‘American Idol XIII’ top 8 review: Jena Irene, Alex Preston, Caleb Johnson one-up auditions
“American Idol XIII” made this week what we initially thought was a pretty bad decision: Making the contestants perform their audition songs again. This idea felt like a retread, and something we would be completely bored by. There’d be karaoke numbers, and nothing would feel that refreshing to us as a viewer.
Luckily, we are so glad to be wrong! The performances that we had tonight were completely a blast to listen to for the most part. There was originality in the repeat performances, and we even had a chance to hear some original numbers for the first time.
There were also some duets performed in here, but as we say with the vast majority of the duets on this show, the less we say about those, the better off you’ll be in the end … except for Alex and Jena doing “Just Give Me a Reason.” That was pretty great.
8. CJ Harris, “Soul Shine” – Not a bad performance from CJ by any means. He’s not the best singer in the competition; as a matter of fact, he is probably the worst singer when it comes to pitch. The reason that he does get some attention is mostly because of the fact that he has such passion and joy when he sings. This performance definitely had that, even if it was spotty at times.
7. Sam Woolf, “Lego House” – The best performance Sam has had in a few weeks. What he brings to the show is a very pretty voice, but at times there’s not much behind that. We felt that he was trying harder to connect this week, but this is something that is obviously a glaring problem for him that is going to take a while for him to correct. So long as there is progress, we really cannot complain.
6. Malaya Watson, “Ain’t No Way” – The past few weeks have been marked improvements for Malaya, but this performance did bring back one of the unfortunate problems that we had from her during some of the earlier performances: Shouting. She tries too hard to be this big singer sometimes, when we feel like her lane is actually more soft, quirky performances that let her have fun.
5. Dexter Roberts, “One Mississippi” – Dexter is a guy who loves his country music, and for him, that means at times doing songs the way that they are meant to be sung. The problem with that at times is that it leads to boring performances that don’t really show off his voice. This was a nice exception to that: A soft, powerful vocal that showed that he has real character in his voice.
4. Caleb Johnson, “Chain of Fools” – Another great reminder that artists on this show can make performances their own. Caleb is a great rock singer, but this proved that he can take a song that is considered soul and transform it into something that suits him. It wasn’t his best performance, but it was still very strong.
3. Jessica Meuse, “Blue Eyed Lie” – We liked this performance a ton when we first heard it, and we loved it a ton here, too. Typically, we worry in the event that someone is stuck performing first, but with this original song being so popular, Jessica is probably going to be just fine going into the results show.
2. Alex Preston, “Fairytales” – Alex and Jessica have the honor of being the first two artists in the history of “American Idol” to play originals on a live show before the finale, and they should be thrilled that their own artistry was heard, regardless of what happens from here. A great performance, and we’d be very much down for seeing an album from him in stores in the next year or so.
1. Jena Irene, “Rolling in the Deep” – Is this arrangement borrowed from somewhere else? We’ve never heard a version of this song like it before … and we’ve heard a LOT of renditions of this song. It was absolutely mesmerizing. We’ve slowly come on board the Jena bandwagon, and this may be our favorite performance of the entire season so far. So unique and powerful.
Who was your favorite on “American Idol” tonight? Share your thoughts both in the poll and the comments below! You can also click here to see where we ranked the singers going into the show, or here to get more news worth singing about via our CarterMatt Newsletter.
Photo: Fox