The 3 Gs of American Idol: Week 2, Part 2

The 3 Gs of American Idol

In a departure from our normal content, we will be guiding you through this season of American Idol from The A Cappella Blog’s perspective. We’re going to do this through the 3 Gs format.

Great/Good: Represents my thoughts on the best performance(s) of the night—these are the star-makers, the tearjerkers, the ones we’re all going to remember.

Gone: Represents my thoughts on the contestant(s) who I think is most likely to be going home (not necessarily the one I think should be going home).

Give it a second look: Represents the act(s) you might not remember, or that we might not have expected much from, but which delivered just the same, and deserve another listen.

Here are my thoughts from tonight’s episode:

GOOD

Crystal Bowersox sees the light: What can I say? Every now and again, the judges nail it. This was a star-making performance that all but erased the hospital-trip-sympathy votes she was going to get anyway, replacing them with legit fan support for a talented musician. While not among my personal favorites, objectively speaking, this was quite possibly the best we’ve seen from any contestant this season.

Lilly Scott gets something Cooke-ing: Against all Idol logic, this oddity keeps on rolling with another surprising and very, very good performance. Lilly’s consistent, and has yet to make a real mistake. It’s unfortunate that all the weird girls seemed to have arrived on the show at the same time—from Crystal, to Lilly, to Siobhan to (to a lesser extent) Didi, because they’re going to cut into each other’s slices of the voter pie. Nonetheless, another standout week for Lilly.

GONE
Kiss Lacey Brown goodbye: Lacey is sweet and likeable, and yet still just one step behind the curve of the rest of a strong class of female contestants. She was lucky to stay alive last week, and while she was better this time around, she just wasn’t good enough to make a case for staying again.

Paige Miles prepares to walk away: There wasn’t anything wrong with Paige’s performance, per se. She just isn’t great, and lacks both a clear “character” and clear demographic pull in this competition. That’s a deadly competition when we’ve got four contestants going home per week.

GIVE IT A SECOND LOOK
Haeley Vaughn climbs toward credibility: OK, so “The Climb” was nowhere near as good as it should have been, given it’s exactly the sort of young, fun, and inspirational song that Haeley should be knocking out of the park, particularly at this stage of the competition. Nonetheless, the performance was far better than the judges gave it credit for, and Haeley deserves to stay on the show for at least a bit longer.