wonder if she probably should have been offering security services to herself rather than any of the other show’s contestants though. Idol fans are hardcore.