Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Well, chalk that up as another very odd results show on American Idol.

You know things were going to be strange the moment Lady Gaga was announced as a performer on Frank Sinatra Week.

I mean, we have the Idols decked out in classy black and white outfits singing songs of Sinatra.

Later, we have Harry Connick Jr., dressed to the nines singing one of his songs, backed by an orchestra.

In the middle of all this, we have Lady Gaga strutting and rolling around the stage in a partly transparent outfit and a black veil, with a bunch of
male dancers gyrating around her.

Hey, I loved the Gaga performance. It’s about the only thing that kept me awake through a results show that seemed more like two hours than one, it had so much filler.

But Gaga didn’t fit.

And Idol missed the boat again. Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard are embarking on a tour in July during which they’ll be singing classic songs.
Wednesday would have been a wonderful night to invite them back to the show.

It might have saved us from one of those group numbers.

But I digress. Last night was a results show, which meant we said so long to an Idol contestant.

Surprisingly, Casey James hangs around for another week. Not surprisingly, that means Aaron Kelly heads home.

The teen from Sonestown, Pa., handled himself with class throughout the competition. No doubt, he’s a gentleman to the core, and he bowed out with dignity Wednesday night.

But I’m still a little baffled at how he hung around this long. I mean, seriously folks, name a memorable Aaron Kelly performance from the
finals.

I rated his week one performance of “Angie” on Rolling Stones Week as his best — a B+ and the second best that week, according to my song-by-song grades.

The rest of his performances were just OK, so I never considered him a legitimate contender for the Idol crown.

The recap:

Deserved his fate: Aaron, for all the reasons mentioned above. But fear not. If Idol does one thing well, it lands recording deals for artists who go on the show and sing country music. It’s worked, at least for one album, for everone from Josh Gracin to Kellie Pickler to Kristy Lee Cook. It’ll work for Aaron because he sings country music very well.

Stock rising: For a reason I still haven’t figured out, the judges loved Lee’s performance Tuesday night, and we were reminded of it ad nauseam during Wednesday’s results show. Personally, I thought it was one of Lee’s weakest vocals all season. But I also think he’s the
contestant most deserving to stand beside Crystal Bowersox in this year’s finals.

Stock sinking: MamaSox, through absolutely no fault of her own. Her vocal was impeccable Tuesday, easily the best of the night even though I’m sure the Sinatra theme jolted her out of her comfort zone. Yet she got lukewarm reviews from the judges. Hey, Randy, Ellen, Kara and Simon, you might want to wake up. On what’s been a woefully uninspiring season of Idol, you’ve discovered one true talent. Celebrate your
discovery. They’ve been few and far between in season nine.

Very, very lucky: Casey James, of course. By all rights, he should have headed home Wednesday after a disastrous Sinatra Week performance. Love what he said backstage: “Don’t take the guitar away from me again. We saw how that goes.”

On the bubble: Big Mike has landed in the bottom three on three occasions, including two weeks in a row. This week, he wound up in the bottom two despite a performance the judges raved over.

And, so we’re down to four. Just three Idol performance shows left.

Next week, we get songs of the cinema, with a songbook that will hopefully be a wee bit more current than this week’s.

And we get Jamie Foxx as a mentor.

Check back tomorrow for photos from tonight’s show, as well as an exit interview with Aaron Kelly.