Tag: Journey

American Idol goes a little GaGa

Last night’s “American Idol” results show was a bit different than the past two weeks, because there was no mentor working with the contestants, and instead the theme was popular iTunes downloads. That meant guest appearances from #1 artist Lady GaGa and also from last season’s Idol, David Cook.

But first they recapped the previous night’s performances, along with snippets of the judges’ comments. Here was a gem from Paula that I forgot to write about yesterday, when she was draping praise over Adam Lambert: “True genius does not fulfill expectations, true genius shatters expectations.” Ugh. How much did you hire someone to write that for you, Paula?

Then after showing a typical day in the life of the Idol hopefuls, there was a group performance of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” and it wasn’t awful. Scott even got to play the piano instead of wandering around the stage aimlessly and trying not to trip on national TV. And Adam got to do a real scream, not a forced one.

Then, on to business….Ryan Seacrest broke them up into groups of three–Kris, Matt and Megan; Adam, Lil and Allison; and Scott, Danny and Anoop. He asked which of them we thought was the Bottom 3. I knew better…there would be one from each group to make up the bottom. Then David Cook arrived to sing his new single, “Come Back To Me” and was presented with a platinum album. He started tearing up, and for good reason…he told Seacrest that in 2006 he sold 1000 copies of an album he released on his own, and now he sells 1 million copies of his major label debut in 3 months, thanks to the power of the show. Damn.

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American Idol: Welcome to Randy Jacksonville

So last night in part five of eight of FOX’s “American Idol” audition rounds, the scene shifted to Jacksonville, Florida. And the producers of the show decided to have a little fun and give judge Randy Jackson some love due to the name of the city (that’s really a stretch, isn’t it?). They showed Jackson in his days performing with the rock band Journey, and basically paid tribute to him a bit. That’s okay, but still a stretch. Anyway, this city did not seem to have the talent level of other audition rounds, and it was obvious right from the start of the show last night. Here are the highlights and lowlights:

THE BAD

Dana Moreno was shouting a Chaka Khan song, and I do mean shouting. Next! 16 year old Kaneswa had been told her entire life by her mom what a great vocalist she was, but that is always the recipe for failure, isn’t it? Kaneswa sang Anita Baker’s “Caught Up in the Rapture,” complete with some of Anita’s vocal acrobatics. However, for Kaneswa, they were not acrobatics, but more like nasal inflections….Darren Darnell was the life of the party among contestants waiting to audition, so much so that I was thinking he could be the next Ryan Seacrest. But then when his buddy didn’t get a golden ticket, a switch went off and this guy looked depressed and started crying, right up through his own audition, which bombed anyway….A girl named Naomi sang Minnie Ripperton’s “Lovin’ You” and while she may have hit the high falsetto note at the end, it was the only note that was on key. Naomi brought along her friend who was semi-obsessed with Randy Jackson, and the friend got to sit on Randy’s lap. Anyway, Naomi was awful….George Ramirez, an 18 year old who sort of looked like a young Abe Lincoln, was a physics student who just happened to want to give singing a try, but it was more like a low rumble of off-key mess Continue reading »

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