Casey James tonight regained credibility and momentum as a real contender to win this season's American Idol competition, with a fresh and highly stylized interpretation of Shania Twain's "Don't," while 17-year-old Aaron Kelly showed off his sensitivity and Country chops with Twain's "You've Got a Way," while delivering the second-strongest of the evening's six performances.
Lee DeWyze showed his smarts by picking the best song in Twain's entire catalogue, with an interesting, if pitchy alt-rock version of her wonderful pop classic "You're Still the One." While DeWyze has a great alt-rock vocal sound, he is frequently flat and sharp in pitch, a fact that the Idol judges steadfastly refuse to address.
Crystal Bowersox had her weakest performance of the competition with a straight-ahead and plodding traditional Country version of "No One Needs to Know," which judge Simon Cowell correctly identified as one of Twain's weakest - and not very memorable songs.
Big Mike Lynche brought tears to mentor Twain's eyes with an over-sung version of "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing," while Siobhan Magnus resorted to some powerful but predictable screams at the end of Twain's boring country traditional tune, "Any Man of Mine," with the judges about equally split on whether her finale was artistically exciting - or just another display of her usual vocal histrionics.
At this point, we believe Casey, Aaron and Lee turned in the strongest performances of the night, followed by Big Mike, Crystal and Siobhan, respectively. We think it's time for Siobhan to hit the road, since her only really powerful and commercially artistic performance of this season, was her version of the Stones' "Paint It Black" several weeks ago.
And that's our view from The A And R Room.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
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