Give Me Mo' Motown

I was pretty excited when they announced Motown for this week, and it did not disappoint. I'm glad they brought in Smokey Robinson, too. He was great in Season 2 as a guest judge and he was great again this season. We had another "typical" week on American Idol: a few predictable song choices, a few strange ones, and one fantastic performance that was untouchable this week. I noticed that both Randy and Paula are rubbing off on Kara--she had excited Randy-esque sentence fragments followed by incoherent ramblings all wrapped up in one. Welcome to this season, Kara! I'm also wondering where she learned to count--"one of the best performances of the night" is 8 words, not 6, but who cares in the end. Paula's crayon and coloring book routine was inspired, but it did give Simon something else to distract him from judging this week. What's with Randy's Urkel outfit? Anyway . . .

Matt Giraud: I loved his piano/vocal hybrid tonight, especially since it was on one of my favorite Marvin Gaye songs. This was a week very well suited to his style and he, of course, did well tonight.

Kris Allen: He made a great choice this week and it was fairly obvious that James Taylor has influenced Kris. He definitely put some of his own flavor on this one, though. The song itself is pretty simple musically, but he did well enough to justify his continuing presence on this show.

Scott MacIntyre: I wasn't overly enthused about his song choice since it's not one of my favorite songs, Motown or not. With that said, Scott had a solid night again. He showed he can handle an up-tempo song and not be swallowed up on that stage. It wasn't the best performance of the night, but it was good enough for now.

Megan Joy Corkrey: If I knew how to text message I'd probably have all kinds of abbreviations to share. I'm pretty sure I can get an "OMG!" from someone out there, though. Megan is a niche contestant, and her niche is not the stage of American Idol. She was out of tune the entire time and other than her (somewhat) likable quirkiness I'm having a tough time seeing why she's even included in the competition at this point. She should have been a Top 36, one-time-is-enough performer.

Anoop Desai: I can see what Simon was saying about him sleeping up there. His vocals were great, though. He really has a great range and his falsetto is usually right on. Let's see what Anoop can bring next time around.

Michael Sarver: Right now he's got to be thinking something like, "I'm so glad Megan's around this week." That way at least he gets one more chance to "have so much fun" up there. And Ryan, how do you spin "you"re a sincere guy, but you can't win this competition" and turn it into constructive criticism for the coming week?

Lil Rounds: I don't like this song at all, but I am now hungry for a flame-broiled Double Whopper with Cheese (and an order of onion rings). I was having flashbacks to Kimberly Locke and her "Heatwave" days. In the end, though, this was a really good performance for Lil. She could have picked a better song, but she still did a lot to stay this week.

Adam Lambert: Anything more than "awesome" seems unnecessary. What a great interpretation of a fantastic song. This just shows that Adam is a true musician, because to take songs each week and create such original interpretations (or draw from similarly unique ones) takes a real talent, like the talent we saw David Cook bring last year. And how does this dude sing such perfect falsetto? It's unreal. Plus, he gave washboard guy's mother a reason to scream at the TV set this week--"That's my boy! The one doing laundry up there!" Plus, I'd like to play the guitar like the most famous anonymous guitarist on national TV.

Danny Gokey: I feel sorry for Danny since he had to follow Adam. It's almost unfair this week, because Danny did so well again. Again, not one of my favorite songs, but he did well and really got into it up there. I especially liked the "wheels on the bus" move he pulled with the backup singers.

Allison Iraheta: She's definitely got it going on. If she can keep these kinds of performances coming she'll be tough to beat down the stretch. I remember Jordin Sparks getting a bit strained toward the end of her season so I worry Allison could easily strain her voice as well, but for now she's a serious force to be reckoned with.

BOTTOM THREE THIS WEEK: Michael Sarver, Megan Joy Corkrey, ??? (Cop out, I know, but I have no handle on where the voting loyalty is yet)

NO MO' SONGS AFTER MOTOWN: Megan Joy Corkrey