American Idol Judges Handicap Bowersox, Kill James with Bad Song Choices

Tonight we got to see which American Idol judges deserve to keep their jobs.  Unfortunately, the only one who does, is the one who will be leaving at the end of this season. 

Simon Cowell did Lee DeWyze a great favor by picking Leonard Cohen's classic "Hallelujah" for Lee to sing.  Meanwhile, Ellen DeGeneres had good intentions in selecting "Baby, I'm Amazed" for Crystal Bowersox, but the end result wasn't all that good. 

And shame on Randy Jackson and Kara Dio Guardi for sticking Casey James with a lousy, mediocre song like John Mayer's "Daughters," which may have a nice lyrical sentiment, but all the dramatic build of a shotgunned quail.  For an intents and purposes, "Daughters" essentially killed James' chances of making it to the final round.

Bowersox is a much better singer and performer than DeWyze. However, Lee benefited tonight by singing two songs that were much easier to sing than Crystal's version of Paul McCartney's octave-jumping "Baby, I'm Amazed." Lee sounded great on the verse of "Simple Man," but as usual, got way off pitch in the chorus. He delivered probably his best vocal of the season on the Cohen classic "Hallelujah," but butchered the last few musical notes of the song. The tempo on "Come to My Window," was way too fast and Crystal had trouble keeping up with it, but still turned in a decent performance.


But singing McCartney, come on! Ellen DeGeneres actually did her a disfavor.  As good as Crystal is, that song is out of her comfort zone - and her vocal range. It's a vocal zone few Idol contestants ever could reach - in fact the only one that comes to mind is Adam Lambert.  Here's the bitter truth. Bowersox is a true performer in the old singer-songwriter tradition of the 1960s and '70s. She has great pitch, feel and intonation, but not always the best sense in choosing her material.

Lee has this great alt-rock sound in his baritone range, but is pitchy as hell when he tries to get into his head voice and above. EVERYONE seems to ignore that fact. If Lee wins Idol this year and gets to a decent vocal coach, he will become a platinum recording star. At least he's not some mediocre talent like Taylor Hicks. But he simply doesn't have the artistic chops or tonality that Crystal has.

Considering how many young girls vote and re-vote and re-vote on Idol, Lee has the inside track to win - although if this were truly a TALENT COMPETITION and not a popularity contest, Crystal would win hands down. As for Casey, bad song choices, mediocre performances tonight. And Kara and Randy did him no favors at all by picking the wimpy John Mayer tune which basically has a throw-away chorus.

Tonight, Kara and Randy pretty much wrote Casey's obituary for this year's competition, although both are too stupid to know it - and probably too vain to admit it. All in all, it looks like Lee will be going to the finals with Crystal. And she'd better be loaded for bear and make much smarter material choices, or the tween vote will put Lee over the top in the final round.   Again, stupid judges making stupid songs choices.  And, the people taking the blame for those bad choices and suffering the consequences, unfortunately, were the singers.

And that's our view from The A&R Room.