American Idol Season 12 - Top 2 Perform

Hello Idol fans and welcome to season finale week!  It's been a rough year ratings-wise (and maybe talent-wise) for Idol.  It's tough to tell how much juice the show has left in its engine.  But, we will get yet another revamp next year with likely an ENTIRE new panel of judges.  But, that's future talk.  For this season, we ended up with the most talented 2 contestants of the top 10 and it led to a fairly entertaining performance night.  I think we all probably know who should win this season of American Idol.  I'm not so sure America will vote that way or not.  But, regardless of who wins the show will  have a good representative for the season 12 crown.  Let's dive into the recap!

American Idol: Season 12 Top 3 Perform

Hello fellow American Idol fans.  As mentioned, I'm out of town this weekend.  I'm on 2 hours of sleep but I did just watch idol, so I wanted to give some quick thoughts.  This won't be a full recap, but here goes nothing!

American Idol: Season 12 Top 4 Perform (again)

Hello Idol fans!  Another cringe-inducing 2 hour spectacle of American Idol aired last night.  Most of the performances were decent, but everything that happened before and after each performance was a little questionable!  For example, I believe Mariah not so subtlety accused Miss Minaj of being unable to sing.  And then, there's always Randy.  And of course, instead of Fox giving us a half hour of our lives back, they let critiques go on for hours and tortured us with that final girls group performance.  But, that's a day in the life of watching American Idol.  So, let's just stick to what we do best.  Critiquing what's meant to be critiqued and figuring out to the best of our ability who America is sending packing!  This week will be a little tricky since we have to factor in last week's results as well.  But, I'm up for the challenge as always!  The theme was Then (Standards) and Now (2013 Songs), of course based on the order of the performances it probably should have been Now and Then!  Harry Connick Jr. provided very good mentoring as always that was harshly critiqued by the judges.  Good times.  Let's get into the recap!

American Idol: Season 12 Top 4 Perform

Hello American Idol fans and welcome back for another round of the all girls show!  Tonight was a pretty rough night all around.  It was pretty apparent what the judges were either doing on their own or were forced by the producers to do.  They clearly put their support behind 2 particular contestants and Jimmy called them out on it.  That said, one of those contestants probably deserved the praise more than  the other.  It's going to be an interesting results night.  Let's preface with this though.  Not sure if you noticed but we're still in April and the finale is slated for May 16th.  If you do the math, we're going to run out of contestants a week too early, due to the save not being used.  Have no fear, the producers have said they always had a contingency plan if the save was not used.  The popular guess is that one of these weeks there will be no elimination and the votes will carry over and be tallied up with the next week's performances.   Ryan did mention a twist, so we'll see if that's what is going to happen.

That could be why the judges decided to be so harsh to the former top 2 contestants.  To encourage them to pick better songs next week because they'll all be here next week.  We'll see what happens.  But, let's treat this week as if someone is going home and then we'll deal with the results after they happen!

The themes?  Contestant's choice was the first one.  The 2nd theme was decided on by fans and it was One Hit Wonders.  Sounded like an awesome category until the contestants cheated!  There is no way that some of those songs should have been eligible to be picked.  And they shouldn't have been picked anyway!  But we'll get there.  Let's dive in.

American Idol: Season 12 - Top 5 Perform

Welcome American Idol fans!  Ok, no more distractions.  All of the boys, talented and otherwise are gone.  A girl shall win American Idol again (even if the producers rigged the top 10 to make it happen this year).  Based on tonight's performances, my opinions on the remaining contestants haven't changed much.  Of course, you could almost predict when the judges would be giving their standing O's, even if they were undeserved.  But hey, they "get it" and we don't.  Anyway, the themes tonight were "Songs ftom the Year They were Born" and for the first time possible, "DIVAS NIGHT".   Let's do this!

American Idol: Season 12 - Top 6 Perform

Hello Idol fans!  Definitely an interesting episode last night.  We got to see the Idol production team go into desperation mode when it comes to one of their out of control contestants.  And we got to see a very talented contestant soar into a new stratosphere.  I think it's pretty obvious at a high level how tonight will play out, but we'll still go through the motions of recapping Burt Bacharach/Songs You wish You Wrote night.  Here we go!

American Idol: Season 12 Top 7 Perform

Hello Idol fans.  Welcome to "Rock" week.  Are we really at a time in the age of music where we have to retrospectively look at Rock Music as a whole?  That's pretty depressing, isn't it?  But, it definitely is nowhere to be seen in the pop landscape.  The sad thing is, some of the contestants didn't even know some of these songs.  Not, Burnell though.  He "been done heard" that before!  UGH.   What is wrong with these kids today!?!  Anyway, the night overall was another snoozer for me.  Nothing was over the top impressive.  I think the problem I'm starting to realize is that these kids just aren't as talented as last year's crop.  But, last year was probably the most talented season ever with season 5 coming in a close 2nd (granted, the most talented CONTESTANTS ever came out of Season 1 and Season 4, but that doesn't surprise anyone that I think that).  So, they are gushing over performances this year that never would have cut it last year.  My opinion at least.  But, we have to change our scale and expectations to deal with the current crew.  So, let's do just that!

American Idol: Season 12 Top 8 Perform

Hello Idol watchers! Another year another Motown night....excuse me...."Music from Detroit" night!  Of course, the only reason to call it that was because a Madonna song was also performed.  Maybe I was in a foul or cynical mood last night, but I really didn't find any of the "competing performances" very good.  A lot of them were passable, but nothing stood out as phenomenal.  The girls had great group performances (one more than the other).  And, I have a feeling that something that happened during the group performances might have affected the voting last night.  It may be a risky move especially since I'm 2 for 2 right now, but risks must be taken when competing in the "no stakes Idol elimination picks" non-competition!  Anyway, let's go into our brief recap and see where we land.

American Idol: Season 12 Top 9 Perform

Hello Idol fans!  Another year, another Beatles night.  And each year we move further away from the 60s, the less people know about the Beatles.  That just scares me.  All of these songs that I've had memorized for years, these kids have never heard.  That said, they learned the songs and most sang them well.  So, it could be a drastically different results night than last week's.  But we'll see! Let's dive in.

American Idol: Season 12 - Top 10 Perform

Hello Idol fanatics!  Yep, I just cannot resist.  Once we get into the finals, I have to say something.  Of course, I did have a discussion post up for the first half of the season, and my comments started to creep into recap territory last week.  I will say that my time is very short these days, so my recaps will continue to be in the abbreviated fashion.  Believe me, I could go on and on about the ridiculousness that is Nicki Minaj.  (seriously, couldn't even make the show on time with the money they're paying her??  Nice hoodie by the way.  Oh and loved Keith smelling her drink after the breakfast critique.)  So let's just dive into the recap.

It took my wife and I halfway through the show to realize that the theme was "Songs that the former Idol winners have sung" (either on the show or recorded).  We were very perplexed by the song choices up until then!  Anyway, that being said, the big winner of the night was Kelly Clarkson as it should be!  That also being said, it's tough for me to judge fairly because I was comparing every performance to 1 of the most famous and successful 2 Idol winners.  Anyway, recap is after the jump!

American Idol: Season 12 Auditions, Hollywood and Maybe More!

Hello Idol Addicts!  Cannot believe we are at that time of year again for yet another run of this show.  The off season had me pretty convinced that I was not looking forward to it this year.  Nikki Minaj?? Seriously!?!?  Then, of course, the previews have me getting the itch again.  But, available time for writing recaps for this, let alone anything, is getting less and less each year.  With a toddler in the house, I can barely stay on top of "WATCHING" TV! (we had to give up X-Factor and The Voice so that we could use those 6 hours a week for other purposes!)  So, anyway, I will be watching Idol's premiere tonight and I will try to stay on top of it all season.  If all things work out, then maybe I'll still be able to recap the live performance shows.  I'll keep everyone updated with the situation in the comments section below.  We can use this comments section to discuss all the episodes of the show leading up to the live episodes and possibly beyond, if I don't get to those recaps. 

So, welcome back and hopefully I'll see you in the comments!