Ryan explains Motown to us for sixty years, but I respect you more than Ryan does, so let's just sit quietly. The Contours, Diana Ross' crazy ass, Gladys Knight with her Pips showing, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, yet more Jackson 5, Martha Reeves, Vandellas. Also, Barry Gordy saved America during the '60s, which had not so much awesomeness in certain ways, by being totally awesome. He bought the Graystone Ballroom so black folks could perform there, and packaged the first Motown albums with pictures of like white people on a beach. That's how you do it until you don't have to do it anymore: make enough money that it doesn't matter. That's so amazing.
The kids fly to Motown, where the most flattering group of Idol fans is there screaming and carrying on, Smokey Robinson continued to be terrifying, Danny was smarmy and bored, to be fair it is kind of boring listening to how "every village, every town, every city has the same amount of talent," and they wander around the famous studio for awhile. Lil is sort of overcome by the immanence of history, and then they all take a picture. As usual, Scott is the only person who knows how to make a normal photograph face. Then they sing "Ain't No Mountain" with Smokey, who is wearing cargo pants and a giant hoodie the same color as his freaky, scary eyes. And yes, the little dance Adam does at the end of the piano is pretty gay but I think we have yet seen nothing, and then the Motownies are in the audience with a killer lady.
Matty G will be singing "Let's Get It On." I think I just died. He plays it for Smokey, who almost starts crying because he was so close with Marvin and Matt is so awesome, and says Marvin would have just completely flipped. That is so amazing. That's like if George Saunders showed up and went, "You know who would like this? F. Scott Fitzgerald."
Cannily, given the critique or facsimile thereof last week about Scott, Matt gets up and dances around a little bit while he's singing. For a song about fucking, it's pretty comfy and sweet. Especially when Matt does it. Marvin Gaye is so funny because even when the title of the song is actually fucking, like "Sexual Healing," you're just like, "Mm, being a little kid was all right. This song makes me think of Baskin-Robbins and sitting in the middle seat of the minivan going through the car wash." How does he do that?
Kara would like to get it on, a little bit. Paula compares him to a pair of worn-in jeans, in the nicest way possible. Simon loved the song choice, didn't love the part where he wandered over to get it on with the Judgery, and thought it was right in the center lane with his voice. Simon reiterates Randy's reiteration of Simon's statement that he is now to be considered a front-runner. That's nice, but I wish I had him to look forward to. Now it's just nine more people. Well, eight people and some kind of scary sex wizard.
Oh, that's kind of cool and kind of karaoke lame: the downloads this week are the kids' voices, over the original Motown wax. I bet that will sound pretty cool, especially if anybody does girl groups. That crunchy lo-fi sound. You know what song nobody cares about? "They Don't Know," by Tracey Ullman. If I could have that song playing over my entire life in an unending loop I would. That song is so fucking sweet.
Kris will be singing "How Sweet It Is," bowling right down the middle of his whole guitar Mayer Jack Johnson deal, to a sort of disappointing degree. Smokey says only that he should change nothing, because Kris can sing well and play the guitar, and also blew his mind. Smokey is so cool. He just likes stuff.
Kris starts out all a capella and then the song with a little bit of exciting drums. The song I don't know, it's kind of worn out, and his style is nice and everything, he isn't a person who fucks up at singing or playing guitar, but mostly it's about being cute and smiling. When I look into the eyes of the Kris, I see puppies and rainbows, and not a hell of a lot more. Like, I can't imagine him writing a song unless it was like one of those Edie Brickell songs about sitting on a porch and eating a burrito. Woke up, it was a Kris Allen morning, so I bought some organic oranges and played X-Box, and people holding hands.
Kara calls this "artistry" and how "Kris" it was, because of the phrasing and the dynamics and all the things that matter when you care to begin with. It was perfect, I cannot deny it. But that place where music lives in my heart, this was the street over. Just knocking at the door all day waiting to talk about sunshine and rainbows and like the Lord's Plan. I'm so disengaged from him. Simon calls it all very smart and whatever, but maybe Kris needs a little confidence, and stands like he's waiting for a bus. "To be a star, Paula, you've got to be conceited. Like me." Truer words. In fact maybe that's my problem: no matter how cute he is, he's still just like your friend's sweet little brother who is very good at a certain something. Like you want to clap for him because he did a good job, not because you have lost your mind with pleasure.
Actually, despite the pants' ill fit, Scott is looking awesome. Pink paisley shirt, pinstriped brown jacket. So nice, like a sort of rock dandy thing, very cool. He talks about the whole thing last week, and how he's going to stick with the piano. Just like he said last week. Paula's like, "He's going to bring it, so who cares." He will be singing "You Can't Hurry Love," but will be doing it all Scott style: slow, piano'd, and uplifting. He also shares with us his romantic status -- single -- and how he is trying not to hurry love, just as in the song.
My thing with this very pretty song has always been that I wish I had enough time to even worry about it. The song is telling you to stop waiting for the person to come along and complete you and just assume that at some point it's going to happen, so get real, because Shel Silverstein had a point. But to me personally, that's kind of like saying stop waiting for the atom bomb, because when it comes nobody will be able to help you out. Maybe there's two kinds of people, and on the other side there's "Hounds Of Love," because that makes more sense to me: you're just obliviously going about your business and trying to be productive and figure it out, and then some smartass shoves a grenade over the transom, and you find yourself in an unholy mess for which you are not entirely without accountability. It's distracting! Boys are very time-consuming! They have friends! And laundry! I can't even juggle my own of those things, and now I'm on some kind of committee? No.
When I was very little I spent years waking up with my stuffed animals on the other side of the room because I apparently didn't feel like sharing my space -- terrible survivor guilt looking over at them all fucking splayed out in the cold morning like a massacre -- and I remember always feeling this tremendous social pressure from my family and whatever, grownups, to bond somehow with these dolls and toys and stuff and carry them around and have them be my best friend or whatever, and I didn't and I still don't see much point. And yet. To see somebody's feet up on the coffee table of a Sunday morning and know that you don't have to be "on" right now, that is a very nice feeling. Especially if you can smell coffee and know you didn't make it. So I guess I agree with Diana Ross, about this if nothing else.
Okay, song's over. It sounded like Scott, singing a song. It was energetic and kind. There was a piano. I am not inspired this week by any of these things, and I'm not sure it's the cheesiness of Scott that is to blame. Maybe it's me: I think after you hear a given song a certain number of times it's impossible to care, and this has got to be one of those songs. You can't hurry "Can't Hurry Love."
Paula likes how he had the backups crowd around the piano, and also she really liked the Roboto section. I am fairly certain that is not actually what she said, because of the two of us she knows more than me and I am comfortable with that. Simon says it was pretty much unbearable and honky-tonk sounding. Okay, and Simon says that it was irrelevant and didn't mine a whole lot of new territory, which yes. Simon talks over Paula's whole critique going, "Answer the question answer the question" and she dives under the table going, "I have something for Simon!" Ryan goes, "We're not allowed to show that," and then she comes back up for air with crayons and a couple coloring books. Simon loses his shit, because to Paula that's probably the same thing.
Ryan explains the gag, so to speak, to Scott and Reason #2365 I love Ryan more than mortal boys is the kindergarten way he says "crayon," like it's spelled "crown." My heart literally melted and now is a puddle in my body somewhere. Scott yells, "Vote for the pink pants!" and Ryan goes, "The flesh-colored pink pants!" Which, I know how Ryan's brain works and that's a private joke about crowns, but just sounds in the moment like yet more gay propaganda. Then, because everything has so randomly and impressively gone to shit, Ryan loses it and goes, "How do you know they're pink?" And Scott has to say, "Um, because they told me they were. I'm blind, dude." I hope they keeping horsing around so that by the time we hit Sarver, Ryan's just doing jumping-jacks onstage.
So the best famous-people Twitters I've found so far are Ryan Seacrest and Courtney Love, both of whom I love about the same, but whose tweets are vastly different in every way except their superiority over other tweets. Ryan's tweets -- and check me with the lingo, because I just started using the account I got a year ago because even though it's stupid, it's happening -- are all about cool shit: "Look at this monkey! They think they're people! Look, a charity!" or whatever. Whatever brightens his day. And then Courtney's are like these glittery, foul IMs from your subconscious that happen in a flurry -- ten of them at once -- at odd hours once a day, and just like Sanjaya they both make no sense and yet are somehow spiritually nutritive.
Paula's explaining to Ryan that the coloring-book choices are "Pirate" and "Daisy & The Pickles." Ryan's like, "I know what he's going to pick." Kara blurts out for attention how Simon's favorite crown is black, and Paula says she keeps a lot of shit under her skirt. Ryan and Kara are horrified, and his voice is cracking all over, and Simon muzzles Paula. And just because that wasn't weird enough: Megan.
"For Once In My Life!" Megan screams at Smokey, making him jump a little and say she's "so different." What Megan hears is that Smokey "likes her," which you can compare and contrast for yourself. She asks if she should Megan It Up on this one line, and Smokey's like, "You have already made it your own. The fact that you think that's what the song sounds like explains a shitload." I'm totally going to pretend she's trying to sing it straight from now on, and it's just coming out this fucked up. Also? Tattoos on the feet. Guess it's good that her horrors are becoming easier to take apart and investigate, instead of just being this tattooed blur of awful shaking its boobs at you.
So she slumps around acting weird and scary, dropping notes and hitting the bottom for no reason, and dancing around all weird, with a strange little S&TC thing happening in the arrangement at some points, and a scary fake smile. She does some awesome stuff toward the middle, and the backup singers are fabulous, and then it's right back into the freakish mediocrity of everything she does: bizarre angle dancing, total lack of breath control, inability to stay on pitch, wavering like she's on an airport tarmac with tanks rolling by.
Kara suggests "My Guy," like that's not even more dicky, and again calls her "weird." She says she was dominated by the song this week, and that's not the Megan she remembers. Good. I wish the song would dominate her a little bit more and squeeze out all the weird. Paula starts out with how pretty she is, which is like whoa. She says the key was too low, but then later too high. This is because Paula hasn't figured out that Megan CANNOT SING VERY WELL. Simon tells her to fire everybody who gives her advice for this shit she keeps perpetrating, and tells her she's in trouble. Finally somebody said part of the total of things wrong with her. Ryan feels bad for her and asks a boring question, and she answers a boring answer through her nose and then tosses around a weird Muppet smile and acts just incredibly insecure and fake and it's sort of demoralizing to watch. "Thanks, Ryan!" I never knew how dead you could sound saying that. "Thanks, Ryan!"
Anoop -- yes! -- is singing "Ooh, Baby Baby"! That will rock. Smokey explains that they used to do this whole medley with the Miracles, and just randomly went off into this song, and they riffed with him and got awesome. That's really cool. Then Smokey says the word "sensual," which is fine I guess. And you know, Smokey was blown away by Anoop. So he's loved everybody but Megan? Welcome to Season Eight, Miracle Man. Wait until Danny gets overexcited and licks your face, or pees on your rug, or hugs you to death, and get back to me.
In context of the song, Anoop's outfit goes from being shiny and rowing crew to this sort of awesome Monty Clift place. He's got a shirt and tie, with a polo over it, and a letter jacket-banded windbreaker over that. I would be proud to have assembled that outfit for sure, although the time for layers is over in Austin. The song itself is sweetness and perfection: entirely within the bounds of the usual song, but not boring.
So his hair is like a single mom from 1986 that owns an art gallery: spiky and helmetty at once. I don't believe we have seen these particular stupid glasses before. The moves are classic Gokey: pointy and explainy, like he's laying it down for you in total authenticity if only you just listen. He does the R&B /t/ thing in "ready," pronouncing it "retty," which is a pet peeve that sort of pales in comparison to his absolute desperation and tragic puffy hair. He's like those churches you see on TV, every time. And OH! He does not do the thing that Smokey told him to do! He is better than Smokey Robinson!
Paula calls him identifiable, reliable and undeniable. Which okay, yes, he has a great voice that is totally his voice and not really anybody else's. He sounds like Danny, which is rarer on this show than it should be. And he's reliable in that he will always do the hokey-pokey and rely on the strength of his voice without offering anything else, such as charisma of any kind. But "undeniable"? Only if you're talking about how he's not been eliminated yet. I deny him. I deny him and defy him and want to liquefy him. Simon's like, "Also though? It was clumsy and amateurish."
Then the crowd climbs over each other to rend Simon limb from limb, because safe is good and boring is great and mediocrity means nobody ever has to excel so stop stressing out. Kara says she remains a fan regardless of tonight. I don't have anything to say about Danny anymore. There's nothing clever about hate, and all I can think of is hate. He seems like a very nice guy. That counts for a lot. He has a lovely voice. Personality aside, he's fairly great looking. Beyond that, what's to say? You can't make a sandwich with just mayonnaise, even if it's the fanciest tastiest mayonnaise from France, with tiny crushed-up diamonds in it that visibly reduce the signs of aging. And he is not even that kind of mayonnaise.
Oh, Allison! I forgot her because she's so small and silly. I could have been looking forward to this the whole time! "Papa Was A Rolling Stone," with the shivery strings in the back and the wickity-wickity and the whole thing! I am about to cross 110th Street just listening to this. How thrilling! She does the first verse pretty solid, and then gets very syncopated with the vocals the second time around, like Lady Marmalade. Between the crowd and the band, it pretty much builds to insanity, and then she goes off on the whole vocal thing at the end, and hits a huge note that goes right up Paula's spine. Where did this chick come from? She is so awesome!