Grading the American Idol Top 8 On The Tivo Multi-Bloop Scale

Another lackluster week in Idol Land. I can’t blame the mentor this week, as I found Jennifer Lopez disarmingly endearing (anyone who cracks up at their own jokes because it amuses them so much is OK in my book; I mean, I know she’s really a beyotch, but her on-camera persona is very cool. I’m definitely looking forward to her live performance tonight). The Idols seemed to relate to her a lot better than they did any other mentor since Diana Ross, mostly because they’ve watched her become an Idol over the last half decade. She’s the living embodiment of a singer with a mediocre voice but tons of charisma selling millions of albums. J.Lo is a modern American Idol, and the cast can relate to that. She was fun, upbeat, knew the type of advice the Idols needed to better their performance (if not their vocal), and generally seemed to be throwing a good-time fun bash with the kids. I especially loved when she said she had her favorites but wouldn’t name them, then proceeded to bring Blake on camera roughly 456 times for no reason. Yeah, no chance we find out who her favorite is.

My pick for the blame is not the theme this week, but song choice. Three girls sang Gloria Estefan songs. Gloria Estefan is A) not a “singer” singer, and B) not the end all, be all for Latin music. It’s no surprise that the one performance that was actually sung in Spanish (Sanjaya!) was the most well-received. The overall song choices showed immaturity and lack of depth, and that resulted in a ho-hum performance night. I mean, heck, Chris R. sang a Rob Thomas vocal. I like Matchbox 20 and all, but one thing you can’t say about them is that they represent the Latin world. I get that the producers wanted the kids singing songs people would recognize, but I found it slightly offensive to the hundreds of talented Latin musicians that were pushed aside in the name of the four Latin performers that broke through to Pop Music in the last few decades. Not to mention the fact that, ahem, Jennifer Lopez is not a Latin artist. Either do these theme nights right, or don’t do them at all.

But ANYWAY…. On to the bloop review.

As stated before, I’ve decided to recap the show week-to-week and grade the singers on a sliding scale of how much I wanted to, or did, TiVo-bloop through the song. At the end of each recap I’ll make my pick for who should (and hopefully will) get the axe on the Wednesday night results show.

Let’s break it down, bloop bloop style!

1. Blake Lewis – Sure, mostly all of the performance last night were like bad karaoke, but at least Blake was trying. I wasn’t a fan of his J.Lo suckuppage (he was really throwing game at Jennifer, not that she minded), and I kinda hate Marc Anthony and everything his soulless mummy-face represents (with the exception of his cameo in Hackers), but the Blake-factor made up for most of the hate. He rocked the moves, the melody, the finger-pointing and the “look into the camera and unleash the sexy eyes” bit. In a night of uneven performances, this is the only one I’d want to watch again (not counting Haley’s on mute, of course). Half a bloop for Blake.

2. Melinda Doolittle – I didn’t think it was a bad performance, per se, but it’s not like Melinda is gonna be the next Shakira, you know? It’s just not her wheelhouse. But she accommodated herself a lot better than LaKisha, was more involved than Jordin, more poised than Haley, and more likeable than Phil, so she deserves this spot. Pertaining to my careful research of her “shy” persona, I’m leaning evermore to the belief that it might just be a hoax. She’s getting just a touch too confident up there. She batted away Simon’s assaults like Tom Cruise evading “are you gay” questions. Could she just be a fast learner? Maybe. But my money is on the whole persona being a very clever ruse.

3. Sanjaya Malakar – I’m the first to admit when I’m wrong, so here I go: Sanjaya was good last night. He was the only Idol to sing in Spanish, which gives him a ton of cred. He toned down the wild and crazy stage act, which was a welcome relief. And for the first time, I could see him as an actual pop star. That being said, I agree with Simon that the vocal was still not great, and that he was too quiet and mumbly for most of the song. But those complaints pale in comparison to the other things he did well. This was the first time in many, many weeks that I remembered why I originally picked Sanjaya as one of my horses. Welcome to the universe of Sanjaya, indeed. One-bloop for the surging (and possibly legit) Sanjaya.

4. Jordin Sparks – Ho hum. That’s about all I have to say about that. She looked bored, she sang bored and I was bored watching it. I got the distinct feeling she was treading water. She has a lot of support out there, so all she has to do until the finale is give a medium-energy performance and she’ll be fine. She’s still three or four weeks from being in any real danger, so I get the tread, but I’m still not pleased by it. I haven’t wanted to double-bloop her in a while, but last night she deserved it.