By Joe R
Ryan Seacrest is somehow under the impression that we still remember what Michael Johns looked like, much less continue to be traumatized by his "shocking" ouster last week. Really, America? You were honestly that attached to him in the first place? No matter, though, as Mariah Carey is here to make things all better. I'm being totally serious, this shit better be good.
We get the traditional mentor video package which tracks Mariah's journey from curly hair to straight and back again. Suddenly I'm longing for "Shake It Off" to replace Ruben celebrating the contestants home as this season's kiss-off song. It'd certainly be less maudlin. Mariah starts us off on what will end up being the evening's most unlikely theme, saying that she's approaching this mentor gig from the perspective of "an artist, a singer, and a songwriter." Look, I'm no snob when it comes to Mariah Carey, but even I'm going to have to draw a line at appreciating her as a songwriter, okay? Back on the stage, Ryan and Simon give Randy shit for his years and years of Mariah name-dropping finally coming to a head tonight. Ryan also basically orders Randy to not even try it with the "You can't live up to Mariah" stuff this week, seeing as it's a producer-mandated theme and all. Randy will heed this advice about 50% of the time, not to ruin the suspense for you or anything.
First up is David Archuleta, who will be singing "When You Believe." Yes, the only Mariah song that can be connected to an animated movie based on the Bible, that's what David's singing. Try to hide your shock. Mariah's advice to him, as it will be through much of the night, comes across a degree or two more control-freaky than it does when other mentors try to suggest key changes and such. It makes me appreciate her more as a musician, while at the same time making me worried about what happens if her latte is placed on the wrong table or something. As for the performance: vintage Archuleta. Which means a whole lot of making you understand how deeply he's feeling the song, with the eyes closed and the arm-clutching. It also means an unimpeachable vocal performance, this time full of runs and accoutrements and a bunch of Mariah-appropriate not-singing-the-melody stuff. He's good. There's also some business with leather pants, I am given to understand, but as with the whole season-long lip-licking extravaganza, I didn't really notice because I am not a creepy, creepy perv man. Randy annoys me right off the bat as he talks about how weird it's going to be to see boys singing girls songs tonight (you'd think after years of working with Whitney, Mariah, and Celine he'd be used to the concept of drag queens by now), but he thought David worked it out. Paula beams a ray of sunshine directly from her ass, as usual. Simon gets a dig in about what a predictably "Up With Archuleta" song choice that was, but he's back to stroking David's shiny hair as the prospective winner. Then Ryan -- who is in Super Duper Mother Hen mode tonight -- takes the stage and makes sure David's eating right and taking his Flintstones chewables and such. Then David's like, "Sorry, I don't do drugs," and runs off to tell his dad.
After the break, Carly joins Ryan by the cola monitors, continuing the charade that this season now has a giant Michael-Johns-shaped hole in it. Man, if that guy was the life of this season's particular party? Remember when there were actual fun people on the show? Remember when there was Blake and Chris and Jordin and Melinda and Gina and how you imagined they had fun and vibrant lives off-camera? ...Oh, right, that was just me. Anyway, Carly hasn't endured her weekly breakdown yet, so she's still pretty fun with Mariah, as she tells us MC was like "a big sunshine ray." Carly doesn't mention that it's because of the giant key light that follows her at all times. Carly will be singing "Without You" because fucking of course she is. God damn it, Carly. Way to take the most predictable choice and also the most doomed to failure. I blame Randy Jackson for at least half of this, because he's the asshole who kept yelling at her to sing these songs and nothing but these songs, but Carly needs to have enough backbone and personal identity to resist capitulating to that all the time. Because these are the songs that have sunk her like a stone. It's not even a terrible performance, but it's underwhelming and unremarkable. Not only in comparison to Mariah's version, but is there still a rule that you can't sing something that Kelly Clarkson killed on this show during her season? It should be. Poor Carly, you guys. Just getting steamrolled by life, again and again. Even Tattoo Face in the audience is like, "Ohhhh, they're not gonna like this." Randy praises the song choice (asshole) but criticizes the low notes. Paula's like, "Well at least you didn't break your voice into a million pieces this week." Simon is also a dick enough to have wanted to hear this song from her all along, but he didn't think she lived up to it. He still thinks she's caught up in her own head, though Carly makes a point not to have a messy breakdown on stage this week. Which is either progress or else she held on with her fingernails until the cameras went off.
up is Syesha, like I have the patience for her crap tonight. Mariah greets her with the fixed smile and slow-mo embrace that comes with confronting someone who's a little too much like you for your own comfort. Syesha sings "Vanishing," a song I didn't think I knew but it turns out I think I might. Either that, or else Mariah's "songwriting" leans more toward the familiar than even I thought. It's a very Syesha performance (I'm sorry, this is the point in the season where everyone's styles have become so fixed that I'm not able to say much more than that). I don't know what it is with Syesha's performances. She's not exactly precocious, she doesn't seem like a kid playing dress-up exactly, but the perfunctory nature of these big diva numbers add up to something like a...cabaret act. Simon! I finally understand! Randy shows uncharacteristic restraint in calling the performance very, very "good," which is probably as accurate as anything. Paula thinks the semi-obscure song choice was a good idea, but Simon and I disagree on that one. Familiarity is Syesha's friend at this stage of the game. Also, and this applies to Carly and also to Future Kristy Lee: it'd have killed you guys to go for something up-tempo to keep the audience awake? The guys pretty much had to deal with the ballads, and Brooke has no business dealing with motion of any kind, but the other three really could have done the hour a lot of good with some "Fantasy" or "Honey" or something. Hook a recapper up, girls.
After the break, Brooke relays her sad story about having to miss her sister's wedding, which...yeah, that would suck, I have to admit. Particularly if she gets eliminated this week, which...well, I'll get to that in a minute. Mariah actually wrote "Hero" for Gloria Estefan, originally, or so she tells us. And then, what, she yanked it back once she thought it would be a super #1 hit? Just when you thought those VH1 Divas concerts couldn't have gotten more intense. So that's what Brooke will be singing, to my great disappointment. When you're as white-bread as Brooke, you really can't afford to go down the "Hero" road. She takes it to the piano, "Let It Be" style, and against all odds it starts out really well, if pretty much identical to any other Brooke-ified songs from this season. That being said, about forty seconds into the performance, the wheels start to come off. She blows a couple notes, and the bridge sounds too flat, and the nerves start showing on her face, and all of a sudden that stage and that piano are looking awfully big and Brooke White is looking awfully small. It's weird to see a performance shrink like that before your very eyes. By the end, it looks more talent show than anything Brooke's done all season. Not her worst performance, but this is a bad time to be this unimpressive. Randy noticed how the bridge went all haywire, too, and of course Brooke cannot help herself and says -- for the billionth time this season -- that this was a difficult and ill-fitting genre for her. I feel her, what with the big diva songs going up against her limited vocal range, but welcome to half the people on the show this season. Paula praises the "unplugged version" of the song, which I guess is very different from Mariah's version with the big electric guitar solo in the middle. Paula calls it a "brave" arrangement which...stop it, judges, come on. It's not brave for Brooke to perform the song in the only style she knows (which Simon actually does acknowledge). It's not brave for her, or for David Cook when he does the same, or for anybody else. At best I'd give you that Castro's weird-ass ukulele arrangements are "brave" in the same way that, like, Bai Ling's fashion sense is brave, but overall you'd think a week after Idol Gives Back, they'd have retired the term "brave" to refer to any of the performances, just on general principle. Anyway. Simon embarks on a very tortured hamburger metaphor that gets dragged out for ever and ever, with Ryan flailing around for a few long minutes trying to make hay of it, all the while Brooke stands there looking like an idiot. Well done, morons.
Kristy Lee is , and she'll also be doing a song I've never heard before. Luckily it's a bland ballad, so I'll be able to catch up on some of the sleep I've been missing lately wondering if I should really express the fact that I kind of want Kristy Lee to win this whole show. It's kind of like the Pickler thing two years ago, where I'm finding it difficult to root for anybody, and since KLC manages to have as little respect for the show as I do, that makes her someone I want to stick around for a while. Of course, performances like this don't help at all. Vocally, she's just fine, and it fits the twang in her voice nicely, but this is powerfully boring stuff and not at all the kind of trainwrecky goodness (or shameless cynicism) that could make me appreciate Kristy Lee on an ironic level. So I guess it's back to rooting for David Cook, I guess. Randy thought she stepped up on the final note. Paula thinks she's totally diabolical (eh, not this week she's not) and thinks she could have a hit with that song. And Simon though she did decently enough given a theme that didn't suit her (though his comments sound more negative than that).
After the break, Ryan's in the audience wearing a silly hat and sitting to Ramiele. This is how I picture his weekends, when he's not busy hosting a red carpet somewhere. Anyway, David Cook is , and he "surprised" Mariah by choosing "Always Be My Baby." I'm not sure which Mariah Carey song would have been a better fit for David, so I don't know where the surprise comes from, but more importantly: "Always Be My Baby" is my sister's favorite Mariah song, I'm fairly certain, so Liz Reid, this portion of the recap goes out to you. David works the song out on his guitar, and Mariah can't help but trill along with it, which is kind of cool to see. Mariah's kind of psyched at the idea that someone else might be able to make a go with this song in a whole other style. I have to say I agree with her, because once again I find myself completely onboard with the whole David Cook thing. We've had our rough spots, but here I am again, putting down the remote and not typing anything and just enjoying the performance. As far as I know, this isn't an arrangement he cribbed off of anyone else, so I get to praise the arrangement here, which is of course bombastic and dramatic and has a great build to it. The judges, of course, think it's the bravest brave that ever braved, which we've already covered. Randy thinks he's the most album-ready of the bunch, which is true but which also reminds me of why I have to enjoy David while I can, while he's covering old songs in new and fun ways, because once he gets to make his very own Daughtry album, I'm going to lose interest, I think. Paula, in perhaps the best moment of the night, says she could see that song on a movie soundtrack right now. Which probably earned a whole lot of scoffing across the country, but from where I was sitting, a) yeah it could, and b) that would be fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, your Love Theme From Iron Man. Simon begins his comment saying "It was like coming out of karaoke hell..." and of the course the dumbfuck audience starts booing because they don't understand things like context and tone of voice and logical progression of words and are too busy wondering where Barack Obama gets off being so elitist to hear what Simon's building to. But of course the payoff is that David broke free of that karaoke hell into the best performance of the night. The crowd goes nuts and David ecstatic and he starts crying, which is a combination of a billion things including his brother being sick, and Ryan Seacrest being many things but not a dummy zeroes in on this as an excuse to touch David a whole heck of a lot. Having sufficiently choked up both contestant and recapper, we head into the final commercial break.