‘American Idol’ top 6 spoilers: An odd theme, plus Scotty McCreery, Kelly Clarkson

Do you want some good news first and foremost from next week’s “American Idol”? Scotty McCreery and Kelly Clarkson are each going to be back on the show in order to perform some new music. Now, we’ll turn to the bad news: what in the world is Nigel Lythgoe thinking right now when it comes to themes?

We really wish we were joking here, but one half of the top 6 theme for next week is the songbook of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Basically, these songs are so dated that Randy Jackson may be the only on-camera personality who actually remembers some of these songs coming out. We’re not necessarily trying to slam “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “What the World Needs Now is Love,” since they are good songs; however, don’t you want people under the age of 50 watching your show? Don’t you want the contestants to connect to them? You know that Lazaro Arbos will have never of any of these. This is one of the reasons why the show is lagging behind “The Voice,” where they are actually interested in clearing songs from the past ten years.

The other part of this theme is somewhat better in “songs you wish you had written,” but we don’t know if this is really a translation for “songs you wish you had written out of the 20 on this list.” If this just means that we are going to get a few Whitney Houston covers, we may groan. (At least Angie Miller will probably try to sing something more recent … how about Paramore’s “The Only Exception”?)

Are you already groaning over next week’s “American Idol,” or does the presence of Kelly and Scotty help to at least in part make up for it? If you want to read our full review of the results show, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: Fox