AI: Top 20

Credit: Patrick Eccelsine/FOX/ PictureGroup

Idol Finalist Sent to Hospital, Girl Competition Show Delayed


American Idol Top 20 contestant Crystal Bowersox has been hospitalized, Fox confirms to UsMagazine.com in a statement.

As a result, the guys will compete on Tuesday night's show, and the women -- originally slated to take the stage Tuesday -- will perform Wednesday.


A source tells Us that Bowersox, 24, is recovering from diabetes complications.

"Crystal is doing OK and should be fine for tomorrow," the source says of the Ohio-based soul-rocker mom.

On Thursday, two guys and two girls will be cut from the competition. Season 8 finalist Danny Gokey will also perform his new single, "My Best Days Are Ahead of Me."

Lee Dewyze, Andrew Garcia, Todrick Hall, Casey James, Aaron Kelly, Alex Lambert, Michael Lynche, John Park, Jermaine Sellers and Tim Urban, Didi Benami, Crystal Bowersox, Lacey Brown, Michelle Delamor, Katelyn Epperly, Siobhan Magnus, Paige Miles, Lilly Scott, Katie Stevens and Haeley Vaughn are the current Top 20.

Top 20 Boys Sing: And I Snooze

Posted by Professor Chan on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 at 2:59 AM EST


Ugh, what another boring-ass episode. The judges are annoyingly inconsistent, giving contradicting advice on the same performance and The Idols are consistently dull. Give them a choice of "Any good song in the last 50 years" or this schlocky song from a wussy performer. They'll go with option B every time.




Then you'd say: "Are you sure? It's going to be boring and suck."

Random Idol: "N-no, I'm sure. I can make it work."

You: "But it was the same EXACT crappy song you sang from last week and the judges hated it.

Random Idol: "I know, but I just have a feeling this time."

The problem is that they're not good. But they're not terrible in a VFTW way. They're terrible in a "Oh, god this is so boring, why is this the #2 Show on TV after the Winter Olympics?" kind of way. That's just depressingly bad.

So we get more Gavin DeGraw, John Mayer, James Morrison and another sub-NickelBack, Daughtry-like Modern "Rock" group called Hinder.

It was all so tired and rehashed. I'm making myself drowsy just thinking about it. Let's just get to the review, and I'll keep writing until I finally fall asleep.

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In order to inject some excitement into the review I'm not doing any internet research. So whatever songs and artists they say they sang, I'm going with that. I don't know if it's right or wrong, and I don't care. I'm walking that tightrope of danger, man.

Muscles Mike - "This is a Man's World" by James Brown

Muscles goes for the extra-manly posing song to try and counter-act the goofy video of him tap dancing in a top hat from when he was a theater dork. And also his admitting to getting a pedicure. Seacrest: "I got a MAN-icure" because I'm not gay or anything. Muscles Mike also bench-presses Aaron Kelly, who's giggling like a little girl. He says he can bench 500 pounds. Not bad. I do that for warm-ups.

Muscles does a mediocre job on the song. His vocals are pretty decent, and he's actually pretty good when he gets beyond the cheesy pregnant pauses in the song. But the bad keyboard backing track undercuts the performance. Sure, it's not Mike's fault, but that's Idol. In retrospect, if I had known this was going to be a bright spot of the evening I would've stopped watching right here.

GRADE: B- == The pressing question is, if Mike works out so much, why does he look flabby? I'm guessing he also likes to bench press nacho cheese gorditas.
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John Park - "Gravity" by John Mayer

John suggests that his decision to sing a 70 year old song last week was a mistake, so he chooses John Mayer, because he's "relevant." So along with being a dull singer, John is also aspiring to be a racist.

John sounded pained on some of the hight notes, and generally showed no energy or stage presence, again.
Dude, if you're only going to sit on a stool and sing these godawful dirge-like ballads, you might as well leave now.

GRADE: D
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Casey James - "I Don't Wanna Be" by Gavin DeGraw
Casey busts out the electric guitar, which at least wakes me up. Sure his vocals are weak and indistinct, but he's a good guitarist. I still hate the song, an Idol standard, but if Casey just rocks out on guitar every week I have no problem with that. Of course the judge's hate it.

GRADE: B+ -- Casey says: "A lot of people here are better than I am. I need all the help I can get." Nope, we're still not voting for you.
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It was at this point in the show when I figured out that the judges weren't rotating who starts off the critiques, like last week. Instead it fell into a boring Randy, Ellen, Kara-Simon pattern. I think it's to make it easier for the judges to rehash their canned critiques. Skipping around was just confusing the poor bastards.
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Alex Lambert - "Some Song" by Some Singer I Never Heard Of.

In Alex's bio-video we learn that he made up his own language and sometimes sings his lyrics in that strange language. Sounded like Quechua to me. Actually that's a pretty awesome talent, and I hope he busts it out sometime during a performance. Alex's performance is pretty good. I was kind of expecting VFTW Gold after last week's train wreck, so I'm a bit disappointed. Alex still goes to the unfortunate falsetto but overall he seemed sincere and competent and his voice is unusual.

GRADE: A -- First performance of the season that's actually you know, good. Simon and Ryan get into a "I know you are but what am I" fight, and then Ryan tells Simon, "I'm in awe, sire." So I guess they're into Renaissance S&M games this week.
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Todd-Rick - "What's Love Got to Do With It" by Tina Turner.
Todd-Rick apologizes again for sucking last week, which is just losing VFTW points. But he wears a silver pleather coat and does push-ups to pump him up before going on stage, so that gets him some points back. Todd-Rick goes to his Proto-Babyface soul-singing bag of tricks and he slows down and mangles an already torpid song. Todd-Rick is mostly flat and out of tune, so he's basically awesome.

GRADE: D -- I hope Todd-Rick sticks around another week to suck some more, but his chances are slim.
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Jermaine Sellers -- "What's Going On" as sung by a tone-deaf Al Jarreau

Jermaine gives us another awesome VFTW performance for the ages. He's dressed like a black Pee-Wee Herman with his own take on the Ed Grimley Hair. It's just demented. Even in the bio-video Jermaine un-appologetically wears a green dinosaur onesie. Then he launches into his own sad, misguided deconstruction of a classic protest song. It's horrible, and completely out of tune. To be fair to Jermaine, it's hard to sing the right notes when you throw out the melody.

GRADE: A -- For AWESOME. But FAIL otherwise.
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Adam Garcia - Some James Morrison Song I Never Heard Before.

Adam completely misinterpets the judge's idiotic and pointless criticisms and decided to take their blather and sing this singer's song, despite Adam not being much of a vocalist. He's mumbly, out of tune and he's out of breath halfway through the song. And the dude is just sitting on the stool, he's not even moving around. He's got to work on his cardio, man.

GRADE: D -- Another let-down for the perceived male front-runner. Mind you, I always thought Adam was dull and mediocre, so I'm not surprised at his early tanking. But he was given the Gokey Superhero editing and he falls below even those minimal standards of talent for the second week in a row.
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Aaron Kelly - "My Girl" by the Temptations.

Aaron is really trying hard for the Kevin Covais pity voting. He picks an over-played Idol standard and slathers a liberal helping of goat vibrato all over it. Every time he hits a sustained note it's hilarious, like singing through a fan.

GRADE: A for AWESOME, but otherwise FAIL
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Coming back from commercial Kara is pulling down her hitched up dress. Was she caught short on a bathroom break? Or maybe just a quickie in the smoking room? Inquiring minds really would rather not know.
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Tim Urban "Come on and Get High" (?) by Matt Nathanson (?)

Tim completely lets us all down by revealing he's really a Christian Rocker at heart. His performance is really bland and lacking in badness. But then it's also lacking in goodness and reasons to give a crap. Singing mediocre covers of forgettable songs seems to be his career ambition. Bah!

GRADE: C- == The only funny part of this performance is Tim's complete shock at getting a good review from Simon on his terrible performance. Major VFTW disappointment.
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Lee DeWyze -- "Lips of an Angel" by Hinder

Lee picks a horrible song and does horrible things to it. His voice is raspy, mumbly and nasally all at the same time. Lee hitches his pants up several times during the two minute song and at the end makes sweet, sweet love to the camera. I guess he was the recipient of Kara's Coffee Break.

GRADE: D -- Simon decides that this guy is something special. If he follows in the Daughtry/Cook trail of MOR Modern "Rock" success on Idol, he'll go far. But I'll still hate him.
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So once again Toddrick and Jermaine remind us why they're VFTW Stars, and the rest of the boys bore me to tears. Sadly the girls are even less interesting. I hope Bowersox is okay.
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What were your thoughts, concerns, criticisms?

--Chan

Top 20 Guys Recap - "I know God."

Poste
This week, the guys tell us things that might surprise us about them. The only thing that would surprise me with this bunch is a performance that isn’t out of tune karaoke. To be fair, most of the contestants improved over last week. But that’s like saying Miley Cyrus is talented because she sings better than Lil Wayne. It’s all bad. Whoever wins this show is in for a rude awakening. But let’s dissect this week’s performances.

Big Mike is huge into theatre and plays football. I laugh when he’s bench pressing Aaron Kelly, but I think even Seacrest could bench press Aaron. Mike sings “This is a Man’s World”. It’s pretty boring. He just stands there between phrases and looks awkward. The arrangement is also very lounge singer. To my surprise, the judges love it. Randy gives Mike a standing ovation. Ellen says Mike is now one to beat. Simon says that this was Mike’s best performance in the competition so far. I say the producers want this guy in the top 12, so even crap like that gets praised.



John Park says that we may not know his first language is Korean. I thought his first language was sucking at singing, since his performance of “Gravity” is terrible. John goes and picks one of the only songs even slower than the song he sang last week. Does this guy even have a heartbeat? He can barely stay in tune. I didn’t think he could be worse than last week. I apparently suck at predicting. Randy thought John didn’t add anything spicy to it. Kara says that John can’t connect with the song. Simon tells John to stop singing ballads. For once the judges are right. That doesn’t happen too often. John is way too boring to be the VFTW contestant and way too bad to be liked by average voters. So bye bye, John. You have one more week tops.


Casey James claims he’s never watched American Idol before, so he picks “I Don’t Wanna Be”, a song that’s been done to death on this show. He also doesn’t want us to know his pre-show ritual. He’ll mention it if he makes the top 10. I don’t want to know what it is. For this simple fact, I hope Casey goes home in 11^th place so I never have to hear about the mangled, dead body in the box. Casey’s performance is pretty terrible. His guitar playing isn’t bad, but his vocals are shaky and weak. Way way worse than last week. The goat vibrato makes an extended appearance as well. Randy proves he’s a complete idiot by comparing Casey to Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix. Holy shit, Randy. You’ve said a lot of stupid things in your day, but that may take the cake. Kara gives the first actually good critique she’s ever given when she tells Casey he didn’t do a good job and his singing was off. Who knew the old broad had it in her? Well we knew she had Casey in her… I meant the capability to critique a performance well.


Alex Lambert suffers from stage fright and made up his own language. Dude’s weird. His performance of “Everybody Knows” is actually decent. He’s obviously nervous, but it’s a huge improvement from last week. The tone of his voice sounds really good at times, but overall he needs a lot of work. Ellen says that the unripe banana was placed in a paper bag and that under the mullet he has a Sam Cooke voice. Simon says that Alex is like a sprinter in a 100 meter race who’s happy coming in mid-pack. Well, he’s clearly not going to win with the mullet, made up language, and no screen time, so really mid pack is all he can hope for anyway. At least he’s realistic.

Todrick Hall was happy that he was cast as the lead in The Nutcracker because his school did color blind casting. Too bad they didn’t do douche free casting. Todrick says he infuses dance with singing like Paula Abdul. And like Paula, Todrick’s vocals are mediocre at best. He again picks a ridiculous song choice, Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It”, and rearranges it so it barely sounds right. Add that to the stupid faces he makes, the horrible melisma, and the off key singing, and he’s living on borrowed time. In a lesser season, Todrick would be an awesome VFTW pick, but his level of suck isn’t even up to the level of some others. Randy again proves what an idiot he is when he praises Todrick’s off key falsetto note. He tells Todrick to just pick a song and sing it rather than do rearrangements. Fast forward to next week if Todrick is still around, and Randy will criticize Todrick for not making a song his own. Kara says she hasn’t seen a real spark from Todrick since his audition and comments that he ruins songs by overdoing it. 2 for 2, Kara. Who lent you a brain for the evening? Todrick is offended at the criticism and argues that he thought he was supposed to take songs and make them his own. Todrick doesn’t seem to get that making songs his own means ruining them. Pay back those kids, Todrick.

Jermaine Sellers, aka my other favorite person, is totally awesome. Just throwing that out there. I wish we could vote for both him and Tim, but vote splitting doesn’t work. Jermaine rocks a onesie in his video clip and then reacts to the judges with a big “are you serious?” He performs “What’s Goin On” and it’s just as bad as I remember. I think the notes he thinks he’s hitting are not the notes he’s hitting. Ellen says Jermaine pushes too hard. Simon says that Jermaine plays with the song too much. Jermaine then invites Simon to church with him and Simon takes him up on the offer. This will never happen, but I am giddy at the prospect. Jermaine asks the judges to pick his next song since they don’t like anything he picks, but they don’t take him up on the offer. Jermaine then says he’s not going anywhere because he knows God. Oh good, because I don’t want Jermaine to go anywhere. He needs to stick around forever. If he and Tim could be in the top 3 with Haeley, I think I would literally explode with excitement. And since he knows God, the VFTW will is done. Jermaine is safe!

Andrew Garcia bores the shit out of me with his rendition of “You Give Me Something.” He isn’t on tempo at all and his stupid voice annoys me. The judges agree and say that Andrew set the bar so high with his version of “Straight Up” that nothing’s getting to that level. OK, I’m going to say it. His version of “Straight Up” wasn’t that good. It was okay. But it’s not this life changing performance the judges keep making it out to be. I bet someone else has done it before. Oh look, here’s one from 4 years ago. Here’s one from 2 years ago. And here’s one from 6 months ago. It’s not fucking original at all. So stop referring to it. Hopefully Andrew misses out on a top 12 spot because that’d be funny.

Aaron Kelly was so happy to have Simon tell him to believe in himself. So apparently being told you have no confidence is a compliment now? He decides that singing karaoke staple “My Girl” is a good idea. His performance is just as bad as you’d expect, and his singing is shaky. His falsetto is especially terrible. Ellen criticizes Aaron’s song choice. Kara says that every time Aaron comes on stage, he sings the same, so she doesn’t get confused. Trust me, it doesn’t take much to confuse Kara, so this is an accomplishment. Simon tells Aaron to be more like Justin Beiber and Aaron looks embarrassed at the comparison. Probably because Justin Beiber sounds like a woman, looks like a woman, and appeals only to teenage girls. Oh wait, so it’s an accurate comparison.

Tim Urban decides that this week he’s going to prove he can sing. But he fails. He sings “Come On Get Higher” and looks just as terrified as last week. This week, he takes any falsetto notes out of the song since he sounded so terrible with falsetto last week. I looked up his song and there’s quite a few high notes in the bridge that Tim totally pussied out on. I could tell, and I’d never really heard this song before. It was clear he was trying to stay as safe as possible to avoid criticism. But still, his voice was weak and very off key. Randy said there were pitch problems everywhere and it was off key. Ellen tells Tim to act, because if he can act and sing, people might pay more attention to his acting. Simon disagrees with the others and says it was a big improvement. Notice Simon never says he liked it. He says that he chose a young song, was more relevant than the others, and was impressed with his attitude and work ethic. That’s because not even Simon wants to look silly praising Tim. But Simon tends to pimp performances he doesn’t like if he wants to get rid of the sympathy vote. People vote less when they think their favorite is safe. Simon’s done it to plenty of our picks before, but we’re not falling for it this time. I’m perfectly happy going with Jermaine if we lose Tim though, but I’d prefer both to stay for my viewing pleasure.

Lee DeWyze continues to prove he has awful taste in music by selecting Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel.” His voice is consistently off key and has way too much goat vibrato. I can see how the guy might sound good every now and then, but he can barely stay on a note. The judges of course praise him because they want him to go far and then be easy fodder for their female winner. Wait 6-8 weeks and Lee’s “you didn’t have perfect pitch but who cares” comments will turn into “you can’t sing, go home.” Kara says this is a big improvement from last week because he had so many pitch problems last week. Simon says that Lee is vocally head and shoulders above all of the other guys and that he’s the one to beat. This just gives his compliment to Tim no weight at all, since technically Lee sounded even worse than Tim. Simon either can’t hear or he’s playing games. Either way, it’s odd to hear him praise someone so shitty.

So who’s gone? Probably John and Todrick. Jermaine could go for his attitude, but I’m hoping not. Tim could go too, but I’m feeling confident about him for one more week. Tim is nervous in such a funny way and Jermaine is hilariously awesome. I’ve never seen two VFTW picks so simultaneously awesome. Tim has the hatred of most people watching, while Jermaine has the personality and back talk. Both have awful singing. And I want them both to last forever. So don’t you go anywhere, guys.d by thefunnystone on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 at 1:01 AM EST

Big Mike - As big as he is, he doesn't stand out to me.

John Park - boring and will probably be one of the guys going home tomorrow.

Casey James - I'm on the fence with him. He may have been given more credit than what he can produce.

Alex Lambert - I still think he's very nervous and very boring. I don't think he has what it takes to be a star. He may have a decent voice but he's kind of weird, and too doesn't have any personality.

Todrick Hall - This guy has butchered 2 big songs. What's his fucking deal, doesn't he get it? I don't think he deserves a second chance to butcher another song but those voting may cut him another break.

Jermaine Sellers - "I rocks the onesie"
Too bad he can't rock a song! He's from a suburb of Chicago and I swear his whole demeanor I have seen so many times before.... He needs to go this week, he's sickening. He's another Todrick that butchers songs. Just sing it, for him to attempt to make it his own is beyond what he can do thus far, he needs to just sing and knock off the over tweaking and keep his mouth shut when he's being judged.

Andrew Garcia - Huge disappointment from what he was able to do with Paula's song. I think if it weren't for him singing straight up in Hollywood week he wouldn't have made it this far. He's boring and has no stage presence.

Aaron Kelly - ugh! This season reminds me of David Archuletta season all over again. I really hope they don't push him through because he's "cute". And of course we can't have a season of American Idol without someone singing My Girl. After all of these seasons of American Idol I fucking hate that song now... please for the love of God people quit singing that song!

Tim Urban - I don't forsee him going anywhere with the preteen girls voting. I'd actually like to see him around longer than some of the other guys.

Lee DeWyze - He's from Chicago ...enough said! I like him haha not just because he's from Chicago but I can see him with a career, he's marketable, he may not be the best singer but if he continues with the alternative rock I can see him going far. And he seems humble and genuine which makes him likeable. Go Lee!

Thank God for TiVo so I didn't have to sit through 2 straight hours of that crap last night. But from what I did see ... I predict John Park and Todrick Hall or Jermaine Sellers.

I really am not surprised John Park, Jermaine Sellers, Michelle Delamour and Haeley Vaughn are now out. It was only a matter of time, they clearly were not going to win. I absolutely loved fast forwarding right through Danny Gokey's performance only to at the very end hear him say he's going country?

Lee DeWyze reminds me a lot of Danny Gokey.

I havent watched Idol all week......and interestingly enough, I don't miss it one bit. Its just as easy to google the results on Friday morning and much less painless.

Lorraine wrote:

Lee DeWyze reminds me a lot of Danny Gokey.

I havent watched Idol all week......and interestingly enough, I don't miss it one bit. Its just as easy to google the results on Friday morning and much less painless.

I think you mean Andrew Garcia reminds you of Danny Gokey. They look like twins!

nope.....Lee does.