Tonight’s Idol Made Me Feel One Billion Years Old

In the order in which I remember them:

Kristy Lee Cook: When Simon Cowell called the choice of “God Bless The U.S.A.” a “clever” one, what he meant was this: “The only people who would ever vote for you are unsophisticated buffoons with spiritual wall hangings in their bathrooms who haven’t like anything in popular music since Elvis’s gospel phase, and those people will absolutely love this, because they love saying they love America almost as much as they love saying they hate sin.” Whether this is true or not is a different question, but that’s what he meant. Every time I hear this song, it makes me want to burn my passport and move to France, but I admit that her singing was not as painful as anything she did to The Beatles.

David Cook: I can’t really decide what position to take about this kid. I don’t enjoy listening to him at all, just as a leisure activity, but I like the fact that he does such wackadoodle things with songs sometimes. I wasn’t wild about the “Billie Jean” arrangement, but I hadn’t heard it before. I found his reference to his giant head sort of endearing also, but then…I still don’t like listening to him sing.

David Archuleta: Oh my God, seriously? He’s now traveling to foreign lands to find inspirational songs that fit the theme of the week? Nothing from his own birth year about controlling the pet population or recycling aluminum cans? This performance was flat-out wretched. Off-key in places, dull throughout, and just artistically vacuous. I’ve often agreed with Simon, but when he said the words “animated creatures,” I thought to myself, “Oh my God, that is IT EXACTLY.” He is exactly singing in a kids’ show about making the world a better place. As I texted during the show, I felt like I was at the finale of Dora The Explorer On Ice.

Chikezie: I understand that he wants to sing ballads, and also that he has this soul-singer vibe that it really means a lot to him to follow. I don’t want to be all, “Sing happy songs and dance around every week!” But…I really liked him the last two weeks, and I agreed with Simon and Randy that this was just completely boring. I’ve forgotten it already, except that I didn’t like it.

Ramiele Malubay: She started out so strong the first couple of weeks, you know? She looked like a really smart pick by the people I knew who picked her in the pool I’m in. But she’s been on a slide, and I’m afraid this is going to be it for her. Fairly or unfairly, legend has it that Carrie Underwood killed this song, and you have to be careful. You also have to 100 percent have those top notes, and she really only about 75 percent had them. Whether that was because of illness or because of her voice, it didn’t work for me at all. She’s exactly the kind of singer who slips through the cracks really, really easily, and I think Simon was jumping to conclusions (and not counting on Kristy’s appeal to your love of America, YOU PINKO) when he predicted she’d get through this week.

Carly Smithson: This was…fine? I…guess? It…wasn’t bad? I barely noticed it going by on the TV. That can’t be good.

Brooke White: I love Brooke. I love singers like Brooke, and I picked her for the same reason I picked Blake Lewis last year — when all else fails, I sometimes pick a kid who seems to be an actual musician. But she doesn’t get “Every Breath You Take.” That song is creepy, and it’s creepy on purpose, and making it into a breathy, plinky piano song really doesn’t make any creative sense. I totally disagreed with Simon and Randy that she should have continued with the style she used at the beginning — she sounded like she was playing it on a toy piano. This, to me, was a performance that once again proved that she’s a good singer and a good technical musician, but it made me concerned about her musicality, because who doesn’t understand “Every Breath You Take,” other than wedding singers?

Syesha Mercado: I didn’t care about this, and I didn’t understand why they were making such a big deal out of it. I feel like I’ve seen this performance a hundred times from a hundred girls, and it’s always fine, but it’s never really my cup of tea. She’s a little screamy for me, and I never get a lot of subtlety out of her. There’s nothing wrong with this, and she’s more musical than Kristy Lee Cook, but the overexcited talk felt to me like they were trying to get a woman in the race.

Michael Johns: For the second week in a row, he tried to cram way too much song into the 90-second (or whatever) slot they have available. Trying to do “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions” made it almost impossible to create any momentum in either segment. There has to be a build, and I think as a bar-band singer (or whatever), he kind of knows that, but he’s ignoring it, because he wants to get to these great Moments, like if he puts together enough Moments, he’ll get somewhere. And he winds up looking like a clip show, is all that happens.

Jason Castro: Man, I had to go look him up this week, so thoroughly did I forget him. The problem with “Fragile” is that it sounded hopelessly pretentious and self-important even when Sting sang it, and he had a history with Amnesty International by then. So when this kid does it, it seems even more ridiculous. But I freely admit that it’s possible that the reason I blocked out this performance was that I was thinking, “OH MY GOD HE WAS BORN THE YEAR THIS SONG CAME OUT.” I mean, there’s good stuff on this record. He was born before Sting became ridiculous. That’s amazing.