Because Taylor, folks, he is not well. I don't know for sure what's going on here, or what the prevailing issues are, but as with Bucky, I really do enjoy his voice if I keep my eyes shut tight, and this week...no. He's singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads," which is a song I don't mind. There's a whole Ricky Skaggs/Eddie Rabbitt/Crystal Gayle/John Denver axis of country I genuinely like, but I've always felt quite warmly toward John Denver because all through high school and college I spread rumors that my mother was a Denver groupie. When I finally told her the story -- "From 1974 to 1977, my mother was on a Rocky Mountain High she'd never forget" -- she laughed so hard chalupa came out her nose. My favorite is "Annie's Song," because I am almost too gay to function. Somebody cool needs to cover that song STAT. There's a fiddle shouldering a lot of the heavier work, because it's country, and Taylor's doing this thing I call The Mary J. Blige Explains It All For You, which is a singing move where you constantly wave your hand around, palm up, like you're showing people the housewares on offer at a Tupperware party. "Voila!" He's so, so tired, and it's like he's explaining this complicated concept about the "country roads," but the situation is direly, deceptively simple: he's on his deathbed, he sounds shitty, and his heart is not in it. It looks like someone pretending to sing while having the Avian Flu. I hope he's okay. I didn't want him to drop dead, I just wanted him to stop twitching. Apparently he did that last week -- when my TV was being hoisted by every boy I know above the crowd like in Crocodile Dundee while I downed truffles and bellinis with a very self-satisfied smirk and a parasol for the harsh winter sun -- and I missed it. The fiddler looks like the Pied Piper, with crimped lady hair.
Afterwards, he claps for himself, in the seal-like way of Paula, but does it because he's about to fall over from illness, and not from being drunk as fuck. Randy says it was a "good song for" Taylor -- with which I am in total agreement, I think it was a genius choice -- but involved a "just okay" vocal. Which is also true, and also sad, because I really could've gotten into Taylor this week. Randy says some boilerplate for the first of nine times, about how country music is mistakenly thought of as "easier," which -- yes, they are not complicated melodies, generally (unless they're the Bucky kind of country songs, which is why I love the songs he picks), but there are expected stylistic choices that are pretty demanding a lot of the time. So, on a very very shallow level, country is the easy choice, but that's only because the lyrics are generally mildly to extremely retarded, and not because you have to sing the hell out of them. And honestly, on that topic, one kind of implies the other. You don't have to be a good singer to sing -- what's complicated, lyrically? Those fucking awful Canadians -- Bare Naked Ladies songs, you just have to keep up. But a song that amounts to "naming things one might see in the country," you have to bring it. Randy has inspired a lot of talking just now, and I'm sorry about that.
“ Simon says he didn't like the song, and calls out the huge section of country music that is worthless and 'fun' and 'cutesy' and doesn't do your voice any favors because it's not about your voice, it's about weird sounds and a clashing chorus and drunk secretaries drinking themselves slutty on margarita night. ”
Paula basically agrees with me that for a person usually "so full of life and electrifying," he certainly was pitiable this week, but thinks that the song choice didn't "allow [Taylor] to shine." I'd like a happy medium between "death's door" and "psychotic break" week. Simon calls it -- to the boos of the truly overinvested and unengaged in the audience -- that it was "safe, boring, lazy" and sounded like Taylor chose it "ten seconds ago" and didn't rehearse. I'd agree, except that I was actually looking at Taylor, who is the color of light green Fiestaware right now. Simon says it "did nothing for" him, and he can't really disagree. Ryan calls Simon's love life "safe, boring, lazy," which...the rule in my house is that you don't discuss those people who are not active participants, because it gets awkward. However, I will say that once he tosses it to commercial, the camera catches Simon looking up at him with a fairly sexy grin that seems almost this close to saying, "I'll show you lazy."
Back from commercial, it's confusing like it gets sometimes when we're live, somebody yelling "I love you, Ryan!" in the audience, and Randy saying it was Paula, and Paula protesting that it wasn't, and Ryan running around like a Chihuahua, and a strange man conveniently near the main Ryan aisle down front saying he loves Ryan, and finally Ryan's like, "We're live, people," and accuses not only Paula, not only the judges, but I think the whole audience of being drunk fuckers.
Kenny says Mandisa's song has more words than any song he's ever recorded. I hope none of them is "lifestyle," or we'll never hear the end of it. Kenny then...and you can feel it coming, and your whole body shrivels in on itself...praises her for being "articulate." Oh, Kenny Rogers. Mandisa -- to me, at least -- looks better than she has in a while, horizontal macram stripes and all, and her hair is...oh, who cares. She's going home. The song? I think it's called "Any Man Of Mine" or something. If you know it, you recognized it. Bucky knows it. There's a time change halfway through that does not do great things for her voice, which is suffering again this week. She's very nasal. This might be her weakest week. Is this Shania Twain? Normally this one part of my back hurts only when I'm hearing Shania, even if I don't know it's her. Afterwards, Rachel Bilson claps, but doesn't stand, because she's too bored. Dude, I love that girl.
Randy calls it a "weird song choice" and says that the beginning "wasn't that hot" because the lower range was skidding out the whole time, and she "wasn't connecting." He praises...get this...the "last four bars," though, because she "got it together" and "showed some personality." Which is so, so stupid, but not as stupid as Paula -- the queen of only remembering the last note of any song, ever -- giving him shit about it. "The last five seconds?" I'm like, "Wait five more seconds and see if she remembers who Mandisa is." Goldfish only have fifteen-second memories, Leonora Shapiro told me, so if you drop them on the floor and it takes twenty seconds for them to die, they'd think that's all existence was. Deep, right? So when Paula's drunk, everybody is drunk, because the world is made of drunk: "You could sing the phone book, the encyclopedia. The song...I don't know...but your voice is there." Lie, lie, lie. She could not sing the phone book if she sang it that crappy. Simon tells Mandisa it was "horrible" and the stupid Pavlov "BOO" sign goes off, and there's some bullshit pre-written banter about how Simon feels bad because he always gets booed when he's "being constructive," and again -- that's not constructive. "Horrible" is not constructive any more than "if you don't like singing, stop singing" or whatever carpet-shitting nonsense he says sometimes. Actually constructive stuff earns him the same response, because these people are stupid, though, so I guess I can understand the confusion. Paula says it's because he's "boo-able," and Simon says he didn't like the song, and calls out the huge section of country music that is worthless and "fun" and "cutesy" and doesn't do your voice any favors because it's not about your voice, it's about weird sounds and a clashing chorus and drunk secretaries drinking themselves slutty on margarita night.
“ I think, in all fairness, that what's going on here is that Mandisa spreads homophobia everywhere she goes and nobody is safe because her mere presence causes boys of questionable sexuality to turn on each other like over-moisturized werewolves. ”
Ryan gets very fussy with him about "But did you like the singing?" Which is valid, because he at no point said anything about the singing, and Simon gets fussy right back, and Ryan tells him to get a dictionary and look up "constructive," and then out of nowhere -- and I do think all of this was scripted, because Ryan's response was very much like a person misreading off a cue card -- Simon says that Ryan, "with respect," is trying to "look like someone out of Desperate Housewives" -- and there's a cut to Ryan narrowing his eyes, and I take a moment to reevaluate if I still think Paul Young is a sleeper hottie, and whether I'm prepared to deal with that yet -- and then Simon goes in for the kill. "Lose the beard." And I mean, it's Simon. He's not fucking around. He knew. Because whether or not Ryan is gay, the facts are that if his possible gayness get any kind of sizable press in a given week, the week will uncover "shocking new candid photos" of him kissing some gross girl. Those are the clockwork facts. And this time around, Ryan was pictured kissing What's Left Of Teri Hatcher, and all that implies, and "beard" is a word with lots of meanings. So if you're going to make the joke anyway, and Ryan's face provides the plausible deniability, this is the week. And I love it. And Ryan, a little bit too hyper to deliver any kind of response well, snorts out, "No, Simon, but you definitely fit the bill in your baby blue powder tight sweatsuit sweater cashmere garb you've got." Which I think probably looked concise on the cue card until he fucked it up, but is still stupid, because he keeps going to the v-neck well every week and it's dried up long ago, but also: is he saying Simon is a lady? Because it's Paul Young that wears the cute v-necks, and you can quote me on that. Also turtlenecks. I think, in all fairness, that what's going on here is that Mandisa spreads homophobia everywhere she goes and nobody is safe because her mere presence causes boys of questionable sexuality to turn on each other like over-moisturized werewolves. "Where's the love?" she giggles, surveying the destruction she has wrought. Ryan once more accuses the judges of being drunk and Paula -- hilariously -- cuts accusatory and not-fake eyes at Simon. He's a mirror for us all, my dear.
Kenny tells us that Elliott has a tendency to over-sing, which is sort of true, but also what makes him awesome, which means it's not "over-singing" so much as...singing with a particular balls-out, shameless style, which I love, and which Kenny is not buying, because his palate is so refined. "If the lyric's important, sing it simply," he advises, as part of his ongoing deal where country is still a narrative tradition like the ballads of yore, even though that hasn't been true since Garth and Strait and the rest popified the entire genre into country-western, but I don't want to talk about that, because the High Fidelity police are already up my ass about sixteen ways I'm so wrong about everything, and this is not the week for me to have opinions about anything, because it's country week, and I'm with Simon: fuck it, I can't tell if you're good, because I just want you to stop. (Except, and this is a subject, clearly, of never-ending fascination for me, one Mr. Bucky Covington, who could sing the collected works of fucking -- who is really really awful? Toby -- Toby Keith to me and I'd roll over for a belly rub and fall asleep.) Kenny tells him that the whole showmanship/beautiful voice/smooth delivery thing is crap, that it's his "comfort zone," and warns him darkly: "You're not trying to impress them, you're trying to make them cry." Which I love, but in Elliott's case is bullshit, but I'm not punking out Kenny Rogers because he told them one of the most astute things I've ever heard, this week, which I'll get to a bit later.
“ Simon calls out Elliott again on his chief (and growing) issue, which is his insane nervousness and pants-shitting fear every week. Elliott admits it's a problem and can't even really explain why he's getting more and more scared as the stakes rise. Aww. That's so rough. ”
So Elliott sings "If Tomorrow Never Comes," by my boy Garth Brooks, and...sucks in exactly the same way Kenny Rogers told him to. Ouch. Well, there's some non-Kenny related carnage (bumpy thumpy notes, weird sharpnesses, strange faces), but mostly he's trying to sing it straight and fails in the boring way of which he's shown such a weakness. He Carol Burnetts at the audience, adorably, and I have to say that the Queer Eye treatment he's gotten this week is really powerful. He has a glow, and his hair is over-gelled but piece-y in a cute way, and he's rocking a pretty serious goatee that's very nice and I hope he keeps it. He still looks kind of trollish, but has crossed over into cute territory. Right up razor-close on the line -- I'm not crazy suddenly -- but definitely no longer on the far side of it. That's wonderful. Of course, he has some cultish Chris Daughtry eyes a lot of the time, which is weird in such a pre-apocalyptic death-wish song, but he's wearing super-cute shoes. I think the word for me this week, with him, is "amateurish." Which is so fucking weird, because he's the only one that isn't like that. The lovely tone is there, the strong voice, but he's using it in such a weird way that it's like he's learning to sing before your eyes. I do blame Kenny Rogers.
Elliott's adorable mother -- and now we know which side of the family provided the leprechaun blood -- claps and Randy goes nuts. "I love this song!" He calls it a great choice and then admits he was the producer on some version -- Barry Manilow's, I believe -- which causes fucking Paula Abdul to fake a snore and act retarded. It's not name-dropping if it's true and it applies, it's a valid fucking comment. She's really a "letter of the joke over the spirit of the joke" kind of girl. That's the sign -- I'm a huge apologist for her behavior a lot of times, because I love her, but Jesus -- of being a fucking moron. "It was HOT!" Randy finishes up, with the cherry on top of a sundae of falsehoods. Paula goes on and on for twenty minutes about nothing, Elliott's a breath of fresh air to the business because he's humble and understated and he knows he's great but he's cool about it, all of which is true and admirable and lovable but has nothing to do with the task at hand, and then she says that above all, he has "careless, reckless abandon."
Simon says the same applies to her, and maybe nobody in California gets that joke, which is actually way meaner than any of the Ryan/Simon sniping, because they just move along (Paula: "I know, right?") and Simon calls out Elliott again on his chief (and growing) issue, which is his insane nervousness and pants-shitting fear every week. Elliott admits it's a problem and can't even really explain why he's getting more and more scared as the stakes rise. Aww. That's so rough. Simon tells him that his appeal is largely based in his confidence and complete skill and bravery with his instrument, and without the gorgeous voice nobody would care about him one way or the other, so he needs to get it together. I agree, and also think that Kenny should be kept away from Elliott. And Ace. Ryan asks him why he's getting so freaked out these days, and Elliott can't really frame a coherent answer: "All the cameras? And the judges? And it's a lot of pressure...I guess I should...be used to it?" He giggles, and I just want to...I don't know. Make everybody in the audience fall asleep for six minutes like a fairy tale, hug the guy, tell him to cowboy up because we're live, and then make sure his breathing and heart rate are under control before I turn the lights back on. You know? He doesn't need this crap. He needs to be celebrated.
“ Kenny's intro to Ace's song goes like this: 'A great singer knows how to squeeze the note and bring passion out of it.' And that Ace is one of these great singers. Not true. ”
Simon disagrees, and gets huge cheers, because this is no different from wrestling, and it's like the annoyance of a laugh track, but expanded to the whole rainbow of emotions, and it's insulting. "Laugh here! Gay joke here! Laugh! Cry! Boo! Yay!" I remember my nanny watching some stupid shit, Family Matters or Family Ties or something, laughing uproariously with the laugh track and admitting openly that she had no idea what the joke was, but that the compulsion was too strong, and she could always get clarification on what the hilarity was actually about later, and it scared the hell out of me. Like, staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night child terror. "Who's driving this bus?" And that's how I feel about the AI studio audience a lot of the time. Anyhow. Simon disagrees and there's cheering, and Paula drunkenly sticks her finger in his face, then flops around weirdly. He says it was an excellent song choice, and the performance reminded him of Dionne Warwick. And then asks for applause for the comparison, but none of them know who that is, because they're either tweens or people with very, very short attention spans.
Ryan calls attention to the topsy-turvy world of the show tonight, how Randy's "dressed as Cupid," and Paula got booed, and "Simon shows his jealousy..." That last, neither Simon nor I understands -- does Simon want to be Dionne Warwick? Is that the joke? That's idiotic. He wants to be Whitney Houston, and just sit in a nice tiled room all day smoking crack and masturbating. And not for nothing, but answer me honestly: who doesn't? Come on. I've never tried crack, although I hear it's just great, and if your money never runs out, I think "locked in a room with crack and porn for the rest of your life" sounds fabulous, if not very productive. Anyway, off the "jealousy" comment, Paula leans over to explain to Simon -- who literally is like "What?" -- and I'm sure whatever garbled sense she's made of that stupid jab will be so much more fucking awesome than whatever snippy, stupid thing Ryan meant. I wish we could hear it.
Okay. It has been alleged that Kenny Rogers wants to marry Ace Young and make him his little lady. Not in a nice Brokeback Mountain kind of way, necessarily, but more in a Merv Griffin kind of way, like, "Never did the white knight say to me, 'Come on, baby, I'll put you up in a great condo'" kind of way. I cannot reveal who has alleged these things, and I can neither confirm nor deny that it was, in fact, me. What I can do is say that Kenny's intro to Ace's song goes like this: "A great singer knows how to squeeze the note and bring passion out of it." And that Ace is one of these great singers. Not true. He also says that Ace is "the best combination of music and singer of the whole bunch," which means nothing and yet is still untrue. What he is, is fine -- although that shit is getting old, Anna was like, "I never thought I would be tired of his face, but I am...so tired. I'm retired." (Anna is like me with the random Pretty Woman quotes for every situation, only with Almost Famous.)
“ WORD, Kenny Rogers. I'm sorry I called you a post-op antiques purveyor, and I do think your lavender sweater is just lovely, but I appreciate your wisdom, I do. ”
Randy says, "Bluesy/country, yeah?" He says over and over that it was very nice, and a good job, dawg, and Paula agrees, saying it's her niche (like Chris, and I admit that) and that she looks "sexy, hot and cool." All too true. Simon's like, "I don't know what to say anymore. That song was just so peculiar!" And Katharine...okay, to me, she was being very "we're so cute together and I'm on your level." To others, she was being an arrogant bitch. She giggles and says, "Simon, you just don't like country music! Just say it! It's okay!" And Simon nods, and Ryan tells her she nailed it, and Simon grins up at her, because they've been verging on making the joke all night, like they do every year, and they finally did it, because Bucky's up -- and last -- and Simon's not going to criticize Bucky's song choice, because to do so would be to criticize him for existing, so this is the only place that comment could go, in terms of throwing water on Simon's hateration this week, and it needed to be said. I don't know if she came up with it on her own, but I do know it fit the production perfectly, and I thought it was cute and totally in character: what are Drama girls for, if not to be precocious and think they're just too cute, and tell you the "real deal" from your knee, adoringly, with batting eyes? That's Ryan's whole shtick, and I think it's super-cute and not arrogant. But if you're not down with her whole vibe, which is six-inches-from-secret-cutting insecurity crossed with I've-only-loved-gay-boys-in-my-whole-life awkwardness crossed with being hotter than a June day in the Sahara, I believe in the hate, because that's a whole lot of bullshit to wave away so simply. If you're like me, and have spent your life surrounded by about 65% That Girl, though, she's really a shining example, way above the median in terms of being awesome, and I love her and want to have a drink with her. ["I don't like Katharine very much, but I had zero problem with that comment. Lord knows it needed making." -- Sars] Kicked to commercial -- Bucky's up, and last, on country night, and my slowly disintegrating sense of self is probably going to just roll over at that point -- Ryan starts yelling at Kat off screen about how (I think) he tells Simon the same exact thing every year. Which he does. Which is why she said it.
Bucky and Kenny have a conversation about something, and Kenny tells him to fucking stop mumbling or the song will make no sense, and I start wondering if I rate as good a condo as Ace, because: WORD. Oh, I wanted to say the neat thing that Kenny said. Basically, that we are all three people: the person we are, the person the audience thinks we are, and the person we're portraying. Forgive me if I'm oversimplifying, or misquoting, but I do tend to accumulate stuff I think is true without regard to author or date of publication, which is why I sucked at multiple choice in Sociology classes, but rocked the essays. So anyway he went on and said that, the more those three Venn circles overlap, the more successful you'll be. Which is...questionable advice to Bucky, but I'm not sure which of the Idols quoted him on this, so I just wanted to mention it. If this were The Apprentice, I'd give you some kind of self-important speech or quiz about applying that to your own life, but come on. You know what I'm saying and that's not the shtick here, but giant WORD, Kenny Rogers. I'm sorry I called you a post-op antiques purveyor, and I do think your lavender sweater is just lovely, but I appreciate your wisdom, I do.
“ If people are looking to Simon, or Kenny Rogers, or yours truly, to figure out what they should think about the performances they just saw, they have bigger problems than what they think about what happens on this stupid game show. ”
And Bucky sings "The Best I Ever Had" by somebody or another, probably Keith Urban again, and there's a whole internet available if you want to make sure. And it's just what I've come to expect from Bucky: totally fucking awesome, with a complicated and lovely, yearning melody, and I love it. (With the obligatory eyeball caveat, so you don't think I've flipped. It's possible to love what somebody does without wanting to make out with them, just like it's possible to think somebody is cute without thinking they're good. Bucky is good, and good at singing.) I will say this: Josh Gracin didn't make we want to listen to country music: he made me want to make out with Josh Gracin. Whatever the hell Matt Rogers was doing, it didn't have anything to do with my musical choices in life. But Bucky makes me think maybe country music isn't so bad. And if you knew me, you'd realize that's like me saying that Jocelyn Wildenstein makes me think that plastic surgery might not be so sad. He also picks songs with melodies I really like, and I think would be fun to sing, like in the shower. And he has such a beautiful voice, country or not, even though he tricks it up so much with that stuff, I can't say I know what he would sound like otherwise. But it doesn't matter -- the country singers I really respect are the ones that only listen to music I like, and don't really like country, but still know where their gifts lie. I say all of this because I want you to understand that it might be mean, but it doesn't take away from his incredible talent when I say that if he sang behind a curtain, I would have a total crush on him. Which would be unspeakably awkward for us both, so thank God for TV. You don't have to give everything a five-by-five to prove that you love something. Nothing is perfect and you're on a fast train to fucking yourself up if you think that anything is. Better to be less lazy and more honest than start with the pedestal right off the bat. I think Kelly Clarkson is just the best little thing, but I don't want to make out with her, and complaining that I'd love her more if she were a guy would be...really fucked up. Same thing with Bucky: I think he's the best thing this show's got going, but I don't want to make out with him or look directly at him, and complaining about that is fun but has nothing to do with how great he is at singing. Which I can do both of, because it's not a thumbs-up/thumbs-down, ever. Or else this recap would be two pages long.
Randy says he "started off out of tune," which is true, but says he "got it together" and made a good (perfect, actually) song choice for himself. Paula tells him that he and Kellie rocked, but makes the mistake of thinking it's mostly or solely because they were in their element. "Wear that hat proud," she says, maybe trying to be funny, but it's telling that I didn't even notice. Simon admits again that he's "not an expert on this kind of music," but says it sounded "okay" to him. Which, if Bucky's getting the pimp spot this week, Simon's gotta downplay the love, especially after the Paris incident earlier tonight. So I guess I agree. Again, Ryan points out that Simon's here to judge the singing, not the songs, but I would say -- sure, but he's also not here to provide the final word. He's not the voice of authority, and he's fully admitting this week that he's biased, so I don't see the problem. If people are looking to Simon, or Kenny Rogers, or yours truly, to figure out what they should think about the performances they just saw, they have bigger problems than what they think about what happens on this stupid game show. You're allowed to disagree with Simon, Ryan. He keeps telling you.