This week our idols will be making their selections from songs of the 21st century. Again, a very broad, probably too broad, range, but I'd like to make my recommendations based on what I personally feel would be good choices for the artists and try to predict which direction they might go.
I'll start with what I feel may be the best choice for Haley Reinhart: Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful". I think this would be an excellent opportunity for Haley to take a quiet moment in the show. She could use one after last week's falter on the Blondie song and "Beautiful", maybe done with a string quartet or just piano or acoustic guitar would give her an excellent opportunity to shine. She'll make another misstep if she tries to go over the top again. This one needs to be intimate.
Stefano Langone's high tenor is maybe his Achilles' heel in this competition. As I've noted, it's really more suited for a boy band set up and not so much for solo work. He's certainly well-suited though for something in the Maroon 5 or Coldplay zone. I think he needs to go a little high energy this week to stand out so I'll recommend Maroon 5's "This Love". I have a sneaky feeling he'll go slow again though. His biggest blunder would be to go directly at a song where he can be directly compared to the original and maybe try to do a sound alike performance. Maybe he could take "This Love" and jazz it up a bit with some horns or something.
I'd really like to see Lauren Alaina step out of the box this week and maybe give something a little outside her comfort zone a shot. After all, she's solidly in the top three with little chance of going home anytime soon so it wouldn't really be a risk. But I think she and Scotty are just going to keep playing to their target demos and playing it safe. The logical choice would be something like Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly" if Lauren wants to keep playing to her fans or maybe something on the country side like Taylor Swift's "Our Song", "White Horse" or "Love Story". As cheesy a choice as it is, I think "Love Story" would be Lauren's best bet.
Now that Scotty McCreery looks like the odds on favorite to win this thing this year, I'd really, really love to see him take something not country and turn it into his style of country crooner song. I think he'd absolutely nail something like an acoustic version of Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" but I think the odds of him taking a risk like that are pretty slim. Scotty will probably do something like George Strait's "Give it Away" and Randy will say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
James Durbin came in at number two in last week's show despite picking a horrible song so it seems he can pretty much do anything he wants at this stage of the show. He's another one who, I think, would benefit greatly from going outside of the box and maybe doing something a little mid-tempo and outside his genre. I'd enjoy hearing him do something like Foo Fighter's "Learn to Fly". This week could really trip James up on song choice though. He is definitely a classic rock kid. Maybe a down-tempo song like Staind's "It's Been a While", though finding a good key for his voice might be tricky, would be a strong choice. At any rate, he'll be doing himself a disservice if he goes for something on the obscure side again this week.
This is going to be a really tough week for Jacob Lusk. He's been hovering around the bottom recently as amazing as his voice is. Of course, this is all due to the racial and age demographic of the average Idol voter out there. As I've said, his glaring gayness doesn't help the situation as he's not really poster material for the wall of the average Idol voter's bedroom wall. This one could really be his undoing. Jacob is strongest when he recalls Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson and that's not going to be available to him this week. So Jacob can go two directions that would be smart for his career as this could well be his swan song on Idol. One choice would be to got totally R&B with something like Mario's "Let Me Love You" although I don't think Lusk's future is in the R&B vein. The other direction is Bubleville which is probably where he'll land long-term. Something like "Hold On" could be career defining and a good bet for Jacob. Again, it's a real shame that it is what it is with this kid. He might be the best singer to ever have appeared on Idol.
I had to save Casey Abrams for last because he can go in several different directions this week. I feel Casey's strong suit and probably where he'll go in the future is that kind of jazzy/indie pop thing he did last week with "Nature Boy". His only real failure to date has been his rather straight reading of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" which was a huge dud and almost did him in. Maybe it should have. Anyway, I'd love to see Casey do his jazzy treatment on a song like Train's "Drops of Jupiter" or Coldplay's "Fix You" or "The Scientist". If Casey really takes himself seriously as some sort of jazz messiah on a mission to educate the masses this week he'll be in the bottom three. He needs to take something familiar and make it his not try to take something obscure and do it justice.
So, just my recommendations and I think this week's bottom three will be Jacob, Haley, and Stefano with a toss-up as to who could go home. They all have legitimate chances to work some magic and save themselves with good song selections but we know that rarely happens. They'll all need some very strong and honest mentoring from Jimmy Iovine and will.i.am.
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