Sia, Shade, Great Singing – and Bumper Stickers

There were so many great performances tonight by the Idolists, Sia and David Cook. But I can’t get past the nerdy Idol staff guy whose 7th-grade crush on Katherine McPhee back in Season V led him to make bumper stickers with her name on them. But what do I know about these things? To me, life is too short to spend even five minutes watching the Hallmark Channel. And I did a Google search on romance books + bumper stickers and came up empty. Perhaps this guy’s move was so brilliant, nobody else has ever thought of it and I just can’t wrap my brain around it. Why not a mixtape of songs that make him think of her?

Speaking of mixtapes, since I know nothing about romance, let me get back in my lane and review the music. But first, let me invoke one of Ray’s Idol Rules: performances at this point in the competition are irrelevant. Interesting, no doubt. Inspiring at times. But irrelevant. Everybody who votes knows who they like. The actual performances don’t change their minds. So the winner has probably already been decided but we just don’t know it yet. It’s a frustrating but real aspect of Idol^[1].

But my job is to review those performances and give them a stamp of relevancy by comparing them to the competition the Idolists will experience once they get out of the Idol bubble and start competing in the real world.

This week’s songs certainly looked like they would give me much to muse about. I certainly had some strong reactions positively and negatively about this week’s song list. But I had forgotten about one of Idol’s Golden Rules: They who chooseth a song outside their strengths but performeth that song according to their strengths may be given power from on high to make miracles. Remember Adam Lambert singing Ring of Fire? Or Blake Lewis beat-boxing through Livin’ On a Prayer? And David Cook doing Chris Cornell’s moody, rock version of Bille Jean during Michael Jackson week? Each one of those out-of-their-genre moments produced epic Idol memories.

Tonight’s perceived mismatches of songs to singer produced a few such moments. To that end, I’ll also include my initial thoughts about the song choices with my performance reviews^[2].

American Rock Songs

La’P – Bon Jovi Wanted Dead or Alive. I was really looking forward to this and I was not disappointed. However, I was waiting for this song to arc to a BIG ending and she never took it that way. Still, her vocal had a ton of soul and feel, and it was a total performance – something I would really get off on if I was at a live show. B+

MacKenzie – Cheap Trick I Want You to Want Me. I was not looking forward to this. I hate the original and he did nothing to make me feel different about it. I actually hated his version more. C

Trent – Z.Z. Top Sharp Dressed Man. Like oil and water, I thought trying to mix Trent with Top was a blend that couldn’t happen. And, oh, was I ever wrong! This was an amazing arrangement of the aforementioned miracle-making variety. It was fun and I had written in my notes that it would be a great concert song before K-Urbs said that. A+-^[3]

Boy Band Dude – The Beach Boys God Only Knows. I was on the fence about the song choice. In some ways, the Beach Boys were both America’s first great boy band and first emo band and so this song could suit Dalton if he managed to reign in his (annoying) tendency to over-emote. Which he went and did. I guess I like singers who can create the emotion naturally in their voice and not have to act it out. It feels forced when that happens and that’s the way he happens to sing. This had way too much drama for my taste. C

Sonika – Patti Smith Group Because the Night. I liked that she wanted to go back to a dark, anthemic rock song to try to recapture the magic of Evanescence Bring Me to Life, which was a pleasant surprise for me. Sadly, as the Idolist eliminated this week, she never got to sing it.

Sia Songbook

My thoughts on the Idolists singing Sia were more general. Sia writes radio-friendly pop songs. Allow me to digress for a moment on that. To me that was the root of HCJ’s unfortunate shade at Sia regarding her advice to MacKenzie about going for “the high note” and saying how he hates it when Idol becomes like a skating competition where the audience just waits for the suspense of the big triple axel, i.e. the big note in a song. HCJ is an interpreter of songs and we’ve seen how much he wants Idolists to focus on lyrics. Sia is a great lyricist but she has freely admitted that her goal in the business – and by the business I mean the industry – is to get songs on the radio. Therefore, she knows exactly how to create moments in songs to grab a listener’s attention in such a way that they won’t change the station when they’re listening in their car.^[4] A well-placed vocal moment in a song really matters to her. And it should matter to the Idolists who are trying to become pop stars on the radio. And with all due respect, Sia and her songs have been all over the charts in recent years while HCJ has been sitting behind a table on Idol.

End of digression. The challenge with Idolists singing Sia is that she writes anthemic pop songs. And MacKenzie, Trent and BBD hardly fit the description of that type of singer. Sonika didn’t really have the personality for Sia-type songs. Only La’P – who apparently can sing everything – had a shot of succeeding with Sia’s songs. Or so I (wrongly) thought.

La’P – Elastic Heart. Simply beautiful. Like many Idol winners before her, La’P really has made the transition from singer to performer. A

MacKenzie – Titanium. This was way better than I expected. It was brave to put his own spin on a Sia song and it worked, especially with the high note. A-

Trent – Chandelier. Whoa. THIS was a MOMENT, boys and girls. A moment as stunning and captivating as anything La’P has done this year. With the right songs, Trent can really sing. This was so the right song. A+

Boy Band Dude – Bird Set Free. For me, this was BBD’s best performance of the year. It was tender, personal and mostly emotionally appropriate. A-

You’ll notice all A’s in the last round. The Idolists certainly deserved them but this also points to Sia’s brilliance as a songwriter that amateurs could perform these songs so effectively. “Good songs stay sung,” as Jackson Browne says. Indeed.

If performances did matter, Trent won the night with La’P finishing second. If there is justice, it will be the two of them in the Finale in two – just two? – weeks. They have consistently been the best all season and have shown the kind of growth as artists that the best Idol winners demonstrated in their seasons. Hopefully the voters agree.

[Correction] In a sign of increasing mental incompetency, my last blog entry contained two major errors. First, I referred to Billboard writer and eventual Atlantic Records partner Jerry Wexler as the famous songwriter Jerry Lieber. Secondly, I should have said that Wexler wished he had called R&B (rhythm and blues), “R&G”, i.e. rhythm and gospel, instead.

_________________________________________________

^[1] It’s actually worse on The Voice aka The Game Show With Singing. With their voting rules where top songs on iTunes get votes multiplied by 10 and votes are cumulative week to week, the person ahead in the first week often has a lead that can’t be made up by the other contestants. Talk about the irrelevancy of the performances.

^[2] A long-time and loyal reader asked. I’ll do almost anything for my long-time and loyal readers. Except make bumper stickers for them. Sorry, J.L.

^[3] I couldn’t decide between an A+ or an A so he gets something in between.

^[4] Yes, many of today’s popular songs are produced with that process of keeping you glued to the radio station in mind. Record executive LA Reid actually prefers to listen to artists’ demos in his car rather than in the recording studio.

Explore posts in the same categories: Performance