American Idol 10: 5/12/11 Results

I apologize for my recap being a day late. Actually, why am I apologizing?? This apology should be coming from the Blogger Nerdery. I'm not the one who decided to blow up millions of blogs for two days. (You may also notice that my recap from Wednesday's performance show is gone. I've been told that Blogger temporarily ate everyone's 5/11 posts but they're scheduled to barf them back up soon.)

Anyway...since it's Friday afternoon, I imagine everyone already knows that The Durbinator was terminated. There was a lot of crying but as he was being lowered into a vat of molten steel (a fitting death for a metalhead), he gave Haley, Lauren and Scotty a poignant thumbs-up. So, I think he'll be OK.

Now, let's get into the good, bad and ugly of it all, shall we?

The Good

The Idolette duets. Yes, both of them were surprisingly good. All during Scotty and James' performance of Brad Paisley's "Start a Band," I kept wishing they would have done Art Brut's "Formed a Band" instead, for maximum hilarity. As it was, though, they did a decent job. Certainly better than I was expecting. Even more surprising was that Haley and Lauren totally blew them off the stage with their version of Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead." I never expected those two to harmonize so well but they really did a great job. But Good Lord, how many country songs are there about women killing abusive husbands/boyfriends/milkmen? It's like every female country singer is vying for a spot on the Lifetime Movie of the Week soundtrack. Won't someone do a song called "Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?" Look, country music writers, I'll even give you a head start: My cute boyfriend took me to his cabin/But Mama said, "He's a dangerous guy"/Made a big mistake when I didn't believe her/And now I'm fighting for my life to-niiiiight. That took me five minutes. Make it happen. And I want royalties.


Lady Gaga's performance. So, originally I was annoyed because I was led to believe that this would be a LIVE Gaga performance and it turned out to be a clip of her HBO concert. But I never get tired of hearing "You and I" (even though they didn't air it all the way to its frenzied end) and I don't get HBO anymore, so I guess it's cool that I got to watch a free clip from the show. I think it's kind of hilarious that the judges (unjustifiably) dissed this song when Haley sang it, yet this is the song they chose to show. Gaga is supposed to perform (really, for real) at the Finale, where I imagine she'll be busting out her '80s-tastic new song, "The Edge of Glory," or the supposed new single, "Hair." (Anything but that awful "Judas," please.)

Jordin Sparks' body. Well, hello Miss Thang! I'm sure some people will still claim that she's fat but some people are just jagoffs.

Steven Tyler's new song/video. I was expecting to hate it but Steven's new song, "It Feels So Good," was super catchy. It sounded a lot like anything by '90s-era Aerosmith with even more of a pop sheen. And, for as progressively watered down as their music has become since the '70s, I still like a lot from the Alicia Silverstone period. Also, his new song is, to use a Simon-ism, 100 million percent better than J.Lo's.

Haley made it to the Top 3! Wow, a month ago this would have been filed under "Bad." But no contestant has improved as much as she has. She's finally stopped just growling at everyone and is really singing. She's definitely got the best voice of the remaining finalists but I think we all (including myself, despite my halfhearted prediction that Lauren would be eliminated) know that Little Miss Alaina winning this thing is inevitable.

The Bad

The Windows 7 ad. Oh, that wasn't an ad? Just a heavily product-oriented montage of the Idolettes Skypeing their families back home? Didn't care.

Enrique Iglesias. Yeah, it's great that he removed the witch mole but he hasn't replaced that void with any talent. (Of course, the Idiot Pit went insane for him.) What was the name of that song he sang again? Something about liking it? I can't remember...did he ever actually sing the title?

Jordin Sparks' performance. She should have just come out and shook her newly-toned ass because the song was incredibly annoying. Like Enrique's song, I can't seem to remember the title of this one. Something about being a woman? These people should really say the title of their songs more often so that we'll remember them easier. Can't say the dance spectacle was all that interesting either but I did enjoy when Jordin went over and stole a kiss from Steven and then blew right by Randy without even a glance.

James Durbin's elimination. I'm not a HUGE fan of James but I didn't think he should have been the one going home. (Lucky for Same Ol' Scotty that there are plenty of songs about 9/11 available and tons of lonely fortysomething housewives out there who dream of corrupting his donkey-eared ass.) His sing-out of "Maybe I'm Amazed" wasn't all that great but it's understandable considering that he was openly weeping.

The Ugly

The Ford commerical. Duh. It will be in this section 99% of the time. I know it seems like I say this all the time, but this one seemed much worse than many of the others. It must have been because of that dumb Owl City song. Like that isn't horrible enough in its original form.

James Durbin's ego. If anything made me a little happy to see James go, it was his irritating post-elimination comment to Seacrest: "I did so much stuff that's never been done on the show before." Come on, dude. This is American Idol. No one's changing the face of music or TV here. And you're certainly not changing the face of anything by covering 20-year-old metal songs and bringing the Ed Grimley 'do back. You had a good run, kid. You could have left with some grace.


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