SPOILERS for West Coast:
Have I mentioned I dislike country. I'll try not to let it color my opinions of the singing.
1. Melinda: LOL, her story about the fan was hilarious. She seems to be going for a younger style today. It didn't show off her voice as well as the songs that Simon says are "too old," but she still sang wonderfully, and again, I enjoyed seeing her have fun.
2. Jordin: Hated the song, didn't like the dress, but judging her performance, Jordin definitely "brought it." She showed she can definitely show emotion in her performances, belt out parts without yelling, and just plain sing beautifully.
3. Phil: I thought this was pretty good. Agree with the judges that he showed some personality. If I listened to country, this would be a performance I would pay attention to, unlike his previous performances which were good vocally, but uninteresting.
4. Blake: I just wasn't into this song at all. Blake was good vocally, but the performance as a whole wasn't exciting.
5. Chris: Carrie Underwood followed by Rascal Flatts <groans> Wow, he countrified his voice pretty well. That said, this was a pretty solid performance, though I wasn't sure the fiddle wasn't off-key at a point or two... coulda been him, but I think it was the fiddle, or just some disharmony in the song itself. I wondered if the judges' problem with the "nasal" singing was related to the twang he added, but it might just be Chris (I definitely have heard people describe him as "nasal" before). My cynical self wonders how sincerely he felt the need to mention VT, or if it was an attempt to promote a good image (after all, everyone who had one mention the "personal/sympathy vote" type things they had last week, and I don't think Chris has one). Actually, I think he is from Virginia and had friends there, and I'm sure that made this performance hard, but he still kinda seemed to be using the situation to say, "This is why I did bad, so feel sorry for me."
6. LaKisha: Oh, that's "Jesus take the Wheel." Gutsy to do a previous AI's song. I had trouble understanding the middle, and the dancing was strange, since it seemed so sad at the beginning. Don't like the song at all, even for a country song, but Randy said it had some pitch problems so maybe that was the problem. Disappointed with LaKisha's performances the last couple of weeks, but I hope she's not left behind because of Sanjaya.
7. Sanjaya: Thank goodness AI classifies Bonnie Raitt as country. And an appropriate title for Sanjaya. He's gone back to his Justin Guarini hair though. We're back to the same old Sanjaya kind of performance, I think. Paula totally called Sanjaya on the "thriving on" the VFTW stuff. And Simon finally alluded to the fact that it's all so stupid.
Weird timing from Simon on the VT mention..., unless Blake was somehow affected personally. Would have been better at the beginning or before/after a break instead of as a tag onto Blake's commentary.
Who should go: Sanjaya
Who might go instead: LaKisha, possibly Chris
Bad song for Lakisha, and she did a bad job of it!
(Or...something like that....can't remember how they do it exactly but I know they wanted to make Bo choose and he wouldn't.) Anyway. They better not do that tonight.
I think you're right, I think it was George Huff.
