The 3 Gs of American Idol Week 9

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.

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
Lee Dewyze plays what we want to hear so we can disregard the rest. While most of this season’s contestants have gone downhill, or at least stagnated in the competition, Lee’s the one guy who still seems to be making strides forward. This may have been his best showing yet with a soulful rendering of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.” It sounded good, there was some real emotion, and he made it his own—you can’t ask for much more from an Idol performance.

GONE
I’ll try to make this kind and clear, I just hope Tim Urban can find better days… not on national television OK, so it’s inspiring song week. So what would happen if you took a somewhat inspiring song like “Better Days” by The Goo Goo Dolls and stripped it of all its melodic intensity—you know—50% of why it’s an inspirational song? Well you’d end up with Tim’s performance, that’s what. I think Tim’s personal likeability has finally run its course, and this will be his last week on the show.

GIVE IT A SECOND LOOK
Siobhan Magnus may not have pulled off a miracle, but it wasn’t that bad… This was an awkward week for Siobhan, a contestant who has built her niche around off-beat performances of off-beat songs. Her performance of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston’s “When You Believe” had no weird factor, but did offer up one of the best pure musical performances of the night. On a night when there were no obvious song selections for Siobhan, she stuck to the fundamentals and executed the heck out of them for a performance worth taking in twice.