Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Gwen Stefani does American Idol

One reason that I don't always enjoy American Idol is that the singers always tend to choose all these older, classic songs that I'm kind of just not interested in. So when I heard that it was Gwen Stefani week, I was super excited, not because I'm a huge Gwen Stefani or No Doubt fan, but this meant that everyone was going to have to sing some more contemporary songs. Overall, I really enjoyed the performances last night, I recognized and/or liked nearly every song (except for one, but I'll get to that later). Anyway, here are my verdicts:

Lakisha: Sang Donna Summer's Last Dance. Was really glad to see her sing something more upbeat, and she showed that she can move pretty well on stage too. But I still don't really see much personality in her. Her vocal chops are obvious, but I feel like that star quality is sort of absent.

Chris Sligh: Sang the Police's Every Little Thing She Does is Magic. Oh, Chris. He was kind of a frontrunner early on but he's kind of slipping more and more every week. His vocals sounded ok here, but everything was just off. Off the beat, that is. I feel like he's kind of in danger here.

Gina: Sang the Pretenders' I'll Stand By You. I've been a Gina fan for a couple of weeks now, and I thought she was really great last night. Absolutely the perfect song for her. I voted for her!

Sanjaya: Sang No Doubt's Bathwater. This was the one song I didn't recognize. Was it a single? Channeling Simon Cowell, this was dreadful. And I'm not even gonig to go there with the hair. Nice kid, but please get him off my TV.

Haley: Sang Cyndi Lauper's True Colors. There wasn't anything really wrong here, it was just boring. Kind of reminded me of whenever Joey Potter sang on Dawson's Creek.

Phil: Sang the Police's Every Breath You Take. Biggest surprise of the night, I thought it was actually really good. I don't think he has any chance of winning but I'll take him over Haley or Sanjaya any day so I voted for him too.

Melinda: Sang Donna Summer's Heaven Knows. As with Lakisha, it was nice to see her do something upbeat as well, but with both of them doing Donna Summer this week, these two need to start distinguishing themselves from eachother. I still think she's got the best vocals here, but she's so consistent it is kind of getting boring.

Blake: Sang the Cure's Love Song (311's arrangement?). I really appreciate what he's trying to do but I'm not always blown away by the results. Not really a difficult song, but I liked it and I'm glad he cut out the beatboxing this week.

Jordin: Sang No Doubt's Hey Baby. A very curious choice for AI, but I really liked it. It was just really fun and I'm just glad she's gotten away from the cloying Disney-Land-Before-Time stuff.

Chris R: Sang No Doubt's Don't Speak. I don't think he's horrible but honestly he's probably my least favorite after Sanjaya. His boy-band-R&B-Justin-Timberlake thing really really just doesn't work for me and I find myself cringing every time he opens his mouth.

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