American Idol: Boy Zone

This was some episode, huh? The guys on American Idol were great (give or take a couple of hiccups), but let’s be honest: the night belonged to Big Mike. Michael Lynche sealed his fate when he closed the show with a fantastic version of “This Woman’s Work” and we bet Ellen DeGeneres is sorry she wasted her hug on Tim Urban. ‘Cause you can’t be running out of your seat all the time to give hugs, Ellen.

Lee Dewyze started the show singing an Owl City song (although really, isn’t Owl City just a guy who sings Postal Service songs?) Fortunately, Lee’s voice isn’t as grating as Adam Young or Ben Gibbard’s and he turned the mellow “Fireflies” into a more rocking version we liked. Lee went to a high school for bad kids, we just want him to do well, people.

We first want to beg Alex Lambert to cut his hair. PLEASE, ALEX! PLEEEASE. It is so hard to take your awesome voice seriously when you have such a terrible mullet. Lambert sang Ray LaMontagne’s “Trouble” and we thought it was the second best performances of the night, it’s just painful to listen to his mature, lovely voice while staring at his God-awful teen boy hair. Ellen DeGeneres, who two weeks ago likened Lambert to an unripe banana said that this week he’d gone mushy. Which, despite the way it sounds, is a good thing.

Tim Urban further bastardized Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” by singing what we thought was a terrible version. Ryan Seacrest introduced it as “the Jeff Buckley version”, but that made us feel even worse. Rest in peace, Jeff. Oh wait, you can’t because some guy with a worse haircut than Alex Lambert is tarnishing your good name. In a shocking move, Ellen was so moved by the song that she actually approached the stage to hug him and tell him how amazing he is. All the judges ate it up, which makes us very confused.

Poor Andrew Garcia can’t catch a break with the judges. He’s still just the “Straight Up” guy to them and everything he does pales in comparison. We liked his version of “Genie In A Bottle” - we actually like that he generally picks typically female songs to turn on their ear - and we think that he gives his arrangements a fun twist. Whether that makes him an artist or just a clever cover band leader, we’re not sure, but we like him and think he should stick around.

Aaron Kelly is one of our elimination picks for this week. His version of Lonestar’s “I’m Already There” was weak - in general, and by comparison to the other guy-testants. Kara got all literal with the songwriting, telling him that there’s no way he, at 16, could understand the perspective of the song which is about a man calling home to his kids, and fortunately Simon called her out on her “rubbish”. Exactly. Kara can take her “Method” singing and shove it in her cliche-loving pie hole.

Praise the Lord that Todrick Hall stuck to something he was good at this week - a song that’s predisposed to dramatics. Hall sang Queen’s “Somebody To Love” and regained some of the judges’ trust, although Simon, acknowledging his good voice, said it was “American Idol doing the Broadway story of Queen”. If he ends up going back to Broadway (remember, he was in The Color Purple with Fantasia), we’ll still be happy for him, but we’d like to see him stick around.

Finally, a ginormous eff you to Kara DioGuardi for taking Michael Lynche’s moment and crying all over it. We’re starting to think this woman is pathological in her desire to make things all about herself. Lynche sang the song of the night, “This Woman’s Work” (also, eff everyone at Idol for not even mentioning Kate Bush who wrote the song) and blew everyone away. But then Kara had to go an explain just how much the song meant to her as a barren, childless woman (ok, we made up “barren”).  Lynche made everyone else’s competent singing sound completely amateur.

Tomorrow night we’ll see some results. See ya, Aaron Kelly and Paige Miles.