‘American Idol XIII’ review: Did Sam Woolf, Majesty Rose, or Alex Preston rule top 10?

For the top ten on “American Idol,” isn’t it fair to ask for a ton of memorable performances? The show tonight was good at times, but also pretty bad at some other points. Nobody had a performance that we would consider to be altogether mind-melting.

As per always when we do these reviews, we’re going to run these down in order of the performances that we enjoyed the most … from worst to first. At the end, we’ll have a handy poll for you to vote in!

10. CJ Harris, “Invisible” – What made CJ pick this song? Also, how was is this out of tune? We usually don’t care so much about tuning so long as we can feel something from the performance, but this was so all over the place that it was distracting. We could barely listen to it, and it comes a mere week after CJ had his best performance of the season.

9. Dexter Roberts, “Cruise” – Ugh. The thing is that Dexter is a fine singer, but he is completely boring. There is not really anything that is that interesting about straight-up covers on this show. There were only a few seconds of this that felt special or different. You can hear a cover of this song pretty much anywhere.

8. Malaya Watson, “When I Was Your Man” – Malaya is still this season’s overly-hyperactive singer. There’s no doubt that she is great, but she needs to figure out how in the world to control that voice. This was loud when it needed to be soft.

7. MK Nobilette, “Perfect” – We finally figured out during this show just what sort of performer MK will be. She will put out a great record, and then do quiet, intimate performances at small venues. She’s not an arena singer, and that is why many of her songs on the show feel awkward when it comes to stage presence. This was one of them.

6. Jessica Meuse, “Pumped Up Kicks” – A little bit of a bizarre song choice here, mostly because there’s not really a single thing about it that seems appropriate for a family show. (Then again, some of the audience probably had no idea what this song is really about.) Take away all that, and it was a really good performance. No vocal snafus at all, and no mistakes from the band hurting themselves. This is probably just not something she should’ve done on this show.

5. Caleb Johnson, “The Edge of Glory” – It only seems fair to bring up Caleb right after Malaya as a performer, since he is right now a slightly-improved version of her. He has a great voice and a fantastic stage presence; but, he’s under this false impression that he needs to be big all of the time. This makes his personality feel occasionally hollow, and he doesn’t need for it to be like that.

4. Jena Irene, “Clarity” – Did Jena really need to demand that everyone “get those glow sticks up” in the middle of the performance? That’s something that we really didn’t get, since it was like she was stuck between the slow version of the song and the upbeat one. It was still better than many other performances, but this was an off night.

3. Sam Woolf, “We Are Young” – A very competent vocal performance of the fun. hit, complete with zero missed notes and a little more passion than last week. We literally felt every second of this, though, like he was going to get up, own it, and take it to another level. that didn’t happen.

2. Alex Preston, “Story of My Life” – Alex knows himself, and also seems to know the sort of songs he should sing. Does he need to pick something a little bit surprising? Probably, but this was a nice interpretation of a song he was probably nervous to sing thanks of the One Directio fans that are out there.

1. Majesty Rose, “Wake Me Up” – After that “Let It Go” mess last week, Majesty needed something that was as strong as this … and it was mostly strong. A few weak notes at the end, but she felt much more in her wheelhouse and comfortable up there with her guitar. She doesn’t need to do this all of the times, but sometimes, it’s better to be low-key than big. Episode Grade: C+, given that so few actually brought it.

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Photo: Fox