(Jennifer Lopez, what oddly red lips you have tonight. And Ryan Seacrest, what a shiny black suit. Fashion sure has changed. Her terrible song is #1 on iTunes, proving that any song on this show, even a crappy one, is still on this show.)
Theme: Songs by your own personal Idol. Mine is Ryan Seacrest so I don't know what I would do. Yes I do, I would sing "Peaches" by the Presidents of the United States of America. Duh. But I would do it like all chopped and screwed and maybe with a string quartet or a keytar. I would probably need Jimmy Iovine's help to pull this off. Luckily...
What Is Jimmy Iovine Wearing: A douchebaggy trucker hat, and a leather jacket that might just be blue, and Don Was (Not Was), who has recently transitioned into being a Fraggle. First you have to live as a Fraggle full-time for six months and then your psychiatrist signs off, it's a whole thing.
Lauren Alaina twinkles and stomps her chubby little self around the world talking about Any Man Of Hers And What He Will Be Doing (Not Doing). It's not really a song, because Shania Twain is not really a person.
Tyler: "time, you should pick a song that is kick-ass, instead of songs that are not kick-ass."
(Lauren makes a horrible face. A child shoots out of her.)
Lopez: "Your voice is really pretty, so you shouldn't do these things to it."
(Lauren chews the inside of her mouth off.)
Jackson: "I met Shania Twain! I got to meet Shania Twain once!"
(Lauren discounts his opinion right there in front of you.)
Seacrest: "Lauren, do you understand anything that was just explained to you?"
(No sir. No sir.)
(Nope.)
Lauren: "America, I just had fun up here on this stage!"
Dumb Fucking America: "That's what's important! Good answer!"
Lauren: "I'm sorry I did such a bad job, America!"
Dumb-Ass America: "Oh, honey, you didn't do so bad!"
Lauren: "I am a total fake in every sense of the word, Peaches! Peaches!"
Seacrest: "I haven't hated a person this much since Kelly Pickler."
(Kelly Pickler was never a person.)
Jackson: "Shania hates mayo, all right, and she can't eat chicken salad, that's no joke. We gave it to her once, she threw up in the limo -- the lady hates chicken salad. So I bring out a bunch of tuna fish sandwiches, she still doesn't believe me, I say, Shania, I'm allergic to mayo, which by the way is a lie. Shania still doesn't believe me, so I eat two of the sandwiches in front of her to prove it. So she eats one and a half sandwiches -- One and a half sandwiches! -- before she realizes: It's chicken salad!"
(After the break, Lauren Alaina explains to us here in America for the seventh fucking time that it's up to us here in America. God, I never thought I'd hate her this much. I never thought I'd hate anyone this much. She's like Rush Limbaugh and Danny Gokey at the same time.)
(Casey pretends he's old enough to remember The Wonder Years. Also, he identifies with Joe Cocker for looking like a troll that lives under a bridge. Dear producers: Stop making them talk to us, and stop telling them how to do it. Even Casey is coming off as hugely disingenuous tonight, and then you got Naima waaaaay down at the other end of the line, fifty people from now, to look forward to. I cannot take it.)
Casey: "I may or may not know what I am doing right now, but my voice sounds very pretty."
Choir: "[Gospel stuff.]"
Lopez: "You are technically proficient, but let's talk about my emotions. You are somebody important."
Jackson: "We are watching American Idol!"
(True.)
Jackson: "Joe Cocker sings like that too, do you know who that is? I do!"
Tyler: "I have bones and beads and feathers and circuit breakers tied to every part of me, like some kind of post-apocalyptic shaman, and yet still I talk shit."
Casey: "Please stop me from talking!"
Seacrest: "Okay."
Lopez: "I refuse to disguise the naked hate I feel for Ryan Seacrest any longer."
Seacrest: "It is my milk and my meat!"
(Ashthon can't believe she is working with whatever producer she is working with.)
Ashthon, verbatim and sic: "I have never went that high in a song before."
Jimmy Iovine: "I can't believe how great this is going to be!"
Ashthon sucks garbage and then sucks the garbage out of her own teeth and then sucks on the stage and sucks on the mic and then just kinda sucks some more in a freestyle way.
Jimmy Iovine: "You are an embarrassment!"
Jackson: "Yo. Listen. Berry Gordy saw you do that shit to yourself."
Tyler: "[Absolute nonsense. Just gibberish.]"
Lopez: "Thanks for not crying onstage. week you should sing some song that isn't totally boring."
Ashthon: "No ma'am."
Seacrest: "Remember when you shouldn't be on this show, but then you are on the show? How come you're not taking this seriously?"
Ashthon employs some weird metaphor I didn't really follow, about how she is an edge but also a softness. She does not explain why she did this so hatefully badly, however. Words are not her tools of choice.
She is really the most awful speaker. It's like she's illiterate? But she's not reading anything. Just talking.
Tonight is not so great, overall. So let's get Old McDonald out of the way. Oh good, he's dressed like Sgt. Pepper. I wonder who his Idol is, since Casey took Joe Cocker. Are there any other people that afflicted/affected?
Oh: Ryan Adams. Of course. The Starbucks of singer-songwriters. I sure hope he sings it in a creepy baby voice. Maybe with an Australian accent in his creepy baby voice and it can just be all the horrible things in the world.
Paul: "You guys doing okay?"
America: "For now!"
Paul: "Let me see what I can do about that."
(Sings some boring song in a creepy baby voice. His voice has actually sprouted new affectations and tics and impediments since last week. Dances around like he's having a medical disaster from which there is no return. So much hipster nonsense all at once.)
If this were Grey's Anatomy, Somebody: "Can I please get a Neuro consult?"
Tyler: "I don't know who that song is by or what that song is."
Lopez: "Ditto."
Paul: "[Standard bullshit.]"
Jackson: "You're a funny little scarecrow! Having a fit!"
Paul: "Yeah but like ironically."
Jackson: "I know who Ryan Adams is! I win! Other words like Old 97's and Whiskeytown and whatever!"
Seacrest: "You dance like a douche. That's my favorite thing about you, because your voice sounds like baby skeletons making love to pets."
(They dance around like jerks. Not even Ryan can save this motherfucker.)
After the break, Paul tells us he wasn't really singing so much as doing a public service of bringing us the obscure sounds of Ryan Adams, and daring us to "get it" -- he keeps saying that, like, what's to get? -- and that if you like him, you will also like Ryan Adams. And vice versa.
(Also, the other way around. You've made me like Ryan Adams just a little bit less. I don't know if you "get" what I'm saying, it's pretty high-level stuff, but to put it simply: You are a lie wrapped inside the appearance of authenticity, which makes you a dick.)
McDonald, with like a tear in his eyes, to the nearest camera: "I love you guys. Seriously. For real."
Team Seacrest: "This is exactly the shit I am talking about."
Seacrest: "Pia, form a sentence."
Pia: "I steadfastly refuse!"
(Pia puts on some glasses and magically she seems smarter. Then she opens that mouth.)
Pia, with a straight face: "I have always wanted to meet Jimmy Iovine!"
Can you imagine if that were true? How weird.
(Pia sings "All By Myself." She is pretty, the song is pretty, her voice sounds better than anybody else's, besides Casey. Steven Tyler watches with such a mournful exactitude that he looks for a second exactly like those giant turtle things in The Dark Crystal, the ones that spend the whole movie humming and walking. God, that movie is boring.)
Lopez: "I have absolutely nothing to say to you. That was pretty good, though."
Jackson: "Yo I've been on this show for ten years. You sang a Celine Dion song, which I've been telling people for ten years not to do. Also, this was not a Celine Dion song, but you know what I mean."
Pia: "I do not! But you have my thanks!"
Tyler: "That was the sum total of all the work that you've done up until now. [What?] You've polished that apple. [What?] Happy International Woman's Day to you. And to women! [Fucking what?]"
(Pia's smile does not reach her eyes when she speaks about her father.)
Durbin loves Paul McCartney for his versatility: He sings, writes, and plays music! Durbin will be singing "Maybe I'm Amazed" and he will do this in a way that he thinks will have to do with not only his vision but that of his Interscope producer. Who is probably super famous like the other ones, but one thing you will not be catching me doing this week is giving a shit.
Also true for the song, which sounds nothing at all like what they were rehearsing, which sounded cool, but now just sounds exactly like the regular song. There's an amazing cut to the three judges, who are all three rocking out in exactly the same dorky, overbite way of Randy Jackson, in perfect sync. James Durbin continues to be beautiful.
Jackson: "I was in Journey, so I know what singing sounds like. [What?] Dude. Dude. Dude."
Tyler: "[Such blatant nonsense that the audience can't even decide whether to applaud.]"
Lopez: "Good job singing an actual song, instead of just putting an Adam Lambert suit over your own complicated costumery."
(James Durbin believes that he can control the sounds and thoughts of the audience using gestures. Perhaps he is not wrong. Seacrest loves him. He is gigantic.)
Haley: "I just love LeAnn Rimes. She speaks to my experience in a relevant way."
Jimmy Iovine: "My advice is, do a hula dance while yodeling."
Haley: "Done."
(She does absolutely great.)
Tyler: "[More nonsense talk. Steven, take your pills. Take your pills, Mr. Tyler.]"
Lopez: "I like how you do all these special tricks with your voice instead of just singing, because how boring would that be. You remind me of Paul McDonald, only you're not the worst thing in the world."
Jackson: "...Or was she?"
(Daaaaamn.)
Haley: "I just want people to like me."
Lopez: "She is sensual! She's way better than Paul McDonald! He has fits!"
Haley: "Is it because I did a hula dance?"
Jackson: "No, it's because I have made up this opinion for no real reason and now I feel embattled so I'm trenching in. It was sleepy for me dawg."
Seacrest: "Yeah, I guess unrecorded Patsy Cline yodeling songs and hula dancing are way too edgy and sexy for Randy Jackson."
Jackson: "I am the boss of you! Everybody do what I say!"
Everybody: (Does not.)
Jackson: (Simpers; scowls; sulks. About literally nothing. This is what having an opinion is like, you big baby.)
Lusk! With Ryan calling him Lusk, which I'm not so sure I like. Used to be Ryan would look right in the camera when he said Jacob, and I would pretend... Well, it doesn't matter what I would pretend.
Okay, there was a flying carpet involved, and we flew over Laurel Canyon singing the song from Aladdin, and I got to see Steve Martin's house, and we were so high up it looked like a dollhouse. Like an IM Pei dollhouse. Then some tea, up there above the pollution but under the stars. A whole new world.
So but now I always called Lusk Lusk because my favorite thing in the world is talking endlessly about myself, and so other people named Jacob make me feel uncomfortable. Not unlike how Haley Mills must have felt when she went to summer camp and there was Haley Mills.
Jacob Lusk and Ryan Seacrest put on a little play about spa services. Lusk mentions the Wet Room, and that one short circuit in Ryan's head shorts out like it does, and then Ryan realizes he's just been totally inappropriate with Jacob Lusk, so he smacks him on the shoulder and we listen to giant weird old Jacob Lusk talking about nothing at all in his crazy Muppet voice. Then he sings "I Believe I Can Fly," in the man-woman style of Antony Johnston, as he typically does everything, and just when you're like, "The first four bars of this song were great, I wonder when things are going to go shit-crazy..."
A full on gospel choir comes out onstage with him! Wearing shiny blue robes! God is on the movie screen zooming through clouds! He does a weird trick with his voice that sounds like he is remixing his own self, live and onstage! It is so weird and awesome!
Tyler: "[Some shit that would give even Paula Abdul pause, like, she would tell you to pull it together if you said this stuff in front of her.]"
Lopez: "I think that you will win this show. As Judges, we don't really Judge you at this point -- America Decides! -- but if we did, we wouldn't."
Jackson: "[Also babbling.]"
Seacrest: "[Also babbling.]"
Lusk: (Broke these bitches. Just broke them, irreversibly.)
Man, Glee was relevant this week. You don't expect it to be a show, and then sometimes it is.
I forgot how in the first couple weeks of Finals, they all try to make Events out of nothing, which is why this week's performances are so bizarre. This is one of the weirdest episodes of this season, and that's why.
Things Of Which Thia Megia Was Not Previously Aware: Charlie Chapman [sic]. Silent films. Musical artists predating Michael Jackson. Very many songs, all things considered.
Right when you think the song -- that gross "Smile" one about ignoring your own mental distress -- is about to be super boring, it turns into this weird jazzy pan-Asian hip-hop thing for awhile, and then turns boring again. It's all very interesting, and kind of cool. It's sort of like that part of The Fifth Element with the blue lady, but not as interesting as that. Maybe if I hated this song less I would be more judgmental but I love it.
Jackson: "I really wish you hadn't done anything interesting to that song."
Tyler: "I agree. Also, I have nothing else to say but I'm going to keep talking."
Lopez: "Not even I am going to back you up on this one."
Q: "Do you think about The Fifth Element as much as you talk about it? Like, when you're alone?"
A: "More, probably. Mostly it's just like, Fifth Element, then I think about Belinda Carlisle for awhile, and then I realize I have forgotten Calculus or some other responsibility I've let go slack, so I take care of that, and then I take a shower. Diet Coke figures largely as well. Sometimes I cut out pictures of the baseball player Brian Wilson and arrange them on posterboard in shapes that please me."
You know that song about how he is a man of many wishes? That's the one Stefano is doing. It is weird. Super weird! I think letting the producers have at these kids was a terrible idea, actually. This one turns into disco, back and forth a few times, and Stefano can't actually just stop and sing the song at any time, because there's so much disco. His voice is just not a concern at this time, on this singing show. It's more important to... This is exactly like what happened to poor stupid ass-face Jordan the Jerk. Judgery bopping their heads along, song getting faster and faster and more and more manic and it's awful, just awful. The judges are going to say they love it, because this show is about proving they're relevant.
Judgery: "We love what you've done with this song."
God, they're ridiculous. Ridiculous! That was claptrap! Buffoonery! We lost Rachel Zevita for actually doing what you think is happening here, because if you actually saw the new thing you would hate it! This was the old thing dressed up as some other old thing, like how Steven Tyler is always dressed as a gypsy, only instead of Steven Tyler it's Stevie Wonder and instead of a gypsy it is the club drug they call crystal meth.
It's not new or interesting in any way, and because it's just recycled bullshit, it means it's about you if you like it! Classic uncoolness trap. Tyler and Jackson, obvs., but I really expected more from J. Lo. Don't know why I did, honestly.
What's Up With Karen & Her Relationship To Selena This Week: What's up with Karen and her relationship to Selena this week is, we get a peek at how their whole symbiosis began, and it's a kind of dark tale. Seems her mom used to dress her up in Selena outfits and make her sing, and that's why she only sings Selena songs, because they're the only songs she knows.
It is my understanding from the context clues that this was part of an attempt to bring Selena back to life by putting her in Karen. Which would also explain why she is so many ages at the same time all the time: That's little bits of Selena coming through. Ditto her Dora The Explorer-esque habit of singing in multiple languages when one would suffice: Selena coming through. The Ghost of Selena.
(Fun fact: When the Macarena became popular we had a good couple weeks convincing drunk people that the song was called "Ghost Of Selena" and that's what they were saying in the song. "Heeeey ghost of Selena ay!")
Meanwhile, Karen now dresses up her Selena Barbies like Selena and sings Selena songs to them and possibly invokes the spirit of Selena into them. I don't know if you're from Texas, but none of this is really that surprising. Selena was actually like watching a cargo cult happen even before she died (which is also how and why she died, if you think about it) -- she was like the Coke bottle in God Must Be Crazy for a couple years there -- and I forgot how totally relevant that was for awhile.
Anyway. I don't know that Selena would really appreciate this version -- Karen is about 38 right now, if you're keeping track -- but she looks really pretty.
Lopez: "You look really pretty, though."
Karen: "Yeah, I was terrible for reasons that are not apparent to me right now."
Selena: "You don't actually need me inside you to sing like I am inside you. I am like that feather they gave Dumbo that time."
Seriously though, I don't know what it was like where you live, but in Texas it was like all there was, was constant Selena onslaught everywhere you went, and "Bittersweet Symphony" playing, for like about a whole year.
After the break, Stefano is still talking like the Micromachines man. Maybe he's just permanently sped up now. Disco dance remixes forever and ever. Less clothes each week. Small price to pay.
Seacrest: "I could have sworn that baseball just ended."
Jacob: "I know this one! Brian Wilson is relevant to my interests! I have a secret poster of him in my closet so that I know he approves my fashion choices! His one dog is named Dubz because that's his name, B-Dubz, so he named the dog after himself! His favorite color is periwinkle!"
Seacrest: "And yet, here we are talking about baseball as if it is merely starting."
Scotty: "That's the way of things, Ryan. The eternal cycle of sports."
Seacrest: "You have so much to teach us, Scotty."
What Scotty Will Be Teaching Us: Singing like Garth Brooks is a fun thing to do. You can do it too! But not as well as Scotty.
Scotty: "You've gotta be country music, you can't just sing it."
Dumbasses: "That is so, so true. Those words that mean nothing in a sentence together, I totally feel that way."
He goes on at length about how he's not changing for this or for Don Was (Not Was) or for anything. He doesn't explain why he feels it's necessary to do this shit on American Idol, though. Then he sings "The River," making those smug sex faces like he knows your sex secrets while faking he doesn't know what sex is, and as usual it's beautiful but complicated.
Even more than usual, because this song, I don't know what the song is about. Its central thesis. I have never been able to put it together. Is it about determinism?
Jackson: "I love how you said you don't ever want to change or do anything but the same thing over and over. If I were a dog and not a dude, I would be the kind that wears a track into the ground by running in circles for years and years. That is where I am comfortable, and I love that you get that."
Steven Tyler, for real this is what he said: "Scotty you did the Garth justice you know someone wrote a song and the lyrics go carpet's all paid for God bless the TV let's shoot a hole in the moon go Rod Roy Rogers Ridin' tonight well you're riding high."
Just what the fuck is going on here?
Okay, his phone number is IDOLS-12 which means there's only one more person, and it's Naima. Oh, and Seacrest says she's singing Rihanna! That's great.
What Naima's sedate personal style needed was a little Barbados flair. A little authenticity on top of all the authenticity she's working. I wonder what the song will be? Probably some sad boring song. Or one of Rihanna's many, many songs about how much she likes getting hit. If it is, this recap is going to end real fast. But I'm hoping for "Umbrella," because she will do some crazy stuff to it, I hope.
As the person with the world's largest collection of "Umbrella" covers, you know, I still wish it was "Disturbia." That's another song I don't think I really understand what the song is about, but it has just such great words. I wish I could do a quiz for you about which are Rihanna lyrics and which are Gertrude Stein quotes because the ultimate song lyric for that quiz would be, "My mind! Is in Disturbia!" When somebody says that shit to you, you know to take it seriously.
Seacrest: "She was a janitor."
Naima: "i was a/ janitor."
Gwyneth: "I am a singer too!"
Naima: "this is/ how it is done."
Then she shows you how it is done. She sings her song while kind of dancing around like slam poetry, and then the lights go insane and she does a couple bars as though she is Shaggy, whatever you call that style of rapping, and then she sings for a second, and then it is the Matrix, and then she makes lightning appear inside the Kodak theatre and time stops and she does some stepping and then the song comes back. It's like having a stroke. But delightful!
Dear Naima, you are so full of it, and in addition to the it, you are full also of awesomeness.
It is not down to me to bemoan the lack of Naima-type culture in the world right now, but if you think about how in the '90s everybody watched A Different World and Spike Lee movies, Arrested Development and Digable Planets, even Living Single, and there was a moment where we were all going somewhere together and then it fell apart, and now it's like: Tyler Perry?
Somehow black art stopped being mainstream again, actually went back into the toothpaste tube somehow, and I don't get it at all and it consumes me. Maybe it was that movie with Ali Larter and Beyoncé, more likely it is The Real Housewives Of Atlanta, but either way something we've done lately may have reached back through time and started fucking things up in the '90s. Or else it was OJ.
Naima gets it, and boy is she interested in changing it, which is why no matter how ridiculous and pretentious she is, she's still the greatest, because somebody has to do it, and activists are always the most insufferable people, because why else would you take on such a big responsibility unless you had certain messianic ideas about yourself.
Tyler: "I have no idea what just happened."
Lopez: "What just happened is something amazing."
Naima: "singing is/ irrelevant to my praxis."
Then the best part of the entire night, when Naima fully creates a new word. She does not understand what the judges are saying, she overstands it. I am so taken with this girl.
Naima: "I also spell disease dis-ease/ and things like that."
Of course you do. God bless you, Naima. I completely overstand where you are coming from. Oh my God.
Seacrest: "Instead of unlucky thirteen, we're going with Karen's age. IDOLS-39."
Naima: (Immediately snags her earring on Ryan's suit and nearly starts crying with how bad it hurts. Unlucky!)
Seacrest: "Explain the total bullshit that was tonight."
Jackson: "Sometimes 13 can be lucky. We sang songs with the help of producers."
Lopez: "That's true. We did have producers. They did sing songs."
Jackson: "Steven Tyler, didn't we have songs?"
Tyler: "Sure did. We had them sing songs. There were 13 of them."
Seacrest: "Thanks guys. That was really helpful."
This shit started two hours ago. Lauren Alaina was annoying as hell. Casey Abrams hopefully got some things out of his system. Ashthon is the worst thing, and also sang poorly. Paul was drunk I think. Pia left her cake out in the rain; sang about it. Durbin got a haircut and wore even more pieces of clothes.
Haley managed to be one of the best of the night thanks to everybody else sucking. Jacob Lusk can do so many things. Thia Megia sang a "Charlie Chapman" song accompanied by the background music from a Thai place. Stefano raced around the stage shouting gibberish faster and faster and faster faster faster like a Jack In The Box with Lyme disease.
Selena did not show up to possess Karen this week. Garth Brooks did, however, show up for Scotty's weekly possession. Naima did the Humpty and made weather indoors.
See you in a few hours for the results. I have no pony in this race whatsoever.