I actually had a lot of fun this week, although, I think several people who are usually good weren't as good. I enjoyed having Gloria Estefan & Santana songs from almost everyone. Here's my top-to-bottom eight, including the comments I made at the time of the performances. This is just for this week, not overall preference.
1. Blake: Man, I don't even like Marc Anthony, but I thought Blake did a great job on this song. It was an excellent choice for him.
2. Melinda: I thought it was great. Disagree with Simon (which is pretty rare for me), although I understand what he was saying about it being "too old" for her, but I thought previous performances of hers have done so much more than this one (truthfully, I think Melinda looks a lot older than she is. I thought the same about Taylor, and, no, it wasn't the gray hair, though that didn't help. Happily, I like Melinda better than Taylor.). Again, we got to see a different side of Melinda, and it didn't detract from the vocals at all.
3. Jordin: I thought it was good, but not stellar. I still like Jordin a lot, though.
4. Phil: I think he's a pretty good singer, but I'm not very into his performances. I can analyze his performance as being good, but if I was just listening to him on the radio, I'd probably ignore the song more often than not.
5. LaKisha: I've suddenly noticed in this song that she seems to have a lisp. Her "s"s come out as "sh"s. I think she did okay, but I liked Melinda's performance better. Here, I agreed with Simon about it not being a singer song. I think she had to worry too much about the dancing and showing she was having fun with it, but let her voice just do the technical stuff to get through it.
6. Chris: Sounded better in the clip. I think he changed it up just a little too much, especially in the beginning. It got better as he went along.
7. Sanjaya: Gets a couple of bonus points for doing something in Spanish (it puts him above Hayley, since they were pretty equal this week). Probably his best performance, but he's still got a little boy voice* that just doesn't compare in the contest. He began and ended well, though. Liked the look, too. Sanjaya just needs to do that and stop torturing us quite as much as he has been (I mean if he's sticking around anyway).
8. Hayley: If we're not going to get rid of Sanjaya, can we at least get rid of her? At least she didn't look as good this week (IMO), so maybe guys will stop voting with their eyes for her. Oops, maybe not (since Simon pointed out skimpy clothing, sigh).
*I swear I typed the "little boy voice" before Simon said the "sounds like a fourteen-year-old" thing.
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In retrospect, I decided that the reason I liked Sanjaya's look so much was that the hair style & facial hair made him look a LOT like someone I went to school with. I'm hoping that Hayley goes away this week, but maybe because she was actually really bad & Sanjaya wasn't horrible, VFTW will suggest voting for her this week (maybe that will even split their votes enough to make them both down at the bottom).
My roommate didn't see last night's performances, so I updated her on them. She said she felt bad for Sanjaya, considering the type of publicity he's been getting. But I was thinking about it, & it kind of convinced me that the "sweet boy" image that got him his initial (real, not VFTW) fan base has completely been lost now. He's grown more confident in front of the camera as this goes on, & is appearing cocky... to me, at least, which makes me believe his "thank you" to Simon last week was not ignorant of the meaning behind Simon's comment. And if he knows that he's not in the running because people think he's good, but rather because he's bad, if he really was the "sweet boy" he originally appeared to be, he'd step out of the running. In fact, if he was smart, he would have stepped out of the running earlier so that the judges wouldn't think less of him (even though it's not his fault why people vote for him), then reauditioned in a couple of years, when his voice has matured. That would have been the smart thing to do.
But anyway, still better than Hayley this week.
