Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Here we go. The Idols will be singing songs from the years of their birth tonight.

That pretty much means it will be ’80s night on Idol. The lone exception is Allison Iraheta from the birth class of 1992.

Three of our remaining finalists — Kris Allen, Scott MacIntyre and Matt Giraud — were born in 1985.

That was the year of Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” Starship’s “We Built This City.”

Here’s betting none of the three sing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” Or dare to try Prince’s “Raspberry Beret.”

No time for fooling around tonight because it’s only a one-hour show.

Feel free to chime in if you don’t like what you read. I’ll post your comments as soon as I can.

Danny Gokey is already singing a version of “Stand By Me,” and so far he’s sounding more like Micky Mouse than Danny Gokey. Now the tempo has picked up. And he’s suddenly belting out “Stand By Me,” which is hardly a belt-it-out sort of song. Sorry, but I think that might be Danny’s weakest performance in a while. But, once again the judges are gaga over Gokey, for whatever reason. Personally, I didn’t like that version of the song at all. Grade: C

Kris Allen is going to sing “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.” He’s on guitar again, and he’s going more up-tempo tonight. But for some reason they’ve injected jazz into the Don Henley song, and I can’t say I like this arrangement very much. Simon is calling it boring, which it wasn’t. It was just a rather strange version of a really good song. Randy Jackson just made a much better point. The arrangement was so different, folks paid more attention to it than Kris’ singing. Still liked it a little better than Danny’s performance. Grade B-

Lil Rounds is taking on Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It.” She has dressed the part. Much better than that god-awful blue dress she was wearing last week. Problem is, she can’t sing this song nearly as well as Tina Turner, and she really didn’t do anything different with it. So that comes off as a pale imitation of the original. Simon just made an excellent point: It came across as a third- or fourth-rate Tina Turner. Grade: C-

Anoop Desai is, believe it or not, going to sing a Cyndi Lauper song, “True Colors.”
Well, he changed it up, slowed it down, managed to keep it from being a disaster, which I thought it had the potential to be. But I’m not sure if it was nearly as “magical” as Paula thought. It was much better than his recent performances. So I guess I’d rather hear Anoop sing Cyndi Lauper than Usher. Grade: B.

Scott MacIntyre is singing “Search Is Over.” He’s out from behind the piano, standing center stage with a guitar and missing an awful lot of notes from what I can tell. Look, here’s the deal, it’s time for Scott to go. That’s a weaker performance than his recent efforts, and they were only mediocre. Scott said that was his “punk side coming out.” Simon just called the song “horrible” and “atrocious” and said the guitar wasn’t much better. Grade: F

Allison Iraheta is singing “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” Wow. Finally. One of these finalists can sing! Great! Easily, easily, easily the best performance of the night. Spot on. And a great time for Allison to come through with a strong performance, after winding up in the bottom three twice in recent weeks. Grade: A-

Matt Giraud is singing Stevie Wonder’s “Part-Time Lover.” That got rave reviews from the judges. Did they hear the screech? Another round of comments from the judges that sort of baffles me. But I gotta admit, I’m just not a big fan of Mr. Giraud. Grade: B-

Hey, I was right about at least one thing tonight. None of the ’85s sang “Like a Virgin” or “Raspberry Beret.”

Adam Lambert closes the night. Singing “Mad World” by Tears for Fears. An absolutely awesome vocal. The judges are running out of time, and Simon just gave Adam Lambert a standing ovation. Has that ever happened before? I mean, this guy is on one level; the rest of this year’s finalists are on another. Grade: A