WEEK 5: British Invasion

Week 5. That Lulu character was fun to watch. Two hours is a long time. Jordin and Blake rocked it out tonight.

Who should go this week: Sanjaya
Who will go this week: Sanjaya
Best song choice: Blake
Worst song choice: Stephanie

Hayley Scarnato:
Sexed it up this week. What's new pussycat? Whoa! Lots of skin, decent vocals, and good song choice helped her. The thing is that she was bad and is consistently getting better, so she looks like she is breaking new ground while others seem stagnant. Obviously not the best, but certainly not the worst.

Chris Richardson:
Pretty cool setting on the stage, but I didn't like this one as much as the judges did. It felt cool at first, but when the recaps came by, it was one of the least memorable performances for me.

Stephanie Edwards:
Ouch. Stephanie looked like Fantasia in that dress, and that is not a complement. Vocals were not the best, and the song was kind of blah. Been there, done that, feels like the performances from the last two weeks, just worse.

Lakisha Jones:
This one fell flat. I think the James Bond song was a good choice, but she had just done one of these songs last week. I am no chick, but wouldn't last week's dress fit those diamonds better than this week's green number? Maybe Kiki was hoping for some luck of the Irish there, but it just didn't seem to work.

Sanjaya Malakar:
Smiling as I type this. What a moment, with that little girl crying and Sanjaya singing and Simon's comment, "The girl's face says it all." It was just good TV. Not good singing, not good showmanship, but good TV. Late night TV. "If it bleeds, it leads" local news, smoking-car-on-the-highway kind of TV. That cameraman needs to be given a bonus, and a raise.

Phil Stacey:
I finally figured out why this didn't work for me. Phil looks like he is from a futurist race of neutered clones that all wear white robes and have no hair. (Sinead O'Connor is also a member of this race.) It turns out that bald nutless clones don't have any street cred singing rough and tumble bar rocker tunes. This had all the authenticity of Josh Groban singing "Sweet Home Alabama".

Blake Lewis:
This was awesome. Blake is cool, he's just cool. Like a modern day Dean Martin. He's cool and he knows it. Sounded like he was stretching a bit to hit the high notes, but this was really entertaining to watch. Randy gave him props for putting the arrangement and production spin on it, too. Looking forward to seeing Blake for a while.

Jordin Sparks:
Holy cow, somebody get this girl a record deal. She's beautiful, young, and she sings a nasty topic song with sincerity and sells it like it was hers. I loved this performance. She's cool, and she said "crap" on national TV. Awesome.

Gina Glocksen:
Her vocals were washed out by the band, but her look was good, if not great. I thought song choice wasn't great, but that she did pretty well with it. I like her more each week, but I know her vocals really need to keep getting better to stay here.

Chris Sligh:
Good to see the old Chris back, but some damage was done last week. No glasses and bad song choices have tainted your image. Good song choice this week, and his vocals are very solid, and he looked comfortable on stage, but in the end, it was weird to see people cheering for him. He's missing that cool personality factor that he needs to get past his looks that I thought he had in the prelims.

Melinda Doolittle:
Another week, another great vocal, I must admit. However, I don't think she is really that sickly sweet and nice, and if she is, she is going to get crushed in the music industry. I also like the new doo, but it makes her missing neck more obvious. Hey Melinda, Cornelius's wife from Planet of the Apes called, and she wants her hair stylist back.