Oh right, this is always fun at this part of the season. Let's play How Many Of These Jerks Can Jacob Think Of Without Help. Well, there's A-Rod and Haeley -- and yes, I've gotten my first deranged hatemail about them this week, as expected; there's this new trend in hatemail this year where the people are so outraged they leave out why, and it's just like, "Let me clear something up for you, asshole! Not everybody in Chicago loves Barack Obama! Stop generalizing!" and it makes no sense and isn't even what they meant to say when they started ranting, and it's sad but funny and honestly I blame Twitter but either way this was one of those -- and then that little baby child-girl with the breasts who talks like codeine feels, Katie something, and oh there's Didi, and then there's the two pretty/yucky ones and the gay one. That's seven of twelve. Not too shabby.
Oh, and the girl who looks like many girls. This show is always so loud. Everything explodes more than everything else. Ryan's wearing a daring plaid tie and his hair is smaller than usual. I'm not sure I like it. Okay, there's Paige looking almost acceptable, A-Rod blowing kisses, Janell (Janell! I loved her!) looking sweet in a Serena van der Woodsen top if Serena shopped at Target, horrible Lilly who Ryan hates maybe more than I do and looks like haunted hair out of an old person's drainpipe, Katelyn who is dressed like Romy and Michelle's funeral, Haeley who is wearing an entire quinceañera for some reason and it makes her look like Wide Sargasso Sea, Lacey who smells like Mardi Gras, Michelle who can't help it if her face makes her look like a bitch, the Electric Company crocheted rug-vest and finger-guns of Didi, that mysterious Siobhan throwing punk rockery moves that make Ryan feel confused, Crystal who is wearing a tasteful suit jacket and would look just find if not for her head, and Little Katie Stevens who as usual makes the universe feel like it's her FAO Schwarz birthday party and we're all lucky enough to be invited.
Ryan makes ha-ha with the boys, who don't care, and Mike Lynche is cartoonishly huge in the middle of them, but I don't recognize anybody else. And so the lineup, and I hope it stays this way, is Ellen-that guy-Kara-Simon. Ryan talks about how Simon told the Post it was the Girls' Year, and Simon says this is because they are all equally interesting. Even fuckin' Lilly. Kara lies right to your face about how we "know" them so terribly well that we are like their intimate BFFs of all time and even help pick out their clothes and their songs with them. Which is the opposite of the reality. Ellen tells Ryan, and the ladies, to not get angry with themselves and not be fucking boring so people will find them interesting. Even Lilly.
Ryan asks why Ellen moved and Randy interjects that it's because she wants to be to him, which is so retarded that nobody even acknowledges it, but she says that it's because Simon won't stop trying to fuck her. Then she shows this video with Simon touching her thigh that wasn't funny on her show last week and isn't funny this week either. Let's see if they show the part where Kara's hand was creeping in from the other side, because I don't think they... Nope. God forbid.
The theme is Billboard singles, which is as much of a theme as anything, and Paige and her creepy mutant ugly cheap-looking blue contacts tell us some creepy story I wasn't listening to because I am mesmerized by how ill-advised her makeup and styling tend to be. Plus I have bad feelings for her having to do with Hollywood Week that I'm not really accessing right now.
Paige sings some song that involves going "Hey!" a whole lot and some guitars. She hits some pretty great notes... Oh, it's the "All Right Now" song from before you were born. Probably she loved listening to that song when she had her first kid back in the '60s. So yeah her voice sounds really good, in most of the parts, but overall is just about as boring as you can possibly be. Not a totally awful start, and she's got a great voice, but I'm not feeling it.
Simon says she has the best voice of all the girls, and her nerdy white friends clap in the audience and are adorable, but he's not done: That was a dumb song choice and a tentative performance. He thinks she'll be safe but needs to push it time. Kara tells her the song choice was brilliant, and... I don't know, something about the way Kara is talking tonight makes me sick. Like, physically sick, like how some people say the word poem or crayon or bury and it makes you want to hit them, or run away? That's Kara today.
Ellen says a bunch of cute nothingnesses and tells her she was much better than in rehearsal, where the boringness of her and her song really shone through. Then Paige and Ryan talk about how she's sewn into her dress and can finally pee, which is almost as classy as the flammable plastic weave on her head. You know, actually her look is so tragic and cheap-looking that I sort of am starting to feel sorry for her. I mean, clearly nobody has told her about the colored contacts issue, and at 24 you're maybe still in that weird-haircuts-can-be-fun place, where maybe something about your look is sort of a middle finger to the idea of other people. But they have to look at you, friend. They're the ones that have to look at you.
Nothing wrong with Ashley Rodriguez's look. She's a Massachusetts student who got shade from Simon about liking "Battlefield," and then sang it in Hollywood, where Simon kept making fun of her for it. Tonight, it's the opposite of Things Simon Mocks, because she's singing "Happy" by Leona Lewis. It took me awhile but I got on the "Bleeding Love" train eventually. I like that song because of the beat, I like violence and fight metaphors, and also because she makes so many weird moaning sounds while she's singing it that you can imagine she's actually been stabbed multiple times.
This song "Happy," though, I am not sure about it. You hear it a lot these days in movie trailers and Lifetime Real Moments but I never knew what it was until just now. I like it less having heard the whole thing. But she's the cutest thing, and her voice is lovely. I mean, how boring. How perfectly boring. Ashley, don't do this to me. I keep hoping she'll do something the song doesn't care to do, or that the backup will sound like something other than a Lifetime Real Moment, but no.
Kara tells her that this is a very big song, but maybe too big, and she's dumb for emulating people that are too much like her. Ellen agrees that it's predictable, and that A-Rod is perfect, and thus can only raise her game by taking risks. Simon calls it "clumsy" and has no love for the arrangement. He says she gets a little worse every time she sings for them, and that she's not an original or a recording artist, but a singer of other people's songs. She cries sweetly and Ryan tells her to pull it together and crush them week, and she totally pulls it together and smiles and whatever. I hope that this won't totally hamper her week. Also, I hope that she comes back week.
Ryan loves Janell, that's good. She is a wine sales rep who was once hated by Simon, and then in Hollywood she did a cool guitar version of "American Boy," which Simon really loved. So now her job is to, as she says, "light up on that stage," which is her birthright. Ryan stands in an awkward/beautiful model pose to announce the song, which... NICE! "What About Love," by Heart, which I've been listening to like nonstop this week for cheesy reasons I'm not going to share right now but which are very real to me. You can listen to "I Can Dream About You" from Streets Of Fire only so many times before those words just stop meaning anything, and then there's Heart.
Janell is yet another uninspiring entry vocally, but seems more comfortable onstage than the others and has that creativity going that the others don't yet. The judges tell her that her song choice was confusing and boring, but less boring than everybody else so far, but Ellen liked it. Kara pulls out the "you can't sing Heart without getting compared to Heart" card, which doesn't make sense to me this week because they're all that song. Randy actually explains it better than any of them, saying that you have to pick something just weird enough that you won't get compared and come off badly.
Speaking of coming off badly, the unimaginably off-putting Lilly is . And you know, she has a wondrous voice. She really does. I already remember how much I love her voice. But her personality and look are already so awful, and tonight she's got the makeup making her look like Death Note and some dumb green vintage-y dress over which she artfully draped half of several other outfits, and her absolutely insupportable hair, and it's like, other people don't fight their talent like this. Other people -- not all of them, Crystal Bowersox -- get out of their own way. And at some point watching you self-sabotage yourself like some kind of conflicted Jekyll & Hyde act makes me want to hit the bricks.
Lived out of her car, played on the street, "struggled," wore all kinds of things as earrings that are not earrings, was shrill and fat-faced, had a dingy grey mullet all over the place, and did everything she does that she thinks is her personality. Now, just to be more irritating, she's going to sing "Fixing A Hole" by the Beatles, and she's going to do this in her best affected Ashlee Simpson pout and Big-Band warble and affected-as-fuck pronunciation, and she's going to do this while dressed as the Patchwork Girl of Oz.
And again, you're going to hit the issue where lots of people are not yet sick of this shit, and an even greater percentage of people are going to find it fresh and new, and you can't say "This is completely unoriginal" without pulling the "I've seen more of the world than you" card -- in this case, the Live Music/Deluded About Their Talent Capital Of The World card -- so what do you do? Stand by and talk shit about her and have a crush on her cute parents and hope that maybe her lack of uniqueness will be a plus and we can all get over it once and for all and she can inspire the three girls who aren't doing this exact same shit to go ahead and "express themselves" by doing this exact same shit and dressing like mental patients, and Courtney Love can come out of a crack in the earth surrounded by smoke and be like, "As it was foretold."
Simon -- yes! -- goes, "Um 90% of YouTube is people doing this shit, you're not fooling anybody." And the crowd goes, "We are fooled!" And Kara goes, "I am fooled!" And Ellen goes, "I'm so adorably out of touch that I think you're unique!" Then Lilly calls Ryan Seacrest short. Hope they send her home in a box.
Lovely Katelyn seems really intense with that Felicity hair and her focused way of talking about music. Like the girl in a teen drama show that writes in a diary and feels feelings, but is unattainably beautiful, and then goes to Brown. Which is even more awesome because she sings "Oh! Darlin'" with the best vocal so far, wearing a deconstructed flapper-concept outfit complete with glittery fascinator, bright red lips and Madonna hair, and pressed-gold feather earrings. Dude, I have just turned right round baby on Miss Epperson. This is fucking masterful.
Simon agrees, saying that there were screamy moments but overall he really likes her. Kara loves her confidence with her instrument and her actual technical ability, but hates her crazy look. I think Kara thinks this look is for real -- because Kara's a singer-songwriter and likes those diary girls best -- but I really don't think it's for real. Ellen wondered at first if she was pushing at first, or if that was just her gigantic awesomeness and personality happening. We'll find out, I hope.
Ryan asks her thoughts -- what was in her "word bubble" -- during Kara's makeover talk, and she laughs and says that she has lots of looks and sometimes she likes to wear crazy costumes like a little kid. Kara gets totally weird and freaks everybody out with a detour into some world where social graces do not function. She's like, "Her word bubble was clearly bitch," and the whole studio freezes and is like, "Did that just happen?" And everybody's staring at her and Kara thinks that we think she was calling Katelyn a bitch, but we didn't think that, we just thought Kara was being totally inappropriate and weird, so she tries to answer the question nobody asked and explain that she was just accusing Katelyn of calling her a bitch, mentally, which makes Kara look worse and which causes Katelyn to be even more completely appalled than she was a second ago, and it's just this five-second spiral into Hell that Ryan quickly shuts the fuck down so we can move on.
Following up Katelyn with Haeley would have been too much happiness. Thank God for Kara ruining everything in the middle there. She got her nose pierced as her reward for getting to Hollywood, which is cute and weird, and she babbles about that for awhile and then about other cute little girl things, I wasn't really listening. She'll be singing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" with an electric guitar and her lisp, and it totally rocks.
Man, it's so awesome! It's all over the place! She's wailing, she's giggling, she's yelling certain words just for fun, she's yodeling a little bit, she's playing that guitar, she's speeding up and slowing down and missing her cue and clambering back on again. It's great! Where did she come from? Heaven! This is how people get sucked into toddler pageants, I bet: You see one and you think to yourself "what a little angel," and then before you know it you're one of those.
Kara has technical issues with the timing -- which got weird in a few places -- but loves how much fun Haeley has and how she sends out magical power lasers of joyfulness in compensation for what she "can't do with [her] vocals," which pisses her family right off. They call her voice less-than-pleasing in places, and she starts making the most amazing yee face like Lizzie Maguire just dropped an entire jar of mayonnaise on the kitchen floor and doesn't want Mom to find out. Ellen's kind words cheer her mommy up, but the sister's still pissed.
Simon calls it "a complete and utter mess" and says she is all over the map because first she's country, and now she's whatever the fuck that was. Ellen says "If it was a mess at least it was a hot mess," because Ellen does not know what that means, but she's so cute it doesn't matter. Also so cute it doesn't matter? HAELEY!
Ryan goes, "It's finally time for Lacey Brown to take the stage, after this break," which I think is a secret message to me that goes something like, "You wanna talk Hot Mess?" But then after the break we're reminded by the fidgeting fingers and strangely high-waisted pants of Ryan that it's a reference to how Lacey got to Hollywood and was cut to Megan Joy and how it was embarrassing but apparently not bad enough that she stayed out of our face this year.
Lacey sings "Landslide," which talk about a song that is never going to be yours, but she does it in a creepy weird baby-voice that goes pretty far in establishing it as her unique territory. I think I like it, or I should say I like the parts of it, because she goes through more voices than Jewel, but most of them I really like. I can see any one of the many people inside Lacey being very entertaining. I definitely understand better why she looks so crazy and dresses so crazy: It's a war in there.
Ellen tells her she was better than that shit, and week she needs to pull it together and stop being tragic. Simon calls it "depressing" and says he was watching the clock the whole indulgent time and that she has no original artistry and is boring. Kara says the song was the problem and that she should have sung Sixpence None The Richer or the Sundays, because that's her "vibe." Ouch! I love the Sundays and all, but if somebody told me "Go sing the Sundays" in 2010 I would not take it a compliment. Simon tells her she has pretty eyes, and she returns the favor by telling Ryan that Simon is being stupid because obviously it was going to bore him: It's a slow song. Like he's some kind of Paula Abdul yipping Pomeranian of a person that equates rock music with an interesting performance. Like what he needed was tempo, not for you to sing like a person and not like a Speak & Spell of totally different people's voices. Fucking idiot. That is so offensive. Go home.
Ryan has a little talk with Katie Stevens about how she's going to sing at the end of the show and how does she feel about that and how does she feel about the judging and how does she feel about hugging and generally just checking in with Katie Stevens about her life and how it's going. How things are for her.
Michelle is the fakest, scariest, Real Housewifest person I've ever seen. Of course she is from Miami: Every word out of her mouth sounds like not just a lie but a mean-spirited deception intended to get something out of you. And what will she be singing? Fucking "Falling" by Alicia Keys, of course. Fuck me for even trying to care.
I wonder if she will locate some more words to that song or it's just going to be those ten words over and over like usual. Maybe she will break it down Juilliard style and start droning on and on about how the guy comes into the diner and she puts cream in his coffee and can you hear me now because that's the only interesting thing that's ever happened in an Alicia Keys song, even though in any other song it would be totally boring. She could just do that in every song and liven things up, and nobody would ever notice because obviously people who like Alicia Keys don't give a shit.
So she sings -- poorly -- the unending song about the falling, and the unending minor piano scales that apparently count as music, up and down and down and up and up and down and down and up, and Ellen is like, "THAT WAS AMAZING." It wasn't amazing, it was whiny and even more boring than the original song. Ellen accuses her of making it look easy or that it really was easy for her, but either way she should have stretched.
Too easy? HOW COULD IT NOT BE? If you sang it while spinning plates or with a tiger prowling nearby maybe that would be a difficult song to sing but my God, this is a song Frankenstein could sing. It has like three notes total, and all of them last an entire measure, and none of them are more than like two notes apart. It is the vocal equivalent of Stairmaster. This is so stupid. I'm not going to talk about this shitty song or this shitty contestant any more. She is the problem. She is the Fergie.
Four more. Wonderful Didi sang "Terrified," the very good Kara song, in Hollywood, but the Italo Calvino poststructuralist highjinks don't stop there: She was also terrified singing that song in front of the lady who wrote it. But then Kara smiled and she was no longer terrified, but the song still was. Tonight she will be singing "The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson, which I'm guessing is going to also be one of those -type songs, if that name is calling up the correct associations... Yes, the song about the joy of lowered expectations and how sexy it is when you settle.
Didi has a little of that Bessie Smith thing I complain about, but enough power behind it, and enough overall confidence, that it's not annoying. Simon calls her out for singing that way, which sucks because she's best of them, and he calls the song "dreary," which it isn't, and the performance dull, which it wasn't, but he reiterates that he likes her and her voice. Kara likes the song because "it's a singer-songwriter type thing," and says that while she's doing Bessie/Billie she did interesting things with the song itself. Simon doesn't understand that because he's not familiar with the song, but Kara's right, and if you've heard the song before you're going to hear the artistry there. Ellen says it would be great in a set but not as her one shot, which I can sort of see, and says it wasn't a great first impression for how awesome she totally is. All of them love her and want better for her but I think she'll be okay. I certainly hope so.
Simon and Ryan talk about kissing and caressing and making sweet love to each other, and then after the break mysterious and very likeable Siobhan Magnus -- Who, honestly, who has a name like that? Spies. Spies and people in Dune -- will be singing Chris Isaak. She looks just lovely, dressed in a Billie-esque costume with a flower behind her ear and Tammy Wynette hair, but I can see this going either way.
One of the many Siobhan lookalikes tells us about how she's a glassblowing apprentice back home. She's so awesome, she's like Iron Man. She's the one I'm most worried about because I think she is so terribly special and so interesting, but like Jessie Langseth whose name I just pulled out of my head and nobody ever got. Her "Wicked Game" is weird and wonderful -- she does the funniest things with her mouth! -- and manages to feel somewhat current, and it's very lovely, and this isn't a song anybody should sing, but... Is she wearing Crocs? That's so amazing. She's so weird.
Kara says it was a questionable choice, but it turned out surprisingly great, and tells her that she is connected to the music in a way nobody else is doing tonight. I don't always know what Kara means when she says that but this time I sort of feel like I know what she means. Ellen calls her "mysterious" and says she totally forgot they were doing American Idol because she was so amazing. Simon liked but didn't love the song, fondly remembers the Stevie Wonder thing, but she tells him that she wanted to prove she could bring the power to softer songs too. Ryan praises her personally and intimately for her authenticity, which is great because she's like the one person that actually has that as an advantage.
Like, take Butch up there on the balcony shooting gang signs: She's authentically her, but that's not a great thing for anybody. What will Crystal sing? I hope she sings Melissa Etheridge just so she can be like Adam Lambert and go, "Are you serious right now?" when people ask about it. Like, it snowed in Austin today and there was less than an inch of snow, none of which stuck and all of which burned off by three, but everybody called into work and refused to go to school because that's what we do here, freak the collective fuck out when there's any kind of weather whatsoever.
Seems ridiculous, yes. But the real reality is that Austin people can't drive for shit -- "If you live here, you're part of the problem!" as Ali says whenever she visits from Dallas -- so actually less than an inch of snow here is as deadly as a blizzard somewhere else and we all know it. Like, half the news segments on the freak flurry are people just saying, "You know how we can't drive when this happens? And we all lose our shit entirely?" So it's a self-fulfilling thing that always works out. That's what it's like when you start bugging Adam about the closet: Not actually a huge mess that turns into a huge mess that is not actually a huge mess, and then everybody takes a nap.
What would be the most awesome song she could possibly sing? Hmm. "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones would be surprising. Or "Iesha" by Another Bad Creation. "Hips Don't Lie." Those are my picks. I just hope she doesn't la-la some wobba-wobba like everybody else tonight. I cannot fucking take that Megan Joy shit one more time tonight. You know what would be good? Ida Maria's "Oh My God." But she didn't chart, and neither did my other picks the Black Kids and Patti Griffin, so let's see what happens.
ALANIS! Score. "Hand In My Pocket." Given ten more minutes I could have nailed that one. And she does great, of course, because she has a magical voice and can play the guitar and seems like she's been doing this for fifty years without losing her passion for it or writing odd things into her concert riders. There's nice drumming in the background as well, and chimes, and the crowd is fully into her from the get-go, and then she just goes ahead and rocks the harmonica as well. They are going to love this so much. What a fabulous voice she has! Oh, Crystal! Look at you doing so good! You are so awesome! If I don't look directly at the screen!
Ellen says that we are all very lucky to have Crystal, which is so true, and her weirdo friends are so cute and happy for her, but Simon brings the room down and says she's just like every other busker in the universe. Which is tough, and wrong, but not as tough or wrong as what he says , which is that it was sound-alike. Simon, I am not feeling him tonight. It's a weird feeling. He says that overall she's wonderful and refreshing and will do great. I don't care, because what she has just done is kick Lilly and her gray granny-panties off the show, and that makes her my beloved. Kara agrees and says she's one of the strongest, and Ryan holds her harmonica and asks whose signatures are on her guitar: Shania, and Melissa Etheridge. I am so psychic right now you guys.
Katie "Chopped & Screwed" Stevens gives us the crunk 411 on her tiny grandma and continues to chatter winsomely. She is so well-spoken and funny! Cute black dress, cute red sash and headband and big-girl heels. She is this like Japanese ideal of what people should be, like, a grown-ass woman in a tiny little baby body, but with boobs. Singing "Feeling Good," which Ryan reminds us is a Michael Bublé song of course, and then she goes for it. You know how this show works, so there's going to be major drama, but even knowing that I wasn't expecting her to get this wild with it. The lights are all red and crazy, and you can kind of hear Adam in your mind of course, but her voice is so great and her moves are darling and most of all you can feel how bad the show wants her to succeed.
Ellen says it was too old, which I do agree but she has such a dramatic, low, awesome voice that she's in a crazy place there, because you can't sing little-kid songs with a voice like that. Simon says she's right and that she needs to think "young recording artist," because it comes off "pageanty." Kara says they're criticizing her because her pitch was off, because if she'd killed it they wouldn't even have noticed. That's really quite insightful. Her (Brother? Stepdad? Boyfriend? Husband?) heaves a huge sigh in the audience, and Ryan is like, "Are you cool?" And Katie is like, "I totally understand what they are saying. There will be no more mistakes."
Recap: Paige was tacky as usual, and the sound system did her no favors. A-Rod was boring but the hottest one. Janell was forgettable and nervous, but just darling. Lilly was so desperately in search of a personality it was hard to watch. Katelyn was either doing some kind of Lady GaGa shit that was totally level, or is a phony airhead. Haeley was supernaturally awesome while dressed as the Corpse Bride. Raggle-Taggle Gypsy Grandma sang in many voices. Nip/tuck was repulsive and fake some more. Didi was absolutely fabulous as usual. Siobhan was a straight-up freak and it was really good. Crystal is, it turns out, actually too good for this show. And Katie was like this nerdy little sister who just took off her glasses.
Tomorrow: Boys, and then on Thursday, if there's a God, they'll all line up and take turns slapping Lilly before she and Lacey are sent packing.
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