American Idol: The Year You Were Born Identity Crisis

Thank goodness for the internet.

Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to catch Adam Lambert’s take on “Mad World” after the show went WAY long and my DVR failed to tape any part of his performance. It’s not that I’m the biggest Adam fan in the world — I was just annoyed that I’d sat through an entire episode only to completely miss the one person who is always, um, unpredictable. I thought taking out the stupid judges’ intro would help squeeze everything into an hour, but the time that was saved was gobbled up almost immediately by the judges and Ryan displaying their cute, (not quite)baby pictures. (It still wasn’t nearly as bad as the time my DVR cut out right before the season 7 “Idol” winner was announced last year.)

Either way, while I wasn’t quite as orgasmic in my response to Adam’s performance as the judges and everyone in the audience, I thought it was the certainly the best performance of the evening. More importantly, (Gary Jules’ version of)“Mad World” was a 1,000,000% better song choice than the stupid “Play that Funky Music (White Boy)” and his subdued, almost-eerie take is always preferable to my ears than when he goes into prancing/screechy mode. If anything, I enjoyed his pre-performance package — with his dad hilariously deadpanning that Adam wasn’t into sports (shocker!) — almost as much as the song.

The show was running spectacularly late, so only one judge got to speak. To the surprise of no one, that was Simon, who simply gave Adam a standing ovation. If there’d been more time, maybe someone would’ve brought up the botched falsetto note at the end. (Then again, probably not.) Either way, since it was pretty much his first botched note of the competition, I think we can agree to let it go.

Unfortunately, the news for another contestant that has pretty much hit all his notes during the finals wasn’t nearly as good.

Kris Allen struggled in every way possible last night. His horn-heavy arrangement overshadowed his guitar-playing charm. “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” turned out to be a redundant, boring song choice. Most importantly, since he was in that cursed mosh pit area where Matt Giraud performed last week, he was completely surrounded by teenage girls/zombies reaching up to him. That had the unfortunate side effect of blocking his ass from my girlfriend’s view (the REAL tragedy of the performance). I’m worried for him since his song and performance were thoroughly forgettable, and because he performed early. I like to think America will come to his rescue, but this is a country that’s placed Allison Iraheta in the bottom 3. (TWICE!) Oh well, at least he’s still hot. (Not you, Simon.)

Despite just slamming America for putting Allison in the bottom 3, (TWICE!) I actually didn’t really feel her performance that much this week. Sure, her vocals on “I Can’t Make You Love Me” were on-point (as usual) and she did a good job of connecting with the lyrics for someone so young (yikes, people born in the 90s make me feel old). However, I still felt like the song was a bit too-old fashioned for her and was actually kind of a downer. (I get that it’s not a happy song, but still.) More distressingly, Simon, once again, largely ignored her vocals and went off on a rant about how she’s not likable when, in fact, she’s proven to be one of the more spontaneous and quotable (“I’m not, like, cutting myself”) contestants this season.

Another one of the most quotable contestant this season has been pianist/part-time punk Scott McIntyre. Unfortunately, that’s the best thing he has going for him, because he whole music thing isn’t going quite as well.

Yes, it’s kind of cool that he can play the electric guitar (even when it doesn’t really make sense), but my main problem with him is that (last week excepted) he and I seem to have polar opposite musical taste. I hated his song choice even more than Simon did. Then I realized that maybe I don’t so much hate the songs, so much as I hate the lame, substandard way Scott sings them. (Ok, I hate “Mandolin Rain” no matter who sings it.) That being said, I expect him to advance to next week based on the strength of a bunch of people thinking that his busting out an electric guitar was cool.

So maybe that means Lil Rounds (pictured, right) will probably make her long overdue appearance in the bottom 3. It’s getting sadder and sadder to watch this girl every week. Not just because it’s becoming harder to believe the judges’ “you’re a terrific singer” rhetoric (despite LOTS of evidence to the contrary), but because Lil appears to be having an identity crisis every week. As she took the stage, I wondered, “Who’s she going to pretend to be this week?” Sure enough, it was (a suckier version of) Tina Turner, right down to the walk. Unfortunately, she did a better job matching the walk than she did the singing.

My sources tell me the creepy bald guy at the start of the show was The Observer from “Fringe” (which followed “Idol.”) I think maybe next week they should have someone from Fox’s “Dollhouse” — a show about blank slate human beings that get implanted with a different personality each week — when Lil Rounds sings.

Another contestant having an identity crisis (on a much smaller scale) is Anoop Desai. Everything about his personality and what we saw early in the competition said he should excel in up tempo numbers, but where he’s really shone in the finals is with quiet, contemplative performances. I’d put his sweet, confident take on “True Colors” above “Ooh Baby”, but below “Always on my Mind.” Simon said it “wasn’t fantastic”, but how crazy can you go with “True Colors”?

The one thing I’d say is that, if Anoop wants to shed the “I’m just a college guy/wannabe pop star” image, he (and the show) probably should stop bringing up the University of North Carolina at every possible turn. Honestly: do you have any idea where any other contestant from American Idol’s last seven seasons went to college? More importantly, do you care?

Matt Giraud shied away from rock and roll and went back into the “soulful” box the judges like to keep him in with great success. His “Part Time Lover” was the second best performance of the night, in my opinion, but also fell victim to the time-crunch at the end of the hour, so the judges didn’t really praise it properly. I like how he slowed down Stevie Wonder’s up-tempo number and I thought his riffs and runs were mostly right on-point. If you’ll allow me to channel Simon here and talk about clothes, I’d tell him to ditch the hat unless he WANTS to come off looking like a second-rate Justin Timberlake.

Finally, there’s Danny Gokey, who actually performed first. While I thought he delivered his best vocal performance in weeks, the slow, odd arrangement sounded like it would’ve been considered unhip in 1980, the year Danny was born. Simon summed up his performance thusly: “Good in the beginning, then lazy, then terrific, so it was great.” I responded thusly: “Huh?” Doesn’t Simon’s equation sound more like it would add up to “pretty good”, “respectable” or “very good” (at best)?

So what’d you think of this episode? Does Randy know that Mary J. Blige and Keyshia Cole were NOT recording music in the mid-80’s? How can I convince my girlfriend Erica to bust out her killer Kara DioGuardi impersonation for us all? Finally, who do you think is going home tonight? (I have a bad feeling it’ll be Allison — leading to a judges’ save!?)