American Idol - Ellen Gets It On With Matt Giraud
I just watched Matt Giraud’s appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, and I have to say, when he sang Let’s Get It On on the show, I loved it. When I heard his studio recording of it, I loved it even more, and watching him sing it on Ellen, i love it even more than that. Somehow it’s even better than the other two times.
Maybe Matt was too caught up worrying about what the audience and judges would think when he was on American Idol or something, as here on Ellen, singing the song, he seems so much more freer and natural. He seems …. himself.
I don’t just mean when Matt’s singing the song, either. I mean throughout the whole appearance. He was so personable. Granted, he’s used to performing and interacting due to his dueling piano gig, but his story about meeting Jamie Foxx was funny and natural, and the way he interacted with Ellen climbing on the piano, he wasn’t taken aback or anything. He just seemed like he was rolling with it and having fun.
American Idol - Not So Surprising Bottom 3, Considering
Some American Idol fans may have been shocked by tonight’s final three results, but once you consider the talent that was standing up there on that stage looking over the top five, and the kind of night everyone had, it really wasn’t that surprising. It was definitely a wakeup call for many fans with Chris Daughtry on many minds.
Everyone expected Matt to be in the bottom three, except Simon Cowell and me, it seems. Well, I knew he had a good chance for being there, but I also thought he had a good week. Unfortunately, everyone had a good week. The judges were split over Matt in his critiques, so it really wasn’t too shocking.
Kris Allen being in the bottom three was a surprise. Despite the fact that Simon took crap from Ryan Seacrest, and himself for that matter, he didn’t call it all wrong this week. He didn’t think Kris had the confidence with his performance, and it seems the fans didn’t either, as they put him in the bottom three. Last week, I was thinking we’d see Kris in the final two because of his steady rise in momentum.
American Idol - Handicapping the Final 7
There’s some Idols that need to be worried next week, and others that don’t. As Simon told us, not only does the Save being used mean two people are going to be voted out next week, but it’s also disco week. That’ll be helpful for some and really hurtful to others. Basically, if you’ve been in the bottom three before, you better bring your A game next Tuesday.
Adam Lambert. This guy has enough going for him now he is definitely sailing to the final three, if not the final two. However, I hesitate to say that, as we all thought that about Chris Daughtry. As much as he loves the whole glam thing and loves to dress up and be outlandish, that has disco written all over it. He likes to do techno-pop, and that’ll work well with that genre. The judges always love him, and he has the fan support. He only needs to watch out for people to stop voting for him in order to save other people, but I don’t think he needs to worry about that until what should be renamed Christ Daughtry and Tamyra Gray week.
American Idol - Saved!
After wondering for the past five weeks how this Save of the judges was going to work and who they would deem worthy, we had our answer tonight. Matt Giraud was worthy of being saved. At the beginning of the finals, I thought he would be saved easily, but the past few weeks, I wasn’t so sure if the judges would feel that way anymore.
Matt has some versatility in that he can sing both R&B and rock, but the judges never liked him singing rock. Personally, I always like him every week, not necessarily my favorite every week, but I always like him. And downloading the songs off iTunes (see the link at the right), on the weeks where the songs don’t seem to work so well live, they always do when recorded.
Yet, my personal feelings aside, Matt still ended up in the bottom tonight with Anoop Desai and Lil Rounds. Once Anoop was saved, and it was just Lil and Matt together on those weirdly-shaped stools, Simon indicated there was one person he would consider saving, and that person would be surprised. I figured the biggest surprise to be saved would be Lil after not just her performance the night before, but the words she exchanged with Simon after her critique. I thought at this point if Matt was in the bottom two, he was a goner.
American Idol - You Can’t Fool Me, Seacrest!
Ryan Seacrest has become masterful at surprising us with the results with the big fake outs. However, we’ve seen it all at this point. There really wasn’t anything surprising tonight. The bottom three was predictable to a certain extent, and when that happens, Ryan always tries to really fake us out. Didn’t happen. Didn’t fall for it.
They started out with the final nine gag several seasons ago. He would separate them into three groups and have us guess which one was the bottom three. It worked great the year Fantasia Barrino, Jennifer Hudson, and LaToya London were all in the bottom three. No one would have guessed that. Yet, it’s hard for them to pull something like that with an obvious bottom three.
There was no way that Kris Allen, Megan Joy, and Matt Giraud were all going to be final three. Megan and Matt maybe, but not Kris. There was no way Adam Lambert, Allison Iraheta, and Lil Rounds were all going to be bottom three. Allison perhaps as she’d been there before and maybe Lil, but Adam being bottom three would be quite the shocker. There was no way Scott MacIntyre, Danny Gokey, and Anoop Desai were going to be the bottom three. Scott and Anoop perhaps, but not Danny. I knew something else was afoot than “one of these groups is your bottom three.”
American Idol - Performance Order Snaps at the Top 10
It’s the second week in a row of perplexing results on American Idol. Allison Iraheta has been burning up the stage, and Matt Giraud has been building in popularity after a great start. Since the final 13, Allison has been the only consistently good female, and Matt has been one of the top males. So how do those two both end up in the bottom three the past few weeks? Is it performance order?
Let’s examine the bottom three/four the past three weeks. The bottom four the first week of finals were Jasmine Murray, Anoop Desai, Jorge Nunez, and Megan Joy. They sang in the positions of fifth, eighth, ninth, and tenth, respectively. These folks couldn’t have been more mired in the middle, and the contestants in the fifth and ninth place went home.
The following week, we had a bottom three of Michael Sarver, Allison Iraheta, and Alexis Grace. They sang in the positions of first, second and seventh, it came down to the people in first and seventh, and the person in the seventh position went home. It seems the people that performed in the beginning were forgotten about, and then the person that was mired in the middle again went home.
American Idol - Motown Update
Reports have been coming in throughout the day of the top 10 on American Idol traveling to Detroit. With the theme of Motown next week, they traveled to the birth of Motown, Hitsville USA, in Detroit and met up with Berry Gordy, Jr. and Smokey Robinson who will act as this week’s mentors.
Hitsville USA is quite an amazing place. It was just a little storefront that Gordy used to begin Motown, starting it from scratch in 1959. I read his autobiography several years ago, and it was a fascinating read, as he recalled all the people that had passed through those doors and became stars.
The only two Idols to not make the trip to Detroit are Megan Joy and Michael Sarver, who are now both sick, and too sick to travel at that. I’m not sure how Michael got sick now, and if he ended up catching Megan’s flu, but he has to be thinking his luck has to improve after this, after nearly getting voted off, then catching a bad flu preempting him from leaving LA to meet up with such legends as Gordy and Robinson. I’m guessing she’s still pulling her Phoebe routine, and is probably licking Michael’s drinking glasses trying to remain sick in order to keep helping out her performances.
Matt Giraud was even more happy to travel to Detroit, being a Michigan native. How cool would it be to leave the state as a dueling piano player from a club and return an American Idol?
It’s kind of funny watching the video, as with six guys and just two girls traveling, it just seems very testosterone heavy. Now it’s time to start guessing. Which Motown songs do you think we’ll hear next week?
Photo courtesy of Fox
For more information on American Idol, see Reality Shack, SirLinksalot: American Idol and American Idol Headlines.
American Idol Early Merchandising
Into our eighth season of American Idol now, it’s no surprise to any of us that American Idol is more about the business side of the music business than the artistic side. That’s why they do a pretty good job of shutting down anything that cuts them out of the money to be made. They shut down the websites that were sharing MP3s of the songs on the show a few years back, and shortly after started selling the music themselves on iTunes. The word came down this year that they’d cracking down on videos posted to youtube of the performances, but here’s one. If you click on it and it’s been removed, thank Idol.
Elliott Yamin - Fight For Love
Just as Simon Cowell is telling Matt Giraud on this season of American Idol that he likes him because he reminds him of Elliott Yamin, the real Elliott Yamin is getting to release another album. His second album, Fight For Love is due out May 5 of this year, but you don’t have to wait that long to hear the title track.
It’s a little like techno/R&B,and just listening to this, I don’t see the comparison Simon made at atll. Okay, I didn’t see the comparison when it was originally made either, but now I really don’t. Listen for yourself and decide. I think the two artists have distinctly different styles.
fight for love - elliott yamin
Photo courtesy of ew.com