Tonight, Blake Lewis and Jordin Sparks will compete to become the next American Idol. Who will prevail? What will they sing? What will they wear? Come back tonight to go through the journey together!

Let the Live-blogging begin! Please excuse the typos, .

Ryan asks if Paula’s nose is alright (she broke it during an effort to avoid stepping on her dog, Tulip) and after Paula said that her dog was fine, Ryan said “so the bitch is okay.” Wow.

Both Blake and Jordin auditioned in Seattle, the city that Simon said was the worst they had ever seen in terms of potential contestants. They show Blake’s audition, the judges’ commentary and a quick word from Blake about how much he realized he wanted to win as soon as he stepped on to the stage (unlike Chris Sligh, I guess). They then talk about Jordin’s journey to the top 2. So, I guess if both of them came out of Seattle, Simon could not have been right about it being the worst audition city in history.

—commercial break—

Ryan shows a coin-toss that determined who would sing first. It’s Blake lewis. He offered the opportunity to Jordin who said no, so Blake said he would go first.

Blake sings Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” He sounds great and his intro actually went better than it did last time. He got the timing down right. He’s beatboxing like a man on a mission. He’s working the stage but he loses a bit of contact with the mouth so his voice cuts out for a second but IT’s BETTER THAN THE FIRST TIME!!! Randy said the beatboxing was hot but the singing was just okay. Paula gives him a 10. Simon says that he’s the most entertaining and, although his singing got a little flat in the middle, it doesn’t matter because he was great. Randy looks like he’s wearing an outfit from the Michael Jackson collection.

Jordin sings Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter.” It sounds good but she’s got to stop the yodelling at the start of every sentence. She’s definitely trying her best. I did not like some of the notes towards the end of the song but the crowd seemed to love it. I guess I’m hearing a different person. Randy said it wasn’t that entertaining but that her voice was stellar. Paula echoed the sentiment. Simon says it was younger choice for her but that she sounded shreiky and that he thought Blake won round 1. Paula said it was a tie. Randy said he performance part went to Blake but that the singing went to Jordin. I did not like it.

—commercial break—

Blake says that he asked for drums every Christmas of his childhood and never got them. He heard someone beatboxing and thought he could do it and when he tried it out his father thought it was a drumset!

Blake sings Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” and it is iffy. He is trying and it is good that he is trying to show his versatility but this song requires strong vocals and I’m not sure he is pulling it off. He is, however, showing his falsetto abillities. Randy liked it and said he likes it when Blake sings naturally. Paula liked it. Simon said it was good but that he wouldn’t have chosen that song for the final because it doesn’t make much of an impact. Blake says that he has never seen an Idol finale but that he is having fun and that the fans are amazing.

—commercial break—

Jordin talks about how she is doing her dream and that she first started competing when she was 12 years old.

Jordin sings Martina McBride’s “Broken Wing” as her second song. I never like the beginning of this song because her lower register singing is sketchy sometimes. She finishes the song better than it began which has worked all season to make people forget how it started. She did control her vibrato a lot better than normal which made it sound a lot better! Randy said it was great, Paula said it was soaring and Simon said it was good. She seemed happy and I’m happy for her.

—commercial break—

The winners of the songwriters competition. They are from Seattle and it is called “This is My Now.” Blake sings it first. It is a slow song which is not really his strong point but he is doing a good job. These songs are always cheesy, so this performance is cheesy. It’s okay, though. He looked adorable. Randy said it was alright even though it wasn’t his genre. Paula said she thought it was good. Simon thought it was odd because he seemed uncomfortable. He said that we have to judge him based on his first two performances. He did say that there was talent in Seattle.

That song does put him at a major disadvantage. It is clearly more suited to Jordin’s voice than it is to Blake’s.

—commercial break—

Jordin sings “This is My Now” and it starts shaky in my opinion. She is getting better but enough of the yodelling, please! She looks very, very comfortable singing this song. She does a better job singing it than Blake and because of this (and the fact that she is now practically crying) the judges will not mention the bum notes. Randy said that Jordin was the best singer tonight. Paula says that she is an angel and that she has a lot to be proud of. Simon told her that last week, he didn’t think she was good enough to make the finals but is now able to say she was wrong and that she wiped the floor with Blake after that song. The crowd is chanting Jordin over and over and she’s crying.

Ouch. You gotta feel bad for Blake. I don’t know if the runner-up, which he probably will be, should be subjected to public humiliation. I am wondering if the song should be more appropriate to the contestant. How would Jordin sound beat boxing? Ugh, this is why I get frustrated with this show!

Chris Daughtry performs “Home.”

VOTING BEGINS

—————————————

“Reminder: The b5media Scavenger Hunt continues… We will be giving away a gift certificate to Amazon.com to the lucky winner who finds all of the puzzle pieces. A piece will be hidden on this site (hint – it will appear in early June). Click here for contest rules and instructions! You’ve Got Two Chances to Win! There is a different hunt on b5media’s Celebrities channel. Click here for details!

Post from: Idol Stalker

Melinda Doolittle

Okay, I need to voice my frustration here. Melinda is a fantastic singer. Tonight, she delivered a good performance of “Sway.” That’s right, I said good – not great. Aside from looking like Martin Short with her dance moves, I’m totally tired of her not picking challenging songs. If she is going to consistently pick easy, repetitive tunes, she needs to blow me away – she didn’t. She did look great in that black dress tonight, though.

Lakisha Jones

Lakisha is another strong singer who isn’t trying very hard. I loved when Jennifer Lopez told her that she doesn’t “have to do too much” Right – because J.Lo has never been known as the queen of excess. Moving on… If you had the Pointer Singers of “Neutron Dance” fame cover Gloria Estefan’s “Conga” you would get tonight’s performance. Lakisha really brushed off Paula’s constructive criticism which falls in line with her total dismissal of the advice from Tony Bennett, Gwen Stefani and Lulu. Keep ignoring the advice, Lakisha, and you might be sent packing.

Chris Richardson

It almost pains me to say that Chris was one of the better performers tonight, but he was. I love Rob Thomas and Santana’s “Smooth” and, although he did not quite get there, the second half of his performance was decent enough.

Haley Scarnato

She sang, “Turn the Beat Around” but I wish she sang “Turn the Volume Down.” Okay, the backup vocals are so strong during the chorus of this song that it might be easy to ignore her terrible singing but when she started singing on her own, the truth was undeniable – it was a mess. For half of the song she was so out of breath that she couldn’t even complete her words properly. Does she really think that those short-shorts are going to get her a record deal? I think we learned our lesson with Jessica Simpson – shaking your booty is just not enough.

Phil Stacey

This was probably Phil’s worst performance. He sang, “Maria, Maria” and let’s hope it was in prayer because only a miracle could make people think he sang in tune. He was ahead of the music at least twice and it was so boring that I think it was actually worse than Haley’s performance. At least he wore a hat.

Jordin Sparks

Is no one else bothered by her yodeling? And her vibrato is so distracting that she sounds almost like a sheep. Am I the only one who feels this way? She’s got decent intonation, she can definitely carry a tune but something just annoys me. I thought the performance was boring and her twitchy behavior was odd. Her clothing was moderately better, though. I liked the top a lot.

Blake Lewis

I think Blake came out on top tonight, which, considering how everyone else did, is not a major accomplishment. He sang, “I Need to Know” by Marc Anthony, who, despite looking a bit like Skeletor from the He-Man cartoon of the 80s, can sing his butt off. Marc’s version is stylish and Blake’s was very straight. However, it was a smart song choice since it suited his voice and, in the end, he managed to pull it off.

Sanjaya Malakar

I can say, for the first time in the 12 top performances, that I did not think that Sanjaya was the worst. In fact, I think he did reasonably well. The song choice (Besame Mucho) was great, singing in Spanish won him some points and as Randy said, he’s “one of the smartest contestants” ever. I don’t know how he does it, but I don’t think he’s going home tomorrow.

Breakout performance – Chris Richardson. It was more than I expected.

Most Surprising – Sanjaya Malakar. He actually sounded okay.

Worst of the Night – Haley Scarnato. No further comment.

Biggest Risk – No one. It was very safe and boring.

Prediction for bottom three – Haley, Phil and Jordin with Jordin being safe.

Photo Source

Post from: Idol Stalker

I was excited about doing this. They had actually been working on getting me into the group for about 4 years now. The problem four years ago is that my home theater setup was a little behind the scope of their equipment to monitor. I was what they called “TD” or “technically difficult”. At the time it was due to more HD inputs than they could handle. To make a long story short, I guess I’ve fallen behind the times or Nielsen has really advanced in their monitoring equipment (more likely).

The team arrived at my house at 3pm to begin the install process. After 3 hours I briefly mentioned that I was blogger. I was telling them my different blogs (MSW, O12W, EE, UTI, CMF & this one). About that time, the primary tech walked into the living room and the tech said he needed to ask him about something and they walked outside. I knew they weren’t going out to talk about quadraphonic 8-track player.

After a few minutes they came back in and started asking me a little more about my blogging for American Idol. It seems I would be considered as having a significant influence over the viewing habits of the general populace by writing this blog. Now, I’m not sure if the influence is really anymore than I’d have with my coworkers hanging out at the water cooler, but for Nielsen TV it was enough to move me from successfully overcoming the “TD” classification and directly into “Occupationally Disqualified”.

Yeah, I’m pretty bummed. I was excited about hopefully influencing what we see on TV and doing my small part to try and reduce the amount of crap we see everyday. It’s probably a good thing though. If we’d made it there would probably have ended up being 27 more Disney channels available on public television thanks to my kids.

If you’re interested in more of the technical details of the equipment Nielsen uses, then take a quick visit over on Emerging Earth where I’m talking about that experience.

Post from: Idol Stalker