Ryan is in fine fettle. Cecile Frot-Coutaz is frotcoutazzing it up. J. Lo is dressed like Blair Waldorf.
So is Steven Tyler.
The finale is three weeks away. Three weeks until Casey Abrams comes back. Maybe he will do a duet with Naima. It will just be him slapping a trombone around while she dances and then they're like, "What. You just don't get it."
Jackson: "Now is the time where you have to be in it to win it. America wants to know."
Seacrest: "So very true, Randy. Tonight, they will be singing songs or whatever. There's not really a theme. Songs from before, and then songs from also before. We got tired. A person needs sleep sometimes."
I KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT JACOB'S LIFE FROM HIS WORDY RECAPS
Sheryl Crow is so great, isn't she? I wish we were friends. I would never say I wanted to have some fun. I would never say that Fireman's 4 or Drunk Amazoning is my favorite mistake, even though that's my favorite song* and I constantly hear myself in my head singing about how things that are a bad idea are my favorite mistake. Or that it's okay if it makes you happy. I suppose that the end result is that me and Sheryl would just caress each other's forearms, bereft of shit to say. And spit at cyclists.
Crow: "What they need to do is sing good."
*(It was agreed that, if JAS and I got married which did not happen, "My Favorite Mistake" would be our wedding song, and "Brand New Colony" would be our first dance. Guess which of those was a red flag! Also, guess who still couldn't legally marry anyway.)
I JUST WANT TO DESTROY SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
Durbin: "I will be singing a pretend song, from pretend band Thirty Seconds To Catalano. It was fun to sing with Sheryl Crow."
Crow: "It was fun to sing with a robot."
Iovine: "I don't know what rock music even is anymore. Sometimes I just turn off my phone and lay on the living room floor and look at the ceiling and think about how in one day and a few hours I have to be on this show more."
Durbin's mic isn't working great, which is sad because the pretend song by the pretend band is, like most of their songs, 100% power hooks that are totally awesome. If you want to rock out in your shower, Thirty Seconds To Let's Bolt! is the way to go.
Also, Durbin: Does just awful. With a Gosselin 'don't, as was pointed out to me by a live-twitterer with very good Gosselin-scope.
Tyler: "Or something!"
Lopez: "You grab, you take, you want, we feel. WE FEEL! It's yours to take and ours to feel!"
Jackson: "Nobody's ever heard of Sharon Chersky To Mars except me, so this probably went over their heads."
Everybody: Cuts him a break.
Tyler: "Or something!"
Lopez: "You grab, you take, you want, we feel. WE FEEL! It's yours to take and ours to feel!"
Jackson: "Nobody's ever heard of Sharon Chersky To Mars except me, so this probably went over their heads."
Everybody: Cuts him a break.
Seacrest: "You busted out the Full Monty! I don't know what that phrase means!"
(But that would be okay too.)
Durbin: "When I think about my hairdo right now it makes me want to slap myself!"
IN WHICH JACOB LUSK REFUSES TO JUSTIFY HIS EXISTENCE
Seacrest: "Jacob Lusk, I dare you."
Lusk: "I accept that dare, Ryan. I am more interesting than anybody, but also an underdog. I am from Compton, which was once the ghetto."
The Actual Producer of "No Air," the awesome song that Lusk is singing outside his range, is there. No pressure or anything. No air, and no pressure. Like a tire. Like a tire in an old abandoned lake where I watched Phil Collins's wife drown and didn't save her. That's how Jacob Lusk makes me feel.
Crow: "I... Think he can sing this song?"
Iovine: "As a hermaphrodite, it makes sense that Lusk would sing a duet with himself."
Lusk puts his stank on what was formerly an awesome song. Listening to him try to ornament around the OneRepublic-esque drum tracks that are the point of this song is amazing, but not as amazing as listening to him bend about 5,000 notes over as though he's wearing a leather harness and confidence. Way to fuck absolutely everything up, you total dork.
Lopez: "It was interesting pretending that you would ever sing a song this great in real life. So your whole 'I've been lying about being contemporary' thing is like a murder mystery. You will get to Top Three at best. Oops! I didn't mean to say that. I meant to say you will be the runner-up. This shit is more real than the 6."
Jackson: "You sang horrible, basically, is the most important thing. You are neither Chris Brown nor Jordin Sparks, give me a break."
(Lusk domestically abuses himself, yet escapes all consequences; it's hilarious.)
Tyler: "I wish you had a personality. Like mine is screaming and talking about my dick. You don't have either of those things, but surely you have something."
Lusk: "I do not, beyond being a douche. But thank you for your feedback."
FACE MEET KNUCKLE
Lauren: "Have y'all heard of Carrie Underwood? She first became famous when I was not yet born."
Crow: "I still haven't heard of her. I don't think this is a good idea."
Lauren: "Please tell me basic things. I am just happy to be here."
Crow: "Remember first that you have feet, and also that breathing."
Lauren: "That is a lot to ask."
Iovine: "America, we are proud of Lauren. For not knowing what the fuck she is doing."
Lauren fucking rocks whatever Carrie song this is. Carrie Underwood rocks, and Lauren is a good jukebox of a person. The strange genderless white skinny-jeans mooseknuckle of the fiddler this week: It is all you will remember. He will put it in your face.
Face: Meet knuckle.Lauren: Is going to win this shit same as Lee DeWyze did. By sucking. Gross me out, America. Let's all go watch the Adam Levine Is Adorable Show, once it is comprehensible, and leave this whole mess behind.
Tyler: "I just love how you tried, and how you are basically unfixable."
Lauren: "I'm just here to have fun, and world peace."
Lopez: "I have given in, too. Sure, whatever. Give the meaningless title and lack of future to the idiot girl in all the makeup."
Lauren: "Well thanks, y'all! I'm just happy to be here."
Jackson: "Yo Dawg I'm just happy to be here."
Lauren: "I'm just happy to be here."
Jackson: "Listen it was just a little I'm just happy to be here for me."
Lauren: "I'm just here to have fun, and learn to sing. Sometime in the three weeks."
Seacrest: "I have one kajillion dollars."
This show will never die.
OH NO THERE'S BEEN A MUGGING
"But Scotty," you're saying, "However will you escape the strictures of this Theme Which Is No Kind Of Theme in order to subvert it by singing a George Strait song exactly like George Strait? What becomes of the Box when there is no Box, and how can one think outside It?"
Fear not my darlings, Wonderwall got you covered: Scotty The Body will be singing "Gone," by Montgomery Gentry.
Iovine: "Because it's so rock and roll, you see."
Crow: "I'm just happy to be here."
Iovine: "This song has angst. Even the title, 'Gone,' speaks of an absence. Do you see? Not presence but absence. The very Da in Fort, Da is essentially what Scotty 'The Body' will be, if you will, embodying. We don't even know what is 'gone,' in the eponymous sense. That's how gone it is. We've created a new genre of music. Call it Deleuze, call it Guattari, but don't ever call it country, because it's not: It's 'Gone.'"
Scotty sings a country song, much in the style of a country singer. You have been deceived.
Scott: Thinks he's adorable. Or you need to remember your safeword, stat. One or the other.
Dumb Audience: Yep.
Tyler: Most of all.
Tyler: "I saw you dance with the Devil tonight. It was beautiful."
Scott: "The fuck you say."
Lopez: Laughs hysterically.
Jackson: Throws himself a party. A party in his pants. In his giant pants.
Seacrest: "Things are hot tonight!"
Ever: Danced with the devil in the pale moonlight? Not remarkably like that. This was more like getting hit on by a valet and then making a night-vision sex tape while his buddy robs you.
Nobody At Any Point: Even bothers to mention the song, or him singing it. It is GONE.
WHERE ARE MY KEYS I LOST MY PHONE PHONE
"An unreleased Gaga song," is what Haley will be singing.
Question: How the fuck is there such a thing as an unreleased Lady Gaga song? She literally announced three singles while I was typing that sentence. All of them about how she is gay, but not really, but please let me be your friend, I would totally make out with a girl if I were drunk, so basically I'm gay, so cottage industry. Times three. While I was typing that sentence.
Scott: "I can't tell you how fun it was, the torture of singing a non-country song that was totally a country song."
America: "Here is a hug."
Seacrest: "Thanks for still watching this crap. Haley, how on earth did you ever get ahold of the one unreleased Gaga song that ever existed?"
Haley: "Jimmy Iovine was like, 'You know how 'Alejandro' and 'Born This Way' are paint-by-numbers crap? That's because she saves the real shit for her concerts, because what the Lady Gaga concert is about mainly is the music. So sing this song, I think it will be hilarious.' I didn't know about that, because it doesn't seem that fun, but then they realized they could force me into being the Mikaela, out of the two of us ladies, so I guess I have a new personality now. A gay one."
Gaga: "I have less of a problem with my songs being on this show than possibly anyone, including dead people. Kings of Leon and I are the opposite of each other."
Seacrest: "I am a cottage industry, but not a gay one, so I only understand half of what you said. The non-gay half, specifically."
Crow: "This is such a great idea that Haley would sing a song nobody has heard, that is so uncommercial that not even Lady Gaga, a young lady who would release an EP of herself getting an upper GI, doesn't see floating."
Iovine: "Basically what I'm saying is that I am tired of having Haley on this show. But also that my frame of reference is limited to the degree where, when asked to name a song from this century, I literally could not."
Haley sings a horrible version of a horrible Gaga version of a horrible Elton John song. I cannot stress how shitty her voice sounds. You know how everybody keeps saying she's going to blow her shit out by singing the way she sings? This is what they were talking about. Hi, Haley's Voice! Bye, Haley's Entire Esophagus! Ashes and what looks like the hair from a My Little Pony come shooting out of her mouth toward the end, just blobbering onto her sweater so it looks like she's been shot. It's a complete massacre.
Lopez: "This idea was retarded. Iovine is fucking you over. That is what is happening."
Haley: "The hope was that I would be a first by shooting the moon."
Lopez: "And yet instead that was a middle finger to us all. Happy birthday to the miscarriage of justice you just perpetrated on us. I have dressed like a wedding cake to celebrate your wedding to nothing and nobody."
Jackson: "[Honestly, I could transcribe it word for word, but it would make even less sense.] Also, all five of you dicks are singing another song once this show is over, because it's not actually over. And the second one probably will be old, so okay."
Tyler: "[Some bullshit about some bullshit]."
Seacrest: "So this was dumb, yeah?"
Haley: "...Yep."
Seacrest: "Up , everything goes backwards and rewinds, and we do this whole stupid motherfucker one more time, only with songs from olden times that you might actually recognize, if you're still watching this show."
YET SOMEHOW STILL INVOLVING CHRIS BROWN PROBABLY
Seacrest: "If you just love what you're hearing, download everything from iTunes that ever existed and then blow yourself up and make some space for newer, better humans."
Durbin: "I have to sing that Chapin song where you kill yourself in a bathtub and Shannyn Sossymahouyhnhnm has to pull you out of the bathtub with your arms flopping around and boobs and your scarred-up face. It made me get all emotional for the first time in life. I can't stop crying. I can't live if living is without you. I have to go be in the parking lot like I'm Michael Scott."
Crow: "Feelings are like that."
Lopez: "So I've heard."
Then -- surprise -- he sings it the most beautiful way, with his sad-puppy face and his hair all calmed down, and it's once again lovely. Coming up on the chorus you can first see and then hear about how he's about to lose it.
TROUBLE CHILD, TWITCHIN' LIKE THE WAVES AT MALIBU
I would say this is probably the only chance Durbin has at staying, since he's basically the only man left in the competition and has to demonstrate his ability to be "real" and so yeah, let's all be "real" together. That sounds bearable.
Judgery: Also crying.
Everybody: Crying. Crying like Pia Toscano just coughed into her handkerchief and there was blood. Crying like Pia Toscano finally discovered her womanhood and now the ship is going down, Leonardo DiCaprio's frozen fingers breaking off one by one. Crying like Pia Toscano was supposed to meet them at the top of the Empire State Building and couldn't make it.
Durbin: Losing it.
Jackson: "Yo. James. Yo. Uh."
Judgery: As usual, idiotically, love that he cried. They honestly think that matters. Like Jackson honestly says that crying is better than singing.
He cries so much and they love it so much that out of nowhere, Ty Pennington runs up onstage and gives James Durbin a blowjob. It is fucking hot.
Seacrest: "How are you doing? Besides not singing the song?"
Durbin: "You know, I'm hanging in there. I almost acted professionally. Let me tell you about how emotions work and also car engines."
Seacrest: "That was actually a hypothetical question. But you are great!"
EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL & LITERALLY NOTHING COULD MAKE ME WATCH THIS SHIT ACTUALLY HAPPENING
Lusk: "Once I realized that Durbin was going to crap his pants onstage and cry like a little baby, I decided to sing 'Love Hurts,' because hurting."
Crow: "[Just lovely. Such a voice.]"
Harpist. Aaaaaaaaand bleep-bloop.
Judgery: "Yep. Sure just watched Jacob Lusk."
Godawful kick to commercial where Lauren is putting yet more blusher on Scott and then they both flip and grin idiotically into the camera as though it's suddenly the credits of Step By Step. Jerks. Criminy, that angers me. In my gut.
SPEAKING OF ASSHOLES, WHAT'S UP SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS? DONE ONE THOUSAND CRAPPY MOVIES LATELY?
Lauren: "I will be singing 'Unchained Melody,' because I have no sense of shame and never heard that song until today."
Iovine: "Most people know this song from the movie Ghost. And by 'most people,' I mean specifically 'most thousand-year-old people.'"
Crow: "This little jerk won't quit, will she?"
Lauren: "Nope."
In a cheap Disney Princess dress with a plastic gold belt that looks like something from the original BSG, or like Lynda Carter's Amazon Sisters of Themyscira, and with a truly egregious edit to the loud part, just ugly nonsense, and then once again with the Miss Piggy makeup and refusing to sing above Middle C, she will do this song. It will be one of the least moving, least memorable, least attractive versions of the song ever performed, including every karaoke bar in every town in every universe.
Judges: "We have nothing to say about that. Why judge? Why do anything? Why care? Your mediocrity is what makes you so almost special. Thanks again, for letting us watch you do an average job at things other people sacrifice things for."
YOU WERE RARELY ON MY MIND AFTER THIS SEASON OF AMERICAN IDOL
Seacrest: "America and I were wondering how your second song is going to blow our minds out the back of our heads and onto our chairs and the people behind us in their own chairs."
Scott: "I will do this by singing 'Always On My Mind,' by Everybody Ever."
Iovine: "Don't ever listen when people beg you to have a personality or sing some other way or song instead of the same song all the time."
Scott: "I certainly was not planning on it."
Pitch issues, from old Scotty. Everybody sucks tonight. It's very interesting. What is the science of that? How does that happen where everybody fails to hit notes we've heard them hit plenty of times? Ha! I don't actually care. But it was fun to pretend for a moment.
Judgery: "That was fun too. I love not doing anything, and getting paid, and lying to children, right to their faces, and getting paid for that too. Sometimes while dressed like insane bridesmaids."
HEY SCOTT'S GRANDMOTHER THANKS SO MUCH FOR SHOWING UP, HERE'S A MILLION EXTRA VOTES FOR SCOTTY SINCE YOU EXIST
Haley: "I will be singing 'House Of The Rising Sun,' because it would be ironic to actually sing about a whorehouse instead of just singing everything like I'm standing in one. In the parlor of one, in the guestroom or parlor. Of a whorehouse."
Crow: "Sing it a capella at first, under a single white spotlight. Since I've never seen this show, that seems really fresh and amazing to me. Maybe when Steven Tyler finally implodes into himself from sucking so hard I can be on this show."
Haley does it just fine. Growly, dressed like a circus stripper but with jeans underneath, it's so sassy sassafrassy and whatever, it's the only one of the TEN songs tonight besides James that's even worth a second listen, but we had to tromp-tromp over nine other pieces of crap to get there. I'm just glad Haley's still here representing People Who Can Actually Sing on this show that is almost never about singing.
Judgery: "[Literally just clapping and nodding. That's all they feel like doing after this nine miles of nothing.]"
Jackson: "I love how every week, somebody actually does something worthwhile. That's how low the bar is. When I say it was the best performance of the night, I honestly mean that it was not that hard to decide."
Tyler: "I like that you sang like me. Well, not like me but I like to talk about me. So let's say you did a great job because you sang like me. I wear ladies' underwear under my clothes. It feels nice. Sorta slippery and soft. I feel safer with it on. I like having my own secret."
Lopez: "I woke up, and I liked what I heard, and now I'm going back to sleep. As you can see by my apparel."
I COULD DRINK A CASEY OF ABRAMS & STILL BE ON MY FEET
Durbin sang that Thirty Krakow To Enrique song, gorgeous, and then gave a so-so song about loneliness. Lusk squatted out a shit to Jordin Sparks right there onstage, and then I fast-forwarded whatever gay hell he unleashed . Lauren did a rousing rendition of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit," followed by a truly sobering take on the title track from Lil B's album I'm Gay. Scotty sang a country song, and then just to mix it up, a country song. And Haley actually showed up for the show and did a crap job of some song I don't even remember, and then what just happened happened.
Tonight: Some good guest stars, and then God willing somebody gets punished for tonight in a major damn way.