Idol Chatter

It's the top nine! Who's ready for Adam Lambert to be inexplicably lauded?!? So, with David Spade creepily sitting behind the judges, here we go:

• Anoop Desai, singing Usher's "Caught Up": This is going to be another weak week for me, since I don't know anything about the hot iTunes songs. As far as I know, Flo Rida is just the Gators with a misplaced space. This song sounds vaguely familiar, but 'Noop didn't do himself much justice tonight. I think he's popular enough that he'll be alright, but just not that strong.
• Megan Joy, singing "Turn Your Lights Down" by Bob Marley and Lauryn Hill: Marley and L-Boogie -- two people whose careers are dead! No, really, she kind of sounds like what it would be if Lauryn Hill were white and a porpoise attempted to cover one of her songs, but not take it all that seriously. Jokey Porpoise has the VFTW vote, but she'll be gone soon enough.
• Danny Gokey, singing Rascal Flatts' "What Hurts the Most": Good job. I don't really know the song, even though he seems to think that everyone in the world has heard it. A fine ballad that let him do his thing. A little flat at the end, but that is the band name after all. Simon said his was so much better than 'Noop Dawg and Meg Porpoise that it was like "two snails competing with a race horse." Well, what are they competing in? If it's a "who can climb up glass" contest, I'll take the snails, thank you very much.
• Allison Iraheta, singing No Doubt's "Don't Speak": I don't recall this being a popular download right now. But, hey, she grew up to this song. Shoot me. Great look, though. We really needed Raggedy Tina Turner. Can't wait for Raggedy Ike to show up. Stop me, folks. I tell you, she gave my ears no respect. Worst performance for her so far.
• Scott MacIntyre, singing Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are": I totally downloaded this on my Commodore 64 back in the day. I wrote an iTunes program in Basic. Print "Buy Now". Run. If I'm making Basic jokes, you know I must be bored out of my skull. And you would be correct! I'm continuously weirded out by how much Scott looks like Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore), which reminds me of the time we were in LA and saw the Country Bears premiere happening across the street (co-starring McDonald). My friend (you know who you are) screamed, with all the cops around, "Shooter! Shooter!" I'm amazed he wasn't arrested.
• Matt Giraud, singing The Fray's "You Found Me": Any time I hear The Fray, I keep waiting for someone's dead fiancee to show up. McVibrato-y was not real strong with his pitch here. He's got to be in some trouble.
• Lil Rounds, singing Celine Dion's "I Surrender": I'm totally soured on Little since she blew it last week. She should have been kicked out on the spot for murdering a song that should have been right up her alley. Pitch problems again this week; she's not quite as good as we all thought, huh? Although, I suppose if she's going for the caterwauling vote, she'll nail it down.
• Adam Lambert, singing Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music": When this song came out, iTunes was literally Eye Tunes. A guy would sit there and blink into wax paper in order to make a song. We all hate Bizarro David Cook. Here's a cover of "Play That Funky Music"!
• Kara mentioned that it was like "Studio 57" in the room. You remember that one, the club three doors down from Studio 54.
• Kris Allen, singing Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine": He has grown on me like a bland fungus. You'd never call him dynamic, but he's never bad. I'm amused by the length of this list of covers of this song. Blowing into the mic aside, he was clearly the best tonight.

I'm going to say that Giraud will be leaving us.