‘The X Factor’ USA review: Emblem3 takes on Tate Stevens, Carly Rose Sonenclar

It’s Diva Night on “The X Factor” USA, and the biggest diva was … a 13-year old girl? It was a night of surprises on the show, but also one full of nagging issues. Why in the world, Simon Cowell, are we still having to watch seizures on stage every week with the lighting? The positive was that there was only one annoying product placement for Pepsi this week, Khloe Kardashian seemed a little less glued to the teleprompter, and there were some great performances mixed in with the “ugh.”

Jennel Garcia – “Proud Mary” may not just be one of the most overused songs in reality TV history; it’s one of the most over-recorded songs in the history of music. For the first few bars, we were really feeling this and Jennel was owning the stage … then the tempo picked up. Whoever designed the arrangement for this song needs to be publicly shamed, as it sounded like something cheesy that you would find on a Disney Channel soundtrack for a TV special set in outer space. It diminished Jennel’s vocals, which were at least pretty solid throughout. Then again, none of the judges agreed with this at all.

Tate Stevens – It’s tough to be ranked #1 going into a live show, mostly because pretty much every person in attendance automatically expects you to be sensational. The irony here is that we actually didn’t love Tate’s song choice last week, since it really did not feel like the sort of old-school country boy anthem that we want from him. This guy is country as pecan pie, and this performance was simply perfect for him. It also made his wife cry backstage. #1 again? Probably.

Diamond White – Okay, it does no good to tell Diamond that she lived up to Beyonce’s “Halo” when the first third of the song was horrendously flat. Did she get better as the song went along? Sure, but this is not “let’s judge you on half of your performance” night. The biggest thing that Diamond has going for her outside of her vocals comes courtesy of her personality: she is someone who doesn’t try to act shy or fake on stage, and she seems genuinely excited to be there.

Beatrice Miller – It’s the song’s fault, not yours. These were the words of L.A. Reid, who gave a pretty poor criticism to what was actually Beatrice’s best performance of the competition. It was not overly exciting despite only being a minute and a half long, but she sang it well and within her range. Personally, we would prefer to see this sort of performance than someone who tries too hard and fails at it.

Lyric 145 – After showing us a sympathy story about how the two New York natives from the group are recovering from Hurricane Sandy, we then had the weakest performance from the group of the season. What happened to performing original lyrics this week? “We Will Rock You” is probably the last song a rap group needs to be doing, and the song choice really did not show off just how talented these three are.

Arin Ray – After two weeks of being overpraised, the judges finally tore in to Arin for what was really his principal problem this season: his vocals are really not up to par with his stage presence. Having him do a Madonna song was like telling Lyric 145 to do a rock song (oh wait), and he just never felt comfortable with it … which is a theme for almost everyone in this competition not named Tate, who seems to be one of the few actually singing songs that he loves and would record.

Paige Thomas – First of all, we love that Demi Lovato more or less called out Brian Friedman for putting choreography on the show that she didn’t want. Since the judges didn’t really offer it here, let’s give out some more honesty: the start of this performance was Paige’s best of the season, but everything that followed it was a mess. You should only dance around the stage if your vocals stay nearly on par. They didn’t. Too bad, Paige.

Fifth Harmony – Holy out of tune, Batman! There were some great moments in this performance, but the girls probably would have fared a little bit better had they waited to sing “Hero” when they were near the finale. They still need some time together to actually work on the world that is in the title of their group. (Hint: we are not talking about “fifth.”)

Carly Rose Sonenclar – Did we really need the boat effects in the beginning here? This was the worst part of this performance. The rest of it was pure SHE THREW IT DOWN. Easily, Carly had the best performance of the entire night, and judging from the cheers in the audience, her “My Heart Will Go Out” could be enough to push her even past Mr. Pecan Pie. The 13-year old will be here for a while.

Vino Alan – As much as getting the Overs made L.A. Reid want to slam the phone a billion times, he’s done a very good job this week giving his two artists songs that really suit who they are. While the judges may not have loved it, this “Let’s Stay Together” had a nice groove to it. There were zero bum notes, the performance was natural, and we always get a laugh whenever we hear this song and think of President Obama?

Emblem3 – First things first, let’s laugh at the fact that Simon Cowell introduced these boys by talking about them saving kittens in a lake and then acting like it’s not a ploy for votes. None of these guys are particularly great singers, but what will probably carry them pretty far in this competition is just they are so current like those surfer guys who you are always insanely jealous of regardless of whether or not you are a guy or a girl.

CeCe Frey – In a recent article, we gave CeCe some suggestions as to how she could improve her performance on the show moving forward, and one of them was to embrace the fun, sassy side of her that we saw before the live shows … and then she sang “All By Myself” with a wind machine. This actually was a pretty polarizing performance to us; there were some bad notes, some great notes, and the whole ordeal was about a million percent more dramatic than it needed to be.

Who was your favorite from this week’s show, and do you think that some components of the live show are getting better?