American Idol: Summer Night

Once again I didn’t expect to like the week’s theme for “American Idol” and yet again I was pleasantly surprised.

This trend — which has also meant that themes I thought would be interesting (“Songs of the Cinema”) turned out to be bombs — has become almost as predictable as the fact that Adam Lambert will wow us next week with a manic performance after slicking his hair back and slowing things down last night.

When I heard this week we’d be “treated” to “Disco Night”, I rolled my eyes. Why would the show force the Idols — some of whom get criticized for not being current — to perform songs from a much-reviled genre and from a very specific period of time (late 1970’s – early 1980’s)? Due to these constrictions, we got the obligatory Bee Gees tunes, and not one, not two, but THREE Donna Summer songs.

The wonderful surprise was that almost every one of the seven finalists (except for Danny Go-karao-key and Lil “I’m Every Woman and No Woman at the Same Time” Rounds) performed these tunes in such a way that they were barely recognizable as “disco” which, ironically, turned out to be the saving grace for “Disco Night.”

Let’s just get Danny Gokey and Lil Rounds out of the way, because I feel like I could copy/paste my comments about their performances from the past month and they would be applicable to last night’s show.

Once again, Danny sounded great a good deal of the time during “September” (though I defer to more musically-inclined people to tell me whether Kara’s right about him always being “pitch perfect”), but the performance was nothing special or innovative. It was just solid. It’s getting to the point where “solid” is not good enough for someone Paula anointed as a finalist last night.

At least Danny mostly has the good sense to keep his trap shut during the judges’ critiques. After what seemed like the 20th straight week of underwhelming work and crushing unoriginality (this week Lil played the role of Chaka Khan in “I’m Every Woman”) Lil once again back talked the judges by insisting that she had fun on stage. I mean, it’s great that Lil is having fun on stage, but I doubt many of the 20 million people watching (other than her indignant parents) share the sentiment.

How bad has it gotten for Lil Rounds? Her back talk to the judges (“I thought I did great; I had fun!”) has become as predictable and unoriginal as her performances. The only bright side is that my girlfriend Erica unveiled a solid Lil Rounds impersonation that’s not quite up to par with her Kara DioGuardi impression, but still pretty good.

Let’s move to the other end of the spectrum with Adam Lambert, Allison Iraheta and Kris Allen, who completely reinvented their tunes.

I kinda felt like smacking Simon when he acted surprised, saying he’d expected Adam to come out in full, FABULOUS disco glory. Anyone with a brain has picked up on Mr. Lambert’s pattern and knew it was Adam’s turn to show us his soft side. All that stuff aside, he delivered another amazing vocal with a ballad-y version of “If I Can’t Have You.” While he was VERY good (but not so good that he made me cry like Paula) I thought his arrangement was a tad sluggish, and I’d still rank this performance below Adam’s work on “Tracks of my Tears” and “Mad World.”

I’d also rank his performance below Kris Allen and Allison Iraheta’s work. Sure, no one can out sing Adam, but I loved the innovation and swagger that Kris and Allison, respectively, brought to their performances.

In fact, Kris was pretty up front about being out of his element during “Disco Night.” That didn’t stop him from taking a song about a woman with a “great work ethic” (“She Works Hard for the Money”) and turning it into something that suited his musical style, while actually highlighting the songs lyrics. Out of all the finalists, Kris is the one (more so than schizo-Adam) whose future track as a recording artist I can see 100% clearly. So someone please explained to me why Simon spent more time asking Kris about his potential cross-dressing habits than he did praising his work.

Allison (pictured, right) would actually be a close second. She brought her patented rocker grrl vibe to the overplayed “Hot Stuff” and made it sound like something completely new. Randy and Kara inexplicably slammed the arrangement, but I think the slowed down tempo (and generous flame action on the screen behind her) suited Allison perfectly. Also, that final note was hella fierce.

That leaves Anoop and Matt battling to stay off the double elimination tandem bike that Lil Rounds is riding around.

Given the incredible swell of positive emotion after his save last week, I actually think Matt is going to be around next week. He sang “Staying Alive” (judges’ save reference!) and sorta updated the “Saturday Night Fever” (not “Saturday Night Live”, Kara) classic. It kinda sounded like “Staying Alive 2000.” (And yes, I meant to say “2000” not “2009.”) Unfortunately, as was the case last week, the song started off very strong, but began to fall apart towards the end as Matt began riffing like there was no tomorrow.

I still say he’ll have enough to outlast Anoop, who was burdened by the absolute cheesiest arrangement of the night during Donna Summer’s “Dim the Lights.” I thought he sounded great during the slower portion of the song in the beginning. Once the song sped up, the performance became kinda stupid, despite the fact that Anoop looked like he was having fun for a change (until that bum last note). I understand why Anoop wanted to show us he could do ballads (which he’s shown) AND up-tempo, but he just came up a bit short last night. That being said, this was NOT his worst performance of the finals, Simon. (That would be “Beat It.”) Oh well, at least he got a new haircut and some scruffy facial hair out of it.

So what’d you think of this episode? Should Adam switch up his routine next week or is this a case of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t’ fix it”? Why does Randy feel the need to tell people on a singing competition that they can sing? Finally, who do you think is going home? (I’m thinking it’ll be Lil and Anoop.)