Ooh, The Year You Were Born! That takes the sting off not being able to see Ryan's tie bar that he's been obsessing about all day on twitter. I love Year You Were Born. If I were on this show, first of all I would not be on this show, but if I were -- and I couldn't do "Magnet & Steel" because that's what I always say, because it is the most perfect song ever written -- I would sing...
Jesus God 1978 was queer. I knew there was disco and shit, but man, I was born in the gayest year of all time. I can't believe anybody had time to conceive me, what with all this nonsense. I thought it was going to be like, tube socks, and Jodie Foster wearing lots of shorts. No wonder I loved Swingtown so much. Check it, in one poor naïve year you have: "Got To Be Real," "I Love the Nightlife," "I'm Every Woman," "Last Dance," "Le Freak," "MacArthur Park," "Shake Your Groove Thing," and (obligatorily) "YMCA." That's just... That's like Liberace and how nobody knew, and you look at your grandma like, "But for real, though?"
"Fire" by the Pointer Sisters, "If I Can't Have You," "Love Is In The Air," something called "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" that I don't even want to know about. All of those are out, duh. Well, except maybe "MacArthur Park" because the lyrics are so Sanjaya. Then there's a more generalized gayness, like "Don't Cry Out Loud," "Hopelessly Devoted To You," "Only The Good Die Young" and "She's Always A Woman," and "You Needed Me," but those are not the kind of gay we like, so they're out. Then there are songs I feel that I could rock, but I would get dinged for inability to commit or connect to the song, probably by Kara: "Baby Come Back," "Heartless" by Heart because I ♥ it, "Hot Child In The City," and "I Can't Stand The Rain." Those would be doable if my real choices were taken away, by the other contestants (whose age would also require the rules to change to even be on this show).
"Can We Still Be Friends," and that Steely Dan song "FM," I could handle, but if you're going schmoopy you might as well sing "Don't Cry Out Loud" and have somebody push you around in the stage in a wheelchair, and I think I would need to dance this mess around a little bit. So that's "Werewolves Of London," which lies outwith my vocal range somewhat, and "Take A Chance On Me," because 1978 did turn at least one person gay, and that person is me.
"Just What I Needed" is kind of a yelling song, but I can think of a few arrangements that would work; "Mr. Blue Sky" has become an intensely personal song for me, and I wouldn't feel comfortable singing it in public, to the degree that you will ever catch me singing songs in public. So I guess it's Meat Loaf, "Paradise By The Dashboard Light." Which is fine, but I really wish it was that song about offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses because I'm obsessed with that one. What is it called, where is the information?
"You Took the Words Right Out Of My Mouth." And YES, it's from 1978, and so we have found our answer. That is a very Adam Lambert song to sing, but it's the only thing about 1978 I can apparently handle. I hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those recaps where I can't stop bringing up werewolves. We haven't had one of those in awhile.
Randy was adorable as a child, in a bowtie, and Ryan keeps talking in his "I love babies" voice; Kara's gorgeous ass came from somewhat humble beginnings, lookwise; Paula looks exactly the way she always has and always will, technology willing; Simon's downstage drinking a piña colada, and his picture is adorable; the gays all moan and gasp about how adorable Ryan was as a kid. There should be a war between people who look the same as when they were babies and those that don't, and whoever the victor is should get to fight Frankie Muniz in hand-to-hand combat.
Gokey (1980) was, if possible, even cuter as a child. He was also, if possible, even more impressed with himself. We get some more of that creepy Danny-love footage from his fam, and then he sings "Stand By Me." The original is sort of sweeping and grand, despite being overused, but this version is pretty much unbearably Whitney, and he milks it for every single showy phrasing and held and ornamented, slow and obnoxious note before it goes into egregious soft-jazz bongo mode. And as long as we're in denial about what's going on onscreen: Danny's outfit is awesome, in a sort of couture hitman way: shiny military/tux jacket, bright fuchsia shirt, and black necktie.
It's all about his vocal talent and whatever, to an absolutely irritating degree, but the talent is there, so way to go I guess. The only good thing about this Delilah-would-yawn performance is Paula, who not only looks great but is dancing in a not entirely ridiculous manner. Gokey makes Paula more likeable because he turns your brain off, and she's only scary when she's trying to think. Kara agrees that the arrangement was at first weird, but then definitely awesome. Paula says he's set the bar for the show -- which is true, which is sad -- and Simon laughs at her for saying the musical bastardy was brilliant. He liked the beginning, thought the boring middle was lazy, and the end was great. Agreed, but I don't see how it matters: "You did unoriginal uninspired crap really well" is the old show.
Did you know Anna Faris and Chris Pratt got engaged? That's the biggest thing I learned today. What a lucky pair of ladies. Chris Pratt is male perfection. up is Kris, who is already cuter than any baby, talks a bit about what they did on their day off. He went to the beach and rode the Ferris wheel, because that's how he rolls. Then the "instructor" [sic] of the Ferris wheel gave him a free ride and asked him to say hi to Adam, which cracks Ryan right up: "So you can't wait to ride it again, huh?" Sounds like this carnival was in 1978, if you know what I'm saying.
June 21, 1985. That makes him, what, a Gemini (Cancer cusp). It's okay to be that needy when you have the kind of Jon Hamm shit going on that makes people give you things. Singing "All She Wants To Do Is Dance," really? This should be odd. Actually, that's kind of awesome, with a big horn section and electric guitar doing minimal duty, shifted into that stonery Jack Johnson/Jamiroquai time signature he loves so much. I do not like this version of this song, but his voice is impeccable, and the mouth quirk thing he does is well-served by it. I wish he would sing some insanely muscular song like Matt G keeps trying to do, I'd like to see his version of that kind of thing.
Kara says she was excited about the up-tempo change for him this week, but says it went to a "jazz funk homework" assignment. I love her metaphors, because they're always so right, she's like the anti-Paula: it's like somebody gave him that song and made him go arrange it. Paula says she liked the changes, and reminds us that he's the most likeable person ever on that stage. Simon says that while he is likeable, that was indulgent and boring and forgettable. All true. Some lady screams, "You're hot!" and Simon goes, "So am I, it's not about that!" Nice. He compares Kris to a guitarist who likes singing, and calls the song choice "stupid." Ryan calls Simon indulgent, predictable, and "hot." And his hair is perfect!
October 20, 1984 makes Lil (not L'il, her mother stresses) a late Libra, which is why she dresses like that. And what's she singing? "What's Love Got To Do With It?" Oh, this is going to be awesome. Whole new Lil... And yeah, you've got her blasting her legs and intense ass like Tina would, dramatic makeup and a very pretty bobbed wig, bedazzled cankles, pretty much black leather everywhere else. Hopefully this will be wild, I've been needing a moment from her.
But no, it's boring, quiet, weirdly mixed synthpop, with the vocals set too low. I bet that sounded a lot more overwhelming in the theatre, because from here it just sounded like everything else. You can see her working, but it doesn't sound all that spectacular. Paula zaps her for staying in her box and still trading on her very good impression of a very good singer, as uncreatively as possible, in fact calling her "beautiful karaoke." Simon calls it a ghastly copycat performance that mimicked Tina's moves, stylings with a general exhaustion. Paula points out that's what she said, but Simon points out that he makes sense and she doesn't. Kara talks about the leap from "singer" to -- you guessed it -- "artist." She also criticizes Lil's lower range, which did suffer. Ryan asks Lil to respond to their advice and how she apparently doesn't understand it because they say the same things every week and so does she. She swears that she will be doing something interesting, one of these days.
Anoop straight up admits that he was classless and an embarrassment to himself and his family last week, which is surprising and pretty awesome. We'll see if he gets his gold star back. He was born 20 December 1986, an only child and a Sagittarius -- with the same birthday as David Cook -- which explains basically the whole incident. I love Anoop's parents because they totally leapfrog the whole "Are you calling my parents adorable because they aren't Caucasian and/or have accents" thing -- what I call the Hiro Effect -- by being personally adorable by every measure.
So here comes "True Colors." Right away that's a good call, because it's the voice that does it, and not all the poseury hopping around shit he likes to do. And so, given that -- and despite some serious lyrical fuckups -- it's one of his best performances. I mean, there's not much you can do with this song, but an R&B slow jam, and the creative rephrasing he gives them, are what he was meant to do, and it translates well. Hopefully he will get all the approval he needs with this one, and stay closer to it moving forward.
My Kara crush is back so super hard after the last few weeks and I can't figure out what it is. She's just really right about things tonight. (And her hair is mesmerizingly shiny. -- Angel) Kara thanks him for "controlling" the song instead of getting beat up by it, and congratulates him on his perfect soul tone. Paula loves it all, and says it's his best performance: the range where he kept it, the update, all of it. Simon reminds us how variable his shit keeps going, and says this week was "very good," if not fantastic, but points him up to Lil as an example of what they're talking about. He then encourages Anoop to be a dick more often in the critiques; Kara goes into a whole thing about how she wasn't offended and Simon talks about his nasty raised eyebrow, and Ryan squeals, "Kumbaya, kumbaya, kumbaya" to shut them up. Ryan has no time for your shit this week, now that we've cut down finally to an hour, and it's glorious to see him dealing with that again after so many filleriffic episodes.
Scott was born 22 June, 1985, just across the Cancer/Gemini cusp from Kris. His package is intensely weird, all about how he was obsessed with his toy trains as a child and used to play scary sinister music for them. That is maybe the coolest thing I have ever heard. Even his mom is like, "It was distressing." Now he will be singing some song with a guitar around his neck. What is this crap? "The Search Is Over"? Imagine every song Scott ever sings, and how it's always the same song with words like "dream" and sentiments like "living for the moment" sprinkled liberally throughout. I think he honestly thinks he's going totally outside the box with his stuff, and it's just that the box he knows about is incredibly tiny. Like, if all you knew were M&M's, you would think there were two completely different colors of brown, and maybe you'd mix it up and go crazy and pick "red," and think that you were being totally freaky and bizarre, but actually there would be plenty of colors in the world that would blow your mind.
Without the piano, it's even easier to see the weaknesses in his voice, which are on high alert this week. I think it's Scott's time to go, infectious enthusiasm or no. That was just ... not at all excellent. Kara praises him for bringing out his guitar and shooting for the stars, but is troubled by his deviation from the singer-songwriter vibe he does so well. Instead of just saying his voice was abysmal through most of it, she says something even harsher about how there were moments that were just too ambitious for him personally. Wow. I mean, true, but on the other hand it's not like he's an amateur compared to you or me; he's just kinda sweet and boring, and tried to sing a song it turns out he cannot.
Paula thanks him for getting away from the piano, and everybody cheers for him, and when Paula asks why it was an electric and not acoustic guitar, he refers to it as his "punk side" coming out, just like a pastel pink M&M. Scott, tell us more about your understanding of punk. Simon tells him to get back behind the piano, because the song was horrible and atrocious, and there was no reason for "the awful guitar" included in "a very boring song." (All true, but still not as syrupy-urpy as Gokey's whole deal. I had to take a Crazy Silver break at this point, and ended up accidentally hearing that crap twice.) Scott talks back a little bit, but it's not annoying at all.
Allison: April 27, 1992. Total Taurus, which explains how she sings from the bottoms of her feet, and her love for bright colors. Her mom told her doctor that there was something terribly wrong with her, because she kept saying such stupid things, but the doctor told mom that she was just going to be a pop star. Sounds about right. And what's she singing? HELL YES, she'll be singing "I Can't Make You Love Me." I can't see how this could fail. Even with the band going ten times of ridic soft jazz on it, her voice is not capable of going to a Raitt place, so it's going to stay in a wonderful Allison place.
And it does. Her stupid horrible outfit is, for once, basically neither, and even her stupid horrible pink hair looks really cute. I'm glad they dressed her as a mentally compromised woman instead of a clown baby, because for this song the latter would not be appropriate. She's wearing, essentially, Death's prom dress from Season Of Mists, but with a billion Michael Jackson chains all over it, and very simple (bright pink) Farrah wings, with bangs pulled up top. She looks adorable. Her voice is about as vulnerable as that kind of voice can be, a very strong emotional interpretation of the lyrics themselves, and generally thrummy without being rocky, which I didn't even think to be worried about.
Paula congratulates her on making the song her own like they're always saying, and points out that she did a great job with that considering she didn't change the arrangement at all. I love how much Paula loves Allison's voice. It feels good in your ear. Simon tells her it was really good, but that she's lost a little bit of her obnoxious dorky personality due to him telling her to do so every week, and she needs to open up more, because as dumb as she seems to be, she's intensely likeable. They bring up Kelly Clarkson some more, and Simon agrees that Kelly Clarkson also could not manage to shut her face up (in fact, he even mentions the "cool beans" thing she always did, which is adorable and affectionate), and Kara... I don't know, she liked it a lot, of course, because of all eight Idols Allison's the Kara -- contemporary, appealing, musically eloquent -- and they both know it.
I am very appreciative about how they put Allison, Matt and Adam at the end. Firstly because I love them with my whole heart, probably about equally, but also because it says that they constitute amazing drama between the three performances. You know how strongly I feel about the way the producers line up the songs in terms of what's going to make it a kick-ass show, which has the ironic feedback logic of making you think that they're putting certain performances in "pimp spots" or whatever, when in fact what is good is good, and it's not a coincidence. But also, I like it because it means my Silver break didn't do something terrible like keep me up until 2AM just so I could hear Gokey and Scott as the last things before I go to sleep and have more dreams about Pander the Panda crashing through LA like the Staypuft Man, snatching people's tragedies and stuffing them into his panda bear mouth for Q points and text votes. I'd rather dream about Adam. I mean, but not like in a gay way.
(Okay, troubling? Danny Noriega and Chris Crocker hooking up, just as was written in the prophecy. They are going to be the Bonnie & Clyde of LA, and you're going to be like, looking up from the bloody wasteland going, "Why didn't you tell us this would happen?" And I'm just going to shrug because anything else would be rude, but I'm serious: keep an eye on those two because they are up to no good.)
Unsurprisingly, Matt G looks exactly the same as he has his whole life, which is to say he looks kind of like a baby right now, and also when he was a baby. He's cuter as a baby, but that's like the point of babies. May 11, 1985: another Taurus. They show a video of him doing a hilarious acting job in this giant scary religion play, dressed as an angel. And now? "Part Time Lover," actually, wearing a fedora and looking more like Joey McIntyre than ever before. His voice is weak, if ornamented, and it's terribly interesting to hear a song from that long ago sung with contemporary R&B inflections, but the voice just isn't there like it should be. I wonder if anyone will care, because that is a damned shame, but it might not matter. If he was Mr. Smooth from a month ago that would have been one of his best. As it is, it's one of the best of the night, but not that proficient for Matt himself. The judges are all over it -- for the five seconds Ryan gives them before the commercial -- but I know he could have done way better.
Thank goodness I taped Fringe this week, not that I'll be watching it, because that's the end of the show, and I'm already beside myself wondering what Adam will sing, and what he will perpetrate on it. I would almost like to see him jump in with the whole sweet jam thing they've got going this week, but then given the flops of the singer-singery people like Lil and Matt, tonight might be the night for him to give us the full Whitney. Or... I mean, like there are words for what he's going to do anyway, or it's possible to see into the future enough to guess what randomness he's going to pull, so why try?
Ryan: "Adam. Back in the day. Ever wondered?" HA! Yeah, I'm going to need extensive photo reference to understand how we got from a little baby to this. Assuming 29 January 1982 isn't actually just the date his spacecraft crash landed on a farm. Aquarian and an alien? It's all starting to make sense. Adam discusses his predilection for "dressup" -- capes, masks, hats of various sorts -- over the mundane sports and whatever. He got into a "grownup" period, and his parents obliged with a three-piece and a little moustache. That's the best thing I've ever heard. No wonder he turned out so awesome.
"Mad World," the not-Tears For Fears version, sung sitting on a white chair, lit by unearthly blue light. Maybe Adam actually is Donnie Darko. I could buy that. He sings it right at that sweet spot at the place where his voice is high but still strong, and then all the falsetto is completely unscreechy. It's understated and confident, and very beautiful. Ethereal, that's the word you're going to be hearing about this. The crowd goes absolutely nuts. What a lovely rendition, and way better than the rest of the night. Simon Cowell gives his ass a standing ovation, is how awesome it was.
So: Danny Gokey did Al Green doing the hokey-pokey and looked like the ass he always is; Kris Allen was fun but forgettable and a little too slow; Lil did a great job of being somebody slightly less boring some more; Anoop zigged after zagging last week, continuing his record of measured oscillation; Scott just gently sucked and needs to go home already; Allison did a great job but still isn't pushing into the top tier she should be; Matt gave a great performance at the expense of his perfect voice; and Adam Lambert put his dick away just long enough to give us something worth loving.
Anoop I think has pulled out of his slump, and always does better when he actually sings, so I'd be surprised if he went. So of Kris, Scott, and Allison, who has the extracurricular thing that makes up for their continuing inability to distinguish themselves? Kris maybe gets by on his actual raw talent, Scott is here for no reason at this point, and Allison is perpetually imperiled, so I'd say it's a three-way tie no matter how talented she is. America, please do the right thing with Scott and stop being so goddamn patronizing. It's over and we all know it.
This week's playlist: old favorites Ra Ra Riot, Home Video, the Tellers, and the Morning Benders. I wish I could love that last Killers as much as I wanted to, but five months later -- beyond the David Byrne-via-Vampire Weekend romps "I Can't Stay" and "Joyride" -- there's still not really anything there for me. Maybe Sam's Town was just their Pinkerton after all? Fingers crossed that's not the case, and meantime, consider yourself the labor-busting Pinkerton of my big gay freeloadin' heart. See you tomorrow.