Idol Chatter

The first third of the thirty-six semi-finalists performed tonight. Here's how it went:

• Jackie Tohn, singing Elvis' "A Little Less Conversation": I think she's generally annoying. The problem with picking this song is that all anyone really knows is the techno remix. Instead, she didn't take it very seriously, went with a Beck-style take, and she murdered it. Awful performance, total joke. After her interplay with Randy and the other judges, I think she's absolutely annoying. And did we need to spend fifteen minutes with her family? It's not like we're going to see her again after tomorrow night.
• Ricky Braddy, singing Leon Russell's "A Song For You": Nice Hef jacket, kid. Pretty good, but next time you have one chance to get America on your side, pick a song we've heard of.
• Alexis Grace, singing Aretha's "Never Loved A Man": Always a good choice for a white chick with pink hair to sing Aretha. She did for this song what Aretha's hat did for fashion at the Inauguration. Now I'm off to go listen to Joaquin Phoenix cover a Jay-Z song.
• After we saw NPH and Ted Danson buddying it up in the crowd...
• Brent Keith, singing Jason Aldean's "Hicktown": Since I'm not a big country music expert, I have to assume he was pretty good. I thought we might be free of this since we have our first non-Southern President in sixteen years, but no such luck. I like how I made fun of Paula for bringing up Bucky Covington right before Simon did. But Bucky was great as the bad guy in Twilight. And dude, don't sass Simon.
• Stevie Wright, singing Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me": She sounded about as good as me singing on Guitar Hero: World Tour. The judges should be embarrassed that they put her in the semi-finals. That's really all I have to say about that. Next.
• Anoop Desai, Monica's "Angel Of Mine": The first of the big fan favorites, but a weird song choice. Dude can sing and I enjoy his work on House and in the Harold and Kumar movies.
• Casey Carlson, singing The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic": Stevie Wright's performance was tragic, but this was the first comically bad one. We really needed a crappy High School Musical-esque version of one of the greatest rock songs ever. One of the worst performances I've ever seen outside of the audition round. But hey, I didn't vote for the last chick who winked at me on national TV either.
• Michael Sarver, singing Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Want To Be": Another really bad performance. Too much smiling and bad dancing. Some flashes of good singing, but a mess for the most part. Maybe thirty-six semi-finalists is too many.
• Ann Marie Boskovich, singing Aretha's "Natural Woman": Aretha again. Can we go ahead and add her to the Whitney/Stevie/Mariah list? I actually really liked Ann Marie after the audition round because of her girl next door feel, but this just wasn't strong enough. I barely woke up in time for the next song.
• Stephen Fowler, singing Michael Jackson's "Rock With Me": He has a tremendous voice, but a bit too laid-back for a song that should be more up-tempo. Tough to sing MJ unless you're changing it all up like Cook did last year.
• Tatiana Del Toro, singing Whitney's "Saving All My Love for You": She sang Whitney! Just when you thought she couldn't get crazier, she tackled the one major taboo of American Idol. Even Kara made fun of her. She doesn't even need to really go the whole serial killer route, she can just talk and people will take care of the rest for her.
• Danny Gokey, singing Mariah's "Hero": He can do no wrong. Even picking Mariah, he can do no wrong. Pretty obvious why the producers put him last.

I'm going to stick with what are probably everyone's picks: Danny, Alexis, and Anoop.