‘American Idol’ rankings: Are Lazaro Arbos, Candice Glover top contenders?

Typically, we wait and do some sort of official “American Idol” contestant rankings until we are a little bit closer to the show actually airing; but on this occasion, we thought it could be fun to look back on who some of the standout artists are from the audition rounds so far.

This at the moment is rather hard to gauge for a number of reasons, with the primary one being that we have not even seen anywhere near all of the contestants who have actually tried out thus far. With that in mind, we are going to go at this with one simple question in mind: who out of the folks we’ve seen audition would almost for sure be a hit with the voters if they make it to the top 3? We’re thinking more in terms of widespread appeal here than personal preference, mostly because we’d otherwise have Charlie Askew or Kez Ban on here than the man we actually have ranked #1.

3. Lazaro Arbos – For Lazaro, the biggest challenge is going to be breaking through the Chris Medina wall of being the incredible guy with the inspiration story who gets cut right before America gets the opportunity to vote. His story alone will make people want to keep him in the competition, but it also helps that he has a sweet and super-soulful voice that is easily recordable.

2. Candice Glover – How exactly was she cut last year? There is a big part of us that just wants to put her through to the top ten right now, since she is almost a lock to get that far. The only real concern that we have right now is just that there have been so many other big-voiced diva contestants on singing shows over the past few years, and the interest in another one may cause her problems. Our recommendation? Try some daring songs that aren’t necessary the “I Have Nothings” of the world.

1. Jimmy Smith – This is surely a controversial choice, but let’s just put it this way: he’s got an awesome country voice, and “American Idol” has a huge country voting block. He’s basically a combination of Taylor Hicks, Scotty McCreery, and Phillip Phillips. Notice the common thread between these three? If he makes the voting rounds, we see him as a lock for at least the top eight, if not much further than that.

Who are you rooting for right now? If you want to read some more “American Idol” news, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: Fox