The thirteen finalists of American Idol performed the music of Michael Jackson Tuesday night. Two of them will be eliminated Wednesday night.
Opening the show was Lil Rounds, who sang “The Way You Make Me Feel,” from the 1987 Bad album. She did a good job, although I wouldn’t have heaped the praise on her that the judges did.
Next up was Scott MacIntyre. From the album Dangerous, he sang “Keep the Faith.” He sang it well enough but I have to admit that I’ve never heard this song before.
One of my favorites, DannyGokey, chose to sing “PYT,” another song with which I was not familiar. It fit his style perfectly and he did a very good job on it.
Michael Sarver sang “You’re Not Alone.” This guy has such a sweet voice and picked the right song for it.
An old Jackson 5 tune, “I’ll Be There.” was the choice of youngster Jasmine Murray. Honestly, I don’t think she did that great of a job. Yes, she’s cute but this is a singing contest!
Kris Allen played guitar and sang “Remember the Time.” Seriously, I thought I was familiar with the body of work of Michael Jackson, but this was yet another song I didn’t know. Kris obviously feels more comfortable with the guitar as a prop, because he really didn’t need it. He did a decent job on the song, though.
Singing “Given to Me” was Allison Iraheta. She gave it her “rocker girl” treatment and she did it extremely well. Kinda reminded me of Stevie Nicks. This 16 year old should go far in this competition. She could sing the telephone book and sound good.
North Carolina’s Anoop Desai picked “Beat It.” I think it was just a bit too high for him. Plus, a fast song didn’t give him the chance to show off his amazing voice. Nevertheless, I expect he’ll go through to the next round because of his popularity.
Another Jackson 5 tune, “Never Can Say Goodye,” was the choice of Jorge Nunez. A very good choice for him and he did enough to make it his own. The judges didn’t like it, but I disagree. It just wasn’t that bad. But “She’s Out of My Life” would have been a better choice.
Quirky Megan Joy Corkrey also reached back to the Jackson 5 and sang “Rockin’ Robin.” She obviously had fun and sang it only as she can.
Adam Lambert has crazy vocal skills and used “Black or White” to demonstrate them. But he just seems to disconnect his vocals from his performance.
“Human Nature” was the choice of Matt Giraud. It was a very good performance.
Closing out the show was Alexis Grace, who, like Lil, is from my hometown of Memphis, TN. She chose to sing “Dirty Diana,” never one of my favorite MJ songs. Nevertheless, Alexis did her thing and performed the song well.
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I think the two weakest tonight were Jasmine and, unfortunately, Anoop. It will be interesting to see what the voters say. But then again, maybe the voters won’t have the final say. There will be “a surprise change to the rules that could alter the face of the competition,” according to Ryan Seacrest. Simon said “it involves us so I’m not sure whether the the public are [sic] going to like this we’ve decided to do something slightly different. ” Hmmm.
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It just dawned on me that there were only five females and eight males in the finals. How in the heck did that happen? I thought it was supposed to be equal numbers of each (plus the one extra). Did they screw up?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I agree with you on Anoop. But I think he won’t get voted off just yet.
Adam was the worst of the bunch easily. His voice is decent, but the theatrics was too much.
Yeah, they portrayed it as there being an equal number of men and women but all it really meant was that there was a guarantee of 3 women and 3 men (the top of each from the three voting rounds).
Between the third person going through each round being a toss up and the fact that I don’t think they didn’t apply this rule to the “wildcard” round, we ended up with a lot more males than females.