American Idol with Bon Jovi

American Idol has been going on for how long? This is its sixth season. I haven't really watched any of the previous seasons, mostly because I don't watch that much television. I watched it for two reasons this season. First, Tony Kornheiser keeps talking about the show week after week. Even so, I didn't watch it for several weeks.

All I recall was the slamming of Sanjaya. Now, the name didn't strike me in any particular way. However, I discovered he's Indian-American, Bengali to be specific (well, on one side--his mother is allegedly Italian-American). For some reason, perhaps because I went to India recently, this piqued my interest.

Now, I still barely catch Idol on TV. Instead, I see it through YouTube. I'm sure the sponsors hate that, but I like watching all the performances in like ten minutes. I prefer skipping over the lead-up and the judging and just listening to the performances.

Last night, there were six performances. Basically, I agreed with Tony, which means that I am too easily influenced by others on judging performances. Basically, I only thought there was one awful performance and that was Jordin. She sounded horridly out of tune, to the point that I almost thought she couldn't sing. I could hardly believe people thought it was "all right".

I agreed that Melinda is so versatile, singing Have a Nice Day with appropriate attitude, and yes, it also reminded me of Tina Turner. LaKisha sang quite well too without yelling her song too much which she's done in past weeks. Both Chris and Phil were decently good. Blake did something very interesting. First, he took a Sanjaya lesson, and dyed his hair dark, which made him look a bit like Kurt Russell. Second, he took a popular Bon Jovi song, You Give Love a Bad Name, and did a beatbox spin on it. To his credit, he sang the main melody, so he could show off his beatboxing as well as his vocal qualities.

Is Blake the best singer? I dunno. Phil's decent too. Blake's voice is a touch high, a touch nasally. But, he's pretty creative, and that comes from, I suspect, his beatboxing. He thinks of music like a composer, and so I think that enhances his creativity. Personally, I like the fact he tries out a couple of ideas. Usually, in the preview, he's smart enough to make it seem like he's going overboard with beatboxing, but in the actual performance, he holds back.

Tony Kornheiser doesn't think much of Bon Jovi, but he was pretty big in his day, and it's interesting, that in the two weeks you'd think people would struggle (country week, and Bon Jovi's limited set of good songs), that it helped key performances. In particular, country week became a breakout week for both Phil and Jordin. Rock week with Bon Jovi was very good for Lakisha who had been seen as slipping up to now.

They eliminated two singers this week, which was Chris and Phil, and that's perhaps no surprise. While Jordin was unlistenable this week, the vote was combined from last week, which was huge (70 million votes, which is about twice what it normally is), which was one of Jordin's best performances. Blake becomes the last guy standing, and he may go next week, though I'm sure they would like one guy to hang around, and if voting is done by gender preferences, Blake is likely to hang out til the last week.

My guess is Lakisha is the next to go, though it will depend greatly on whether Jordin can recover. Most everyone feels that even on a bad night, Melinda is too talented to mess up. Blake is usually decently good each week, and the only way I see him getting eliminated is if the other three are lights out, and he pales by comparison. He's made some smart choices, and not any dumb choices. Admittedly, Imagine wasn't particularly strong, but he's usually consistent. His main problem is that he occasionally moves his microphone away from his mouth, and he hear vocal gaps as the mike no longer picks up his voice.

We'll see how it turns out. If it came down to one girl and one guy, well, since Blake is the only guy left, it'd be him, I suspect it's Melinda, though I'm sure Jordin is more marketable. For consistency though, Melinda's been consistently good week after week, without any of the kind of lapses that Jordan or Lakisha have had, but then, voting is not based on consistency, but on a given performance.

I wonder if the guys get more passionate voters than the women. None of the remaining women are particularly "hot" for lack of a better word. Blake, on the other hand, does have charisma and is reasonably good looking that he should have a contingent.

Amusingly enough, this kind of guessing is much like Oscar guessing. Who will win what award? However, it's far more engaging than the Oscars because, as I've mentioned before, the singers are not uniformly excellent. You can hear vocal flaws, and so you know they aren't as good as professional singers (who can sound very polished because of studio wizardry).

Well, we're down to four, so I suppose that's three more weeks to find a winner.