I'll spare the suspense here and go ahead and say goodbye to Jacob Lusk. If the average American Idol voter was a 45-65 year old black woman, Jacob would be in this week's top three but, seriously, Luther? Really? What better way to make yourself irrelevant in this competition than to make your song selection from an artist currently better known for the sandwich named after him.
In case you didn't know, the Luther is delicious. It's a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut cut in half and put cut sides down on a buttered grill. The doughnut then becomes the bun for a bacon cheeseburger. Believe me. Word.
But for 95% of the American Idol voting public Luther Vandross is simply a name that gets brought up all the time when describing Jacob Lusk. I'm not a slow jam guy so I don't really care that the name is lost on everybody. I just think it's a shame that Jacob had to go there. Any chance he had of saving himself this week was in a different direction. If he plans on making a career out of being the next Luther then you won't be hearing much about Jacob after the competition either.
And just to reinforce the belief that Jacob is probably gay, every other contestant agreed that he's the "diva" of the show. Just sayin'. I don't think Adam Lambert was even ever called a diva.
So rounding out the bottom three this week will be Haley and Stefano. Neither will be in the bottom three due to lack of talent but it's just at that point in the competition.
Stefano's take on Ne-Yo was a total sleeper but probably a good direction for him. He'll just need to learn how to do some choreographed stuff at some point. Sorry, amazing vocal talent but the boy is just boring.
Haley made a good selection this week with a current Adele hit. She could have gone too far in the Adele direction and brought direct comparisons but she played it smart and gave it the Haley treatment. Randy Jackson wisely pointed out that the Adele route is probably a good bet for Haley's future and she'll have one or two more weeks to emphasize that.
The country kids, Lauren and Scotty, totally phoned it in this week. Neither took any risk and were simply warming themselves up for their first tour together post-Idol. Again, it's going to be very important in the future for the Idol producers to try to push things in a little more interesting direction. The kids know where the votes are coming from and they're just waiting for the finals.
Scotty is still a boring lock to win the whole thing, so much so that he did a cover of a cover of a song from the '80s. I feel they stretched the rules a little bit in allowing that but it really doesn't matter.
Lauren just gave us some average performance of some average pop country crap and I've already forgotten it. Fortunately for her though, that's her future and she's got a bright one doing it.
The risks this week came from the risk takers: Casey and James.
I hated Casey's song choice and had recommended Maroon 5 for Stefano instead. Casey's strong suit is in taking a track and Caseyfying it and he went the rock direction rather than the indie/pop/jazz thing he does so well but he'll be safe this week nonetheless. He still brings a spark to the competition and with Scotty and Lauren playing it safe it's still refreshing.
This week's over the top moment came from James Durbin. When they said he'd be doing Muse I was hoping it would be "Starlight" but his take on "Uprising" was as close to a barn-burner as we were going to get this week. On second listen, the times James went up an octave, apparently based on a personal challenge from Muse vocalist Matthew Bellamy, were horribly shrill. Still, it was nice to have a little something something in an otherwise boring as hell hour and a half.
So, to recap, bottom three are Jacob, Haley, and Stefano and Jacob will be packing up for his future as a closeted, slow jam superstar.
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