I think that Ryan Seacrest is on drugs tonight. I'm totally serious. His eyes look dead and scary. He's also got severely fauxhawked hair which was compared, insightfully, to Tintin. The new intro includes a bunch of faceless people with real genders, though, and that's exciting; the new stage is kind of amazingly overdone, with lights and thousands of stagelets and buttresses and areas all over the place. Ryan describes the area before the stage as a "mosh pit." I want to see motherfuckers moshing to the songs on this show. Like you could be singing Josh Groban or some shit and look down and it's just a heaving mass of sweaty violent bodies hurling themselves into chaos and the fray. How nice.
Ryan shows us the Top 12, in case we forgot why we're here. I see that makeovers are still coming, because David Cook and Amanda both still look like that. Ryan gives us the rundown on the Beatles, specifically John and Paul, to the point that I don't think anybody is going to say the word "Beatles" all night, which is just so Idol it's ridiculous. Every time anybody says "Liverpool," drink. I think that before this show started, somebody said "Liverpool" in front of Ryan and the judges many times, because check this out.
Ryan: Earlier I used the word "enduring." How come?
Randy: "These boys put it down, dude. These songs are...all true copyrights, meaning that they will last forever."
Jacob: The...fuck does that mean? Rewind it, please.
Paula: Well these songs are full of melody and I you sang the song straight it pays great tribute but for those who are going to take the risk it better be worth the reward and I think some of them can change it up.
Simon: I don't want to be here, and I hate Ryan Seacrest.
Ryan: I kind of like being abused by Simon Cowell. I don't have feelings anymore.
Syesha Mercado goes on and on about nothing, nothing, nothing at all, and will be singing "Got To Get You Into My Life" in the hopes that she will spontaneously generate a personality out of nowhere. Like how in olden times they thought if you put like a sweater and some wheat or other grain in a barrel and left it, that's the recipe for how you make mice. And that's pretty much what she does: toss a crazy brass section and some terrible off notes and a pretty total lack of charisma in the barrel, and then just walks away from it and hopes that one day there will be mice. Randy asks if that boring shit was Earth Wind & Fire, and it was. So now she needs to apologize to two true copyrights. Paula: "You're very very good singer and it was it started off pitch I am confused but midway through you found your zone and then it's like there's Syesha." Too true. Simon, weirdly, totally freaking loved it, but thinks she looked nervous and sucked less this week. Syesha responds by giggling and shaking like a Chihuahua and looks like Emily Rose, or else she's having a petit mal seizure, and then tells Ryan she likes the new stage.
Jacuzzi. I have heard that he is awesome this week, finally. Remember when he was so, so great? I barely do. He tells a scary story about working security at LAX and his coworkers setting everything up so that he could go through Paula's underthings every time she travels. Yikes. He tells a kind of sweet story about how he loves Danny Noriega, and assumed that the whole world loves Danny Noriega, and thus thought he was going home last week, and then another sweet story about how his mother is secretly an encyclopedia of all music knowledge. "She's A Woman" starts off with a seriously bluegrass intro, with a fiddle and everything, and he slaps his knee in time to the music and then gets up and...well, damn. Good on Chikezie. He's wearing an argyle sweater and completely, totally rocking out. This is so freaking awesome! He's doing the whole Amanda thing better than Amanda has done, with weird noises and crazy loud gospel sounds, and a screech at the end that could drive you mad. You've just got to see this! It's so amazing! That is one of the best things I've ever seen on this show and I don't even know what words to use.
Randy's like "Who knew?" And the answer is everybody, but so long ago. He doesn't even make sense, because everybody in the auditorium just lost their minds. Paula notes how it went from Oh Brother Where Art Thou? to a rock and roll song, and how this proves her theory about risk and reward from earlier in the night, and then says this: "The reward paid off, my dear, the reward paid off." So insane has he left them that the crowd screams and claps for this statement. Simon says he looked drunk in the middle of it, but praises everything about the performance, because it was truly awesome. Ryan goes completely insane and chases Eze around the stage screaming his brain out and acting the fool. I don't even want to talk about it or tell you what he is saying because it's too embarrassing. I don't want to talk about it. I don't even want to think about it. Ryan Seacrest needs a goddamn nap.
Ramiele Malubay's job at home involves smelling like soy sauce. She'll be singing "In My Life" because she misses Danny Noriega and because she thinks that when people are eliminated from this show, they are murdered, so this is like "We Are The World" for her murdered friends like Danny Noriega. And like, it's super boring in the exact same way that she's doing things lately, but mostly I think it's funny that she has decided "I cry on Results Night" can just be her whole personality. Like on '90s Week she'll sing "Runaway Train." "Because they are never coming back," she'll say, and then weep softly. Randy calls it "kind of pretty" and "kind of pretty boring." Word, Jackson. Paula calls her "pretty," and "pretty safe," and reminds her that her voice is amazing and this fact should cause Ramiele to sack the hell up. Simon was bored to tears the whole time, because it was frigging boring. He calls her out for standing all drama on the stairs and wandering the stage and being a drama queen without earning it by singing awesomely. Ryan clarifies that it was a boring performance of a boring arrangement done in a boring way, and then Randy and Paula both wade in and call her "boring" a couple more times. I mean, now would be the time to cry, lady.
Or...don't. It starts hellish and very Three Doors Down or whatever, and then gets really boring and loud, and he shouts a whole lot and forgets the words, and then it's over. It feels like the shortest song ever performed on this show, but it's not short enough. He kind of reminds me of Chris Sligh, like how Blake was doing all the different arrangements and being creative and then Sligh thought he could do that too and it was a disaster. This is exactly like a big show-stopping encore performance at the end of a Nickelback concert where they're like, "Maynard is here to sing with us" and then they all sing some shitty Pink Floyd song. I've never been to a Nickelback concert, but I imagine this kind of thing goes down on the regular. Cook could probably tell us for sure. It ends with a rocker scream, and it's totally boring and stupid and the lights are all crazy and dumb, and then he jumps around acting the fool for awhile and generally being in love with himself. It's so tame and silly and stupid like his hair, so of course Randy is like, "That was rockin'!" Paula also tells him that he is wonderful and a thoroughbred. I wish that he had gone back and done something more "Hello"-like, because at least that was interesting and pretty, but this was just ill-intentioned noise. Paula then loses her mind and calls him a "stallion" and Randy calls him a "donkey" and Simon thinks about quitting. He tells David that if this show were about talent, he would be golden, but we know it's not. Then David tells Ryan how amazing it is to be so amazing or whatever, and his stupid collar is popped and he looks like a moron as usual. Turns out I was really looking forward to that crap. Dang. I can't even think of a name for his fans right now because I am split into two people and both of them are kind of angry. The hater side is like, "See?" and the fan side is like, "Thanks for burning me." I want to go listen to "Hello" right now and think of what could have been.
Brooke White's rockin' the side pony, and as with all things Brooke, it shouldn't work, but it does anyway. She tells us about nannying and how hard it is to be away from other people's babies. She's so sweet, she almost cries the whole time she's talking about how much she loves everything in this whole world. "Let It Be" is the last Beatles single, and Brooke White is magic, so this should be good. She starts on the piano and as usual it's like she's a returning artist who is just here to be nice to the show, rather than a person competing on a game show. Everybody in the audience has their Jesus arms up in the air, and the backup singers sound very holy. I don't think I've ever cared this much about a person on this show, I just love her. I cannot separate this out from my own experience or tell you what it's like, because I don't even like this song, but Brooke loves it enough for us both, and I love Brooke White like our own private Penny Lane. She is like seeing a unicorn in the forest when your feet hurt from walking.
Amanda Overmyer looks like a girl instead of a single mother at the DMV! Whoever did her makeup is my hero. Maybe it will make her behave herself. The rest of her look is ugly and stupid as usual, though, and she's wearing circus pants and her stupid hair is all curled and she's wearing like fifty necklaces and a hundred bracelets, so who knows? It's a draw. She talks about riding her Harley, gross, and they take pictures of her. She looks like Scott Savol, I'm sorry. And thank goodness, she's not singing "Across The Universe," which fear was, I admit, rather irrational. "A Little Help From My Friends" still would have made the most sense. Instead, she's singing "You Can't Do That." The Beatles are so funny, them and Stevie Wonder and the Stones, like, you see the song title and you're like, "I don't know that one," and then invariably you totally know all the words to the song you didn't think you'd ever heard of.
"All right! Here we go!" she screeches, and then song starts, and it is absolutely perfect for her, that Hard Day's Night-era kind of twisty-shouty stuff with room for her to do her Taylor Hicks tics and Elvis sounds and total affectation. It's probably the best job she's done, but it's still a compendium of everything horrible, so that's fun. I like how it's from the harmless kid stuff catalog, because it's even funnier to think of her slowly being torn apart by internal pressure from how she thinks of herself as totally real and uncompromising, and yet she is singing this song on this show. That J-Lo thing inside her is going to ruin her because she's just Amanda from the Block and she can't stop telling us that, whilst selling out. Randy and Paula loved it, but Simon thought last week was better and that she was irritating and slurred her words. Then he tells Paula to shut the fuck up when he's talking, and Paula responds by babbling some more and acting like she has the right to shout nonsense while he's talking. I think the demon came out of Ryan and went back into Paula where it belongs, and I think that this is how you know that Brooke is magic because she totally did an exorcism on Ryan just by being neato.
Michael Johns will be singing motherfucking "Across the Universe." I knew it. I knew this stupid show was going to come after me on this level. He tells a story about how the song got him through a family disaster and gets kind of choked up, which is actually pretty touching. I hope that he does not screw this up, actually. How great would it be if he was awesome right now? It starts out with normal guitar and his very pretty grumbly voice, and he looks nice even with his ugly singing faces, but there's a chance that it will be okay. First verse and chorus are good, right, and into the second verse...it's a little forced and shouty, but we can take it ... and then it goes very loud and the band gets overexcited and whatever, but he doesn't go nuts on it. It's kind of cheesy and the arrangement is kind of missing the entire point of the song, but I give him props for trying. He really wanted it to be memorable, and I bet in that room it's pretty cool and big. Randy says that he wanted it to be even more bombastic and silly than it was, because he's a dummy. Paula disagrees even though she is a dummy, for the right reasons: she liked how he stood there and sang the song. For once, she's making sense. Simon agrees with Randy that it was "sleepy" and boring, and then forgets Carly's name! He totally goes, "Um, what's the Irish girl's name?" That is freaking awesome. He called her the new Kelly less than an hour ago, and now he doesn't even remember her name. That's my boy. Ryan, I think, agrees with Paula that the very lovely tone in Michael's voice was more than enough to balance out the subtlety of the song itself.
Colonel KLC tells us a bunch of nothing and looks very pretty and has heard of the Beatles. She'll be singing a countrified version of "Eight Days A Week," which she calls a "risk" six times in a row. If there is any justice in this world, this is going to be the most amazingly sucky thing in the world. Like I actually started bouncing on the couch when she said that, because I think Kristy Lee has a pretty good shot at being Sanjaya, honestly, because she sucks so bad that it could be incredible. She just needs to commit to sucking and so far she hasn't really done that. This could be her night to suck really bad, though. Let's see. There are like twenty violins going, and she's seriously squatty, and the song is like incredibly fast, like they sped up the real song on the Chipmunk machine. WOW! This is totally awful! This is so great! I can't believe how shitty this is! Her eyes are full of terror and it's like the song is going faster and faster and faster and the monkey's chasing the weasel and it's...she has no idea. Just none. This is so great, she makes all manner of spooky weird faces and then yodels. Yodels! I love this show! She's so fucking awful, it is great!
Randy's like, "You sounded shitty and inbred, and yet came off fake even though you are both, in reality." Paula tells her she prefers barbiturates to the violently methamphetamine nature of her performance, and says she knew where she was going with it, but that it was a grandiose failure. Simon tells her it was of the Devil and that she sounded bravely like Dolly Parton on helium, and calls it "ghastly country fair." The Colonel's all, "I liked it!" Whatever, freak, go vote for yourself. Ryan asks how Simon can tell her to be country, stay country, and then bash her for it, and Simon's like, "But it fucking sucked, though." And Ryan asks Paula if Simon's advice was crappy, and Simon tells him to fuck off, and Ryan says that the day Simon becomes the host of the show he can do whatever the hell he wants, but until then, he can double fuck off. Paula says that KLC is safe because she has a big fan base, and Kristy thanks her for this value-free fact as though she just said something nice. Which she didn't, she said something mean, which is that KLC's fans are stupid and will vote for her no matter how bad she sucks. But I mean, how do you survive if you're KLC without being able to turn frowns upside down like that? She just made lemonade out of Paula! Delicious metalemonade!
Which means all we have left is David Archuleta, in what's commonly called the "pimp spot." I mean, there's a lot of hanky-panky with this show, it's not a trustworthy show, but that makes me laugh, because the show is entertainment: they don't care how you vote, they care if you watch. So they arrange the performances based on what would make a good show: the reason people in the pimp spot do well, generally, is because those are the performances that will close the show on a high note, so that's how they do it. They do well because they were already going to do well, which is why they put it there.
Usually. This week, not so much. Because I think that what we have done, as a nation, is to break David Archuleta. Too much pressure, too much weirdness resulting from him being born five minutes ago and being obsessed with the show, so he's simultaneously inside the show and outside the show, and everybody loves him and they go nuts on him every week and put a bunch of pressure on him. Poor kid. I feel bad for him, and that he only knows "We Can Work It Out" because of Stevie Wonder, because he's still young enough that he hates the Oldies station and anything that sounds old so he doesn't know the Beatles at all. He confides in his package that he is very nervous, and then onstage we see that he has every right to be nervous about this, because it is sucky as hell.
He does a sassy version and walks down the stairs and forgets the words and then forgets the notes and then gets weird and weirder and...oh. This is amazingly bad. He's just so off and bad and embarrassingly not present for this. Thank goodness that everybody loves him, because this is something for which he should be forgiven. It's just so terrible! He spends the rest of the song trying to cover with random runs and made up unrehearsed whines and sounds and repeating random words from the song. Man. That was a bloodbath.
Randy tells David that apparently he is capable of sucking, and he succeeded at doing that. Paula calls him out for forgetting the lyrics and letting us see him sweat, but doesn't stop loving him. Simon's like, "I love you but I have to be honest: that was a mess." He agrees with Randy that doing a Stevie version of anything is just stupid, and not to forget the words. Ryan's like, "Did you know that it was going to suck that bad?" David admits that he had a feeling that it was going to suck, but nobody could have predicted what a damned mess it turned out to be. He's the sweetest kid in the world, that's just brutal.
To review: Syesha exists, did you know? Because goodbye, girl. Chikezie finally blew everybody's minds like he keeps meaning to. Ramiele earned herself a tiny little amount of "shut up" feelings. Jason did the exact same thing he does every week, thankfully. Carly continues to be a charisma black hole but at least justified her presence. David Cook thinks he is a wizard or something and went to a seriously GOB Bluth place. Brooke White is one of heaven's angels sent down to make us feel better about the world and our place in it. David Hernandez did an outstanding impression of somebody on American Idol. Amanda squatted and shouted and was gross some more. Michael Johns managed to be awesome for once, but is still missing something essential that I cannot find a name for. The Colonel skyrocketed to the top of my all-time favorite performances by freebasing the Beatles from a crack pipe and produced a memorably amazing hot mess. And then poor little David A. turned out to be human. Tomorrow, Joe R. will help us say goodbye to Syesha, and tell us who this season's mentors are, even though I swear they said there weren't going to be any this year.