I am as big a fan as anyone of Bobby Flynn's originality and inventiveness. But am I the only person in the world who thinks you really need to actually hit, oh, say, 19 out of 20 of the notes you attempt to hit, even if you only hit them a little bit, in order to deliver a performance that is not embarrassing?
Askin'.
Dean South Africa hits all his notes, and then apparently hits a small child with a guitar pick. I don't like the guy (Tom Cruise wannabe, which is both boring and scary). But I've got to admit he's pretty good tonight. Also, he can play his guitar, which I was not expecting. But can anyone explain his hair?
I've got a suggestion for the producers, re the screams of the hysterical children in the audience while the performers are trying to sing and while
Duct tape. A powerful disciplinary tool. (Sandilands yelling 'Oh shut up your stupid yelling' later in the show was funny and gratifying but not very effective.)
And speaking of incredibly irritating audience behaviour, could someone please pass a law against studio audiences, in any reality TV show involving music, clapping? On the beat like an oom-pah band? Except a little bit behind the beat, like a bad oom-pah band? I'm sure the performers would really appreciate it. They already have enough problems.
8.23
Chris Murphy sings a song that reminds one what a truly excellent composer of popular songs Paul McCartney actually was. Or, for all I know, still is, though he's had other things on his mind lately. This song has "Beatles" written on it in letters of fire, as the best of post-Beatles Lennon also does. Chris Murphy, like his brother, is already a successful professional musician and does not need to be in this show, much less win it.
Jess Mauboy, who is wearing amazing shoes, screws up her key change. Holden doesn't mention it, Marcia never gives any feedback of specificity and substance anyway, and Sandilands probably doesn't know what a key change is. [9 pm update: cruelly, they pick this painful moment to show at the end as a so-called highlight. If you thought there was something audibly painfully wrong there, it's that Jess was singing in a different key from the dozens of musicians behind her.]
Here comes the Irish dude, who has a lot of ground to make up after last week.
8.31 pm
Irish Dude sings Wicked Game and is completely stunning, revealing among other things with his breathtaking a cappella opening that he has perfect pitch. He (with Reigan) has one of the two best voices, musically speaking, to make it to the top 12 -- Jess and Lavina are freaks, vocally speaking, but not totally in control.
This Chris Isaak song is so cool that the audience actually claps in time and on the backbeat. It is as if the song has forced them not to be tone-deaf dags in spite of themselves.
Now that Damien has delivered one of the great Idol performances, he will probably get voted out tomorrow night.
8.45
I'm in the camp that thinks Ickle Princess Lisa is, in fact, gorgeous, and I'd far rather listen to her voice than to the horrible melismatic yowling of the so-called divas (!). She's an okay guitarist and I find the vulnerability and openness hypnotising so I'm with Holden on this one. Also, I thought the clothes were perfect.
But does anyone know what language she's speaking when she talks?
8.51
I can hear from here that Ricky Muscat is the weak point in this group as currently constituted. But we already knew that.
8.55 However, the Holden/Sandilands trashing was unnecessary.
I think Dean will win. Which will be boring.
I have a deadline first thing in the morning, and there are an awful lot of unsavoury things I will do in the name of avoidance behaviour. Hence the Idolblogging. I mean, really.
8 comments:
I am not with you on the Irish dude nor on Chris Murphy...it struck me as a bit feeble that he sang a PMc song when Courtney also sang one - (My Love?) But yes, Dean will win and that is so, so boring.
I take it you mean you think Irish Dude did not redeem himself, rather than that he wasn't that bad to start with ... Of course he can't and shouldn't win, I didn't mean that, God forbid -- but he has got a great voice, and I thought he did a good job with that song. I haven't been watching it religiously, so may not yet be as terminally off-put by his non-coolth as many have become. I find it helps if you shut your eyes.
I don't remember Courtney much -- what an excellent memory you have. I do like that McCartney song (last night's, I mean), musically v. interesting and difficult to sing -- I thought he did a good job with it. (Again, so not an Idol winner though.)
I'm old enough to be their mother so I tend to judge them not as packages, as one does one's peers, but rather off a checklist (good singer, crap clothes, moves well, my god what has he got in his hair, etc).
I thought Damien's performance was haunting, the best of the night. But agree that he will probably get voted out.
Lisa has tried my patience. Her performance last night couldn't redeem the cumulative lameness of the past few weeks. I think she has a good voice -- in its genre -- there's just something lazy (or maybe shy and awkward) about her performances.
I actually think that some strange homo-erotic countertransference is going on between Dean and Mark Holden (similar to wot used to happen when certain male postgrad gave papers in the staff seminar), and that this is what the Hair is about. either that, or they're using the same stylist at the moment.
At least Bobby got out of the Andy Pandy suit.
Don't like Lisa. Voice very annoying in Kasey Higgens-esque fashion.
Elsewhere you're right about the hair and "Deano" / Mark Holden ... Holden looks to me like he's been instructing his stylist to do his hair like Dean's, whose hair is actually done to the same template used on Andrew G's. A similar similarity is emerging between Sandilands's and Ricky's.
The Irish dude really sounded pretty woeful to me, it was that thing where when a person sings a song very much in the manner of the famous voice associated with that song your ear is irresistibly drawn to the discrepancies. And to top it off he kept closing his eyes as if overcome with emotion by the sound of his own singing.
I am with you on the clapping. I started talking to the tv 'what's with the clapping? you're ruining it.'
I didn't like Damien's version of Wicked Game. Maybe because the mellifluous tones of Chris Isaak's voice just infuse that song with so much loss, that I couldn't make the adjustment to the higher register of Damien's.
Is it too wierd to say that he took the American-ness out of it as well, which seems like such a part of that song too?
I think it's a case of a lazy stylist - short hair done like Kyle, long hair done like Mark, Chris and Bobby go in the too hard basket.
Mindy, that is totally convincing.
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