Here it is, our long journey through auditions is finally at its end. Now the real fun can get underway as we’ll get to see crying, backstabbing and betrayal in Hollywood Week.
Sadly, that’s still a week away, but there was still some fun stuff to wrap up this final night of tryouts.
THE THREE BEST AUDITIONS
Adanna
This is the girl who led off the show to a smiling group of judges who the producers introduced to us with their twitter handles. Somehow, I think this is the decline of Western Civilization, or maybe I’m just the world’s oldest thirty-year-old. It’s a toss-up.
Adanna sang “You and I”, the underrated tune from Ms. Lady Gaga. And she really sang it. She didn’t make her audition a showcase for crazy belting or runs. Instead, she turned the song into a bit of an emotional crescendo as she told a story with both her emotions tied into the lyrics, but also how she built her vocals as the song progressed.
I don’t often say this about singers under the age of eighteen, but Adanna really really knows what she’s doing.
Rocky Peter
This is the guy from Africa who says that all things are now possible because he is an American Citizen.
I say all things are possible when you’re loaded with enough talent that he could go out and lend some to half the stadium waiting to audition and still have more than enough left over to get through to Hollywood Week and probably into the top ten.
He gets to keep it all though, and it’s going to be a lot of trouble for the rest of the contestants. He sang an original song that’s just stunning in its beauty. Not just his voice, but in the originality of every aspect of the song and how well-crafted his performance was. This guy is a true artist and I can’t wait to see him progress on the show.
Tyanna
This is the girl who looked like Janelle Monae’s little sister, right down to the bow tie and crazy hair. She’s not quite Monae in terms of talent, but yet might be an operative word with which to end that sentence as she did show flashes of somebody who could become that level of an artist somewhere down the road.
As with most youngsters, she’s just not quite all the way there yet. She showed some real pitch problems in her performance, but they weren’t totally glaring. She made up for that by saying she’s working on her pitch and is aware of her faults, but the faults are still there.
Just one more kid that I wish would wait until she was ready for the show, but I think she’s pretty good as is.
THE THREE WORST AUDITIONS
Christopher
This was the guy who did his stadium audition in front of…who was that? Yes it was! Carly Smithson of ‘American Idol’ Season 7. Good to see her back in the ‘Idol’ realm if only for a brief clip.
Christopher is basically an idiot. He played an acoustic guitar like it was a flying V. Not just in the way that he basically abused the guitar to the point that it seemed like he had a personal vendetta against the pickguard, but also that he held it like he was doing an action shot for the Jackson Guitars catalog. That’s not really how you’re meant to play an acoustic, Christopher.
Guitar playing wasn’t his worst offense though. His singing didn’t really fit any genre. An insane grunt to no melody in particular that immediately sounded like something you wanted him to stop for both his and everybody else’s sakes. Christopher claimed he was too hard rock, but I tend to agree with Jennifer when she said, simply, “You just have no damn chance.”
Daniel
This was the kid who claimed he was fifteen, but I’m pretty sure was actually a small child from a Norman Rockwell painting come to life in the worst Disney movie script pitch ever. He claimed to be a multi-instrumentalist and singer, but only one of those is true: he actually has some decent chops on both the piano and the guitar.
His issue is that he appears to be going through puberty. I mean, the kid says he’s fifteen, but he definitely has the physical maturity of a thirteen-year-old and it totally manifested in the fact that his voice kept breaking like the teenager on ‘The Simpsons’ every time he tried to reach for a note.
Daniel is the classic example of why a kid like him should not come on ‘American Idol’ when he’s fifteen. Wait a couple years! The kid obviously has talent, but, in his case in particular, he’s just not ready yet to be in a singing competition. For crissakes, he hasn’t finished getting over his voice cracking yet! Wait at least until that happens.
Of course in super-soft judge world he moves on, but they should have done him a favor and told him to come back in a couple years.
Harry
This is the guy who’s sold nearly 30 million albums worldwide and judges the quality of singers on a nationally televised program. He attempted to sing “Chandelier” by Sia in a caterwauling mess that found him on his knees like Tim Tebow and screeching loud enough to make the next contestant wonder what all the noise was on her way in.
It was definitely the funniest moment from Harry so far this season, and there have been plenty. I’m sure we’ll cover more of those once the show goes live.
But for now, on to Hollywood Week!