American Idol: A Lack of Originality

When is it ever a good idea to cover a song by Whitney Houston? If you answered "never", you win the prize. Help yourself to a complimentary donut from my office.

In fact, it's almost as bad an idea as taking on "Against All Odds" as Ramiele Malubay did last night. As I mentioned yesterday, it's not that I don't like the song — it's just that it's on the shortlist of songs (along with pretty much everything by Whitney Houston) that are grossly overplayed on the "Idol" stage. There's also the fact that Ramiele delivered her third-consecutive competent-yet-unspectacular performance in a row. She just seems to get up there, sing the words to songs pretty well, but forgets to connect with the audience or, for that matter, the words that are coming out of her mouth.

Still, because she's so gosh-darned small — I'd actually like to see her snap back a bit with a sassy retort during one of the many times the judges treat her like she's eight years old — and adorable, I think she has enough support to squeeze through to the final round. This segment was also particularly memorable (which will help Ramiele) because Paula went, well, Paula with a rant about the singer's beautiful face and about how she loves mutts. Yikes.

With Kady Malloy making like Luke Menard and being the obvious choice to go home out of her group after another dreary performance (where does the fun girl from the interview packages go?!), I'm guessing it's the other lady going home will be one of the two Whitney offenders.

Here's the problem(s) with covering a Whitney song: on top of the fact that we've all heard her songs thousands of times on this show, no matter how good it is, you're never going to top the original. You're going to come off looking like second-rate Whitney, which is apparently a compliment according to Asia'h Epperson, who opened the show with "I Wanna Dance with Somebody."

Everything about her performance was second rate actually. Besides, the vocal, which was all over the place and extremely meh, even the way she came down the stairs was a lesser version of what Alexandrea Lushington did during the first semifinal round. (We miss you Alexandrea — well, I do anyway.) For the second week in a row, she tackled a challenging song and didn't rise to the occasion. Even though she's a likable performer with a solid voice who deserves a spot in the top 12, I think she's going to be the other person sent home this week.

But that doesn't mean that I'm not scared for Syesha Mercado (picture, right, since she got almost no face time last night), who delivered the superior Whitney Houston cover of the night and one of the two best vocals. Sure, she didn't deviate from the original, like, at all, but it would've been nice if the judges had more than a few seconds (thanks, rambling Paula!) to deliver "praise" that came off as extremely half-hearted.

So, three of the contestants sang inferior versions of played out songs, and another was Kady Malloy. Ladies and gentlemen, that's half your female contenders in the season with the MOST TALENTED GROUP EVER. Way to disappoint, ladies! I want to hit Seacrest with a shoe now for lying to us.

Syesha, Ramiele and Asia'h should've all taken a cue from Brooke White. The season's nicest contestant brilliantly deviated from "Love is a Battlefield" and made like Jason Castro by delivering a stripped-down version of a song we've all heard many times. Like Castro, she's not the strongest vocalist in the world, and she knows it (are you listening Asia'h?). Instead, she spends her time making the song and performance suit her personality (imagine that!). My only complaint is that I liked her better with curly hair.

The other top notch performance was Carly Smithson's take on "I Drove All Night", which I really honestly thought was first song by Celine Dion for those car commercials. Smithson seemed to base her performance on the Celine version and probably delivered the evening strongest vocals. Emphasis on "strong," since the song was like 70% shouting. Fortunately, she's able to hit most of her notes.

I wasn't as crazy as the judges were about Amanda Overmyer's performance. I would still love to see her successfully do something different, but there was no doubt that she recovered pretty much all the swagger she lost during last week's semi-disaster. She looked comfortable and in control out there — now if only she could do that during the judging.

As for Kristy Lee Cook — I would actually pick her to go home along with Kady, but there's no way America is going to send home two attractive, blonde, dreary performers in one night. Like Kady, she gave her best performance yet (as in Kady's case, that's not saying much) and she was very smart to countrify her Journey song — no one's really going for that sizable audience this season. On the other hand, she still looks bizarre when she performs and she's yet to convince me she can sing anything other than "Amazing Grace" really well.

So what'd you think of this episode? Weren't Randy and Paula PARTICULARLY useless during this episode? Is Brooke White the female Jason Castro of the competition or is Jason Castro the male Brooke White? Is it just me or were the girls' "embarrassing stories" a lot less interesting than the guys'? Finally, who do ya got going home tonight?