This week’s Idol featured one of those moments, one of those unforgettable performances that live in Idol history. Sadly for Paige Miles, it was because the performance was so breathtakingly bad, so spectacularly dreadful, that it will be the limbo stick under which Idol contestants fail to crawl for years to come.
A sign of what was to come was offered by Ryan, who suggested that “some Phil Collins” was due after the break. I turned to my wife and said, “Please don’t let it be Against All Odds again.” Naturally, it was, but still, we had no idea of the horrors to come. I struggled for a comparison, and here’s the best I could come up with. When our cat was young, he hated the travel cage. My wife used to grab him in a pillow case and carry him to the vet in a cab so that she wouldn’t have to put him in the cage. Whenever she’d grab him with that pillow case, he’d make this terrible and sad howling noise that caused people for miles around to gnash their teeth and weep. This was like that, only worse.
The judges (somewhat surprisingly considering their relative inability this season to unanimously recognize bad singing) pounced quickly, with even Ellen getting in on the fun, falling back on the Paula special, “You look beautiful.” The kiss of death indeed. The most amusing thing about the performance is that it seemed to suck all of the tension out of the rest of the night. All of the contestants seemed to know that they could suck — a lot — and would still be fine as long as they didn’t drop F-bombs on stage or swallow their tongue.
And suck they did. This was what I expected last week when the contestants were required to choose Stones tunes. This week, with 100 years of #1 hits to choose from, they produced a string of lousy performances of songs we’ve heard over and over again in previous seasons.
First, the good from a decidedly bad lot. Siobhan trotted out Stevie Wonder again, following up her Hollywood week performance of “Living For the City” with “Superstitious.” Simon’s right – she needs to bag the hollering for a couple weeks, but otherwise this performance was so much better than the others that it was like seeing Joss Stone at her high school talent show. In a shocker, Crystal played Janis Joplin! No, really! Her performance of “Me and Bobby McGee” was just fine (and my wife, who digs the hippy tunes, loved it), but I’m just so bored with her. She needs to do something different. But man, she was rocking the new teeth.
Big Mike was also just fine with a safe rendition of Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Nothing exciting here, and a 60’s Motown number was what I would have predicted he’d go to, but as with Crystal, he can coast for right now. Lee was done no favors by getting the first slot in front of “The Disaster That Was Paige,” but was also okay with his performance of “The Letter.” I’m guessing this was his tribute to Alex Chilton, who died last week and performed that song with the Box Tops, but if it was, I think he should have said so. The performance was notable because — well, no, it wasn’t really notable at all. But it wasn’t bad, and on this night, that was good. Casey was fine tonight too, doing a bar singer rendition of “The Power of Love” (Huey Lewis, not Peter Cetera). Casey seems to dig him some 80s cheese-pop: he also sang Bryan Adams earlier this year. I like it anyway, though, because he seems like the least ironic guy in the world. He can pull off these tunes because he’s not a navel-gazing whiner listening to Conor Oberst tunes on loop on his iPod.
The best that can be said for the rest is that they weren’t Paige. Tim Urban did a laughable rendition of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” If he was cleverly pandering to his base (the gay male vote), this was a brilliant song choice. If he was just a clueless dope, this was terrible. I thought he was going to stop in the middle to entreat the diners in the audience to “try the veal.” As with Paige, I heard Ryan say that Aaron was going to sing Aerosmith, and immediately knew it was that cheesy song from “Armageddon.” He wasn’t awful, but he sure as hell wasn’t good, despite Randy’s standard boy crush. I loved the Ryan line, “If you want to vote for David Archuleta….”
Andrew just keeps slipping. He has the right voice for Marvin Gaye, but had a god-awful arrangement of “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and sang it like a stalker. I think he’s done very soon. Katie Stephens finally pulled out a song written after she was born, singing Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” I must admit that I did 90 seconds of web surfing during this performance and don’t really remember it. Finally, Didi chose Carly Simon, which should have been in her wheelhouse, but then did a weird, cabaret version that looked like she was auditioning for an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Not good, but again, after Paige, who’s worried?
Predictions for bottom three: Paige (duh), Tim (again), and Andrew. Bye Paige.
What did you think?
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