‘American Idol 15’ review: Trent Harmon, Dalton Rapattoni, La’Porsha Renae, and ‘America’s choices’
Thursday night’s new episode of “American Idol” is certainly a complicated show. For one (ugh), the judges are still choosing who to be eliminated at the midway point of the show.
Until then, we’re getting the chance to see yet another series of performances! This time around America has apparently chosen some of the songs from Twitter, at least to a certain extent since producers could always pick and choose from some of these at their leisure.
Trent Harmon, “Counting Stars” – Not the best vocal from Trent. This is a rather deceptively hard song to do, since the chorus is so high that it is hard to really nail the intonation of it. We’ve definitely heard cleaner, more put-together vocal from him.
Dalton Rapattoni, “Numb” – While we are certainly not going to say that this reinvented anything for us, it was Dalton’s best performance in a few weeks. Also, we like the choice since he kind of looks like a Linkin Park band member and we haven’t heard the song in a while.
La’Porsha Renae, “Ready for Love” – Wasn’t this a powerful performance? Think of this as yet another reminder of just how amazing Renae is, and at the moment just how far ahead she is of the field. Is anyone really that close to her? We don’t think so.
MacKenzie Bourg, “Wild World” – We are never going to fault a singer on this show for doing something original with a familiar song. With that said, the original did sap some of the energy that is typically there with the song.
Save-Me Songs
Tristan McIntosh, “Independence Day” – She’s really good at sitting at the piano and doing some of these slower ballads, but sooner or later we are going to need to see her try out a few different things and dimensions on the show … if she stays.
Sonika Vaid, “Let It Go” – This was the Demi Lovato version rather than the Idina Menzel original, and it was … decent? The problem is just that we find this song so cheesy for “American Idol,” and it really didn’t do for us what we wanted for a save-me-song.
Results – Head over here to see what happened!
Round Two
Dalton, “The Sound of Silence” – He put a lot into this number, and we do appreciate that very much. At the same time, it was a little much for a TV performance, with him probably making too many attempts to swing big for the fences when he really didn’t need to.
MacKenzie, “Billie Jean” – No, it was not the best version of the song we’ve ever heard. That would be David Cook’s! Yet, it was still a nice, stripped-down version of the song that we know a lot of people out there really enjoy.
Trent, “A Simple Man” – Maybe the best performance Trent has done during the live shows. This was really fantastic; it showed off not only his range, but the uncanny ability that he has to inject meaning into almost every single word.
Sonika, “Clarity” – We’re starting to sense Sonika’s biggest problem: She wants to do these enormous pop songs when in reality, she’d probably be better off just focusing on her connection to the lyrics. There were nice moments in here, but she probably tried a little too hard with the notes.
La’Porsha, “No More Drama” – AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING. Emotional, powerful, and almost otherworldly. Drop the mic.
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