‘The X Factor’ USA review: Did Sweet Suspense, Alex & Sierra, Rion Paige win Motown Week?

There are some things that we do want to praise about Wednesday night’s “X Factor” USA live show: The judges seemed to be having fun, even if it was in the schoolyard way a la giving each bunny ears and Kelly Rowland doing dances around Simon Cowell. While it was definitely forced, it was at least effort. This was therefore not nearly as insufferable to watch as last year’s live shows with Britney “barely speaks” Spears.

As for the performances, there were some good ones … but this theme? BLAH. Motown is not something anyone in America was begging for, since it feels like this was the show getting lazy with the licensing and doing the same thing “American Idol” has for more than a decade. For a show that tries to sell itself as modern and current, that did not mesh.

Also, were these performances tonight only 24 seconds or something? We are exaggerating, but they were so short that it is hard to get into to any of them emotionally.

Josh Levi, “Who’s Loving You” – We begin with the awful revelation that the show has just randomly taken it upon itself to add Josh back as a wild card because it can, which pretty much tells you that like this season of “Homeland,” what they tell you doesn’t matter. Josh’s performance was okay, but we are more upset over the principle of the thing that Simon Cowell does things without rhyme or reason to them outside of grooming people for his label. Without L.A. Reid, this show feels more like this now than ever.

Rachel Potter, “This Old Heart of Mine” – Not as good as her performance last week, but it really does not matter in the slightest since Rachel is not going anywhere in the near future. She’s a good singer that has a large built-in fanbase, and now that she is out of that Thunderdome that was for her the Four-Chair Challenge, she’s going to be fine.

Carlos Guevara, “What’s Going On” – Not good, and we feel like this is what happens at times when you take nice people with big stories like Carlos and put them into a part of the competition that they are not ready for. They simply struggle, and it becomes more about their story. This is unfortunately all Carlos can rely on now, since his voice is not that distinctive or that strong.

Restless Road, “Easy Like Sunday Morning” – For a group that should have a chance in country music after this show, why in the world is Simon letting the show give them Motown a week after he made them do Katy Perry? That cover barely worked, and this one didn’t really work at all. You just can’t turn Motown country.

Ellona Santiago, “Baby Love” – Ellona reminds us of that person who meets a celebrity and tries to spout off every fact she knows about them in five seconds. She tries too hard, and has yet to learn the value of subtlety. To use another analogy, if Harry Potter came out and cast every spell in five minutes, he wouldn’t be so cool. You want to see what else he’s got going on in his bag of tricks. Ellona’s got a great voice and it showed here, but it reeks of desperation.

Jeff Gutt, “Say You Say Me” – A good comparison for Jeff is Terry McDermott from “The Voice.” They are both good vocalists, but you don’t quite ever get the feeling that he is modern enough to do well in the charts today. That’s what this felt like: An early nineties rock track that would have been great on the radio then. There are some places that this will work, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We liked the vocal a lot.

Alex and Sierra, “Heard It Through the Grapevine” – Probably one of the best renditions of this song we’ve heard on a singing show, and typically it is one that is drowned to death under boring arrangements with a chorus that doesn’t give contestants much to do vocally at all. Was it pretty much them doing more of the same on stage? Sure, but they at least showed off a little more chemistry rather than it feeling like a coffee-house production of “Once.”

Khaya Cohen, “My Girl” – This is one of the easiest songs in the Motown songbook to do, and that itself screams “don’t mess it up.” The vocals were pretty good, but the reality here is that Khaya is probably a couple of years too young for the competition based on her voice. She feels a little too nasally at times, and it shows here as her voice went higher.

Carlito Olivero, “Stop in the Name of Love” – This is a song that is meant to be sung fast, mostly because the “I’m a romance traffic cop” lyrics are otherwise going to descend into a mountain of cheese. The vocals were great, but we couldn’t buy into the song. Plus, this performance felt like it lasted about 25 seconds. Seriously. Why do we have a wild card for this?

Lillie McCloud, “All Is Fair in Love” – We have to start this off by saying the obvious, and that is simply that Lillie had a huge advantage with Motown given her being the oldest contestant and simply knowing the genre well. She also had a great song, and a great stage presentation that Kelly Rowland and the producers set up. While we still don’t think she is top 6 material just based on the support we’ve seen, she certainly shouldn’t be packing the afro away just yet.

Sweet Suspense, “You Keep Me Hanging On” – This is what we call Simon Cowell-ing a performance. He sees the dollar signs, and points these three to them like he is sending mice into a maze with cheese on the other side. Even though the three ladies barely ever made their voices distinguishable, and when they were they were shaky, this still came across as a good performance. But did they borrow that cage from Miley Cyrus’ “Can’t Be Tamed” video?

Rion Paige, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” – A very good performance by Rion, and easily in the top 4 or 5 of the night. She, Demi Lovato, or whoever does these things made this actually work mostly as a country song, and we bought the vocal take on it. Rion’s also so young that you have to be cognizant of the subject matter, and this was innocent enough to work for her.

Tim Olstad, “I’ll Be There” – Someone needs to make a gif IMMEDIATELY of the look on Tim’s face when Simon told him he was Donny Osmond. That was genius, and Simon’s actually right. This is basically Tim in a nutshell, though slightly less-charismatic version. He is a great singer, but he needs to introduce more personality beyond him fishing on a pier. (Ironically, he picked one of the most boring hobbies out there.)

Overall, we were at least pretty entertained with this episode, and while we complain about the performances being too short and Josh being brought back, this was still probably the best “X Factor” live show ever just in terms of all-around presentation, from the judges to the hosting to the general feel. Grade: B-.

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Photo: Fox