Idol Chatter & Voice Views

American Idol judges Luke Bryan and Katy Perry during Season 19 Hollywood Week

American Idol’s first Hollywood Week episode confirmed one thing for certain. The show rounded up a talented and diverse group of artists for Season 19.

Sunday night featured the genre challenge performances. Contestants were split up by genre, selected a song to perform, then either advanced to Monday’s duet round or were eliminated from the show.

Those eliminated included lots of familiar names from the audition round, but no real surprises.

Among the Hollywood Week casualties were Ammon Olayan, part of a brother-sister duo; country-singing beauty Cameron McGhar, shy Moly Maid Christian McGuckian; and quirky Erika Perry, who was desperately seeking a cowboy.

Also eliminated: Celeste Butler, DJ Johnson, Yurisbel, James Perdue, Vahhley, Brianna Collichio and Tryzdin Grubbs, all of whom had been featured in the audition episodes.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Sunday’s show featured several outstanding performances. The only shame is that we only heard a tiny snippet of most of those performances.

Among my favorites —

Best of the Night: Idol gave Willie Spence the pimp spot, and he was impressive. But my nod would go to Chayce Beckham, the country singer sans boots who showed off a wonderful combination of grit and rasp covering Tyler Childers’ “Hard Times.” If he was on The Voice, I’d declare him the winner right now.

They weren’t flash in the pans: My two favorite female performances came from two of the least experienced performers — Cassandra Coleman (what passion on Ingrid’s “Dynamite”) and Mary Jo Young (what a tone on Harry Styles’ “Falling).

He’s ready for this: He will probably be a bit too country for some fans, but Alex Miller seems to be the perfect combination of experience, confidence, character and talent.

The fabulous 15s: That would be Ava August and Laila Mach, both of whom excelled among the pop singers, and Casey Bishop, who again showed off a big voice among the rockers. Finding three 15-year-old females with this much talent — that’s almost an embarrassment of riches.

The surprises: Yale student Xavier Washington turned in a brilliant cover of “Gravity.” We’d seen him just briefly in an audition episode. And I figured Claudia Conway got a golden ticket because of her family’s political drama. But she was strong on a cover of “River” by Bishop Briggs.

Also worth noting: Liahona Olayan was fun and sassy on a cover of Meghan Trainor’s “No Excuses.” And singer-songwriter Murphy impressed me every bit as much in Hollywood as he did during the auditions, which was a great deal.

The disappointments: Not performances, but the fact that we didn’t hear from Madison Watkins, Alanis Sophia, Alyssa Wray or Ronda Felton, ladies who were oh, so impressive in the audition episodes.

Others who advanced: Andrea Valles, Drake McCain, Caleb Kennedy, Cecil Ray, Anthony Guzman, Grace Kinstler, Hunter Metts, Graham DeFranco, Colin Jamieson, Wyatt Pike, Beane, Althea Grace.