American Idol 17 review: Laci Kaye Booth, Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon, top 6

Tonight, the American Idol 17 top 6 are hitting the stage in an effort to bring you ALL sorts of music. You’re getting performances themed around Woodstock and, to go along with that, also some good stuff themed around Inspirational songs. For the sake of this article, we’re discussing all things Woodstock! We’ll share with you the six performances and, to go along with it, our take on who won the night.

Of course, to go along with this review we’ve also got a video below with other thoughts! On the other side of checking this out, we highly suggest that you subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for more, and also view our official playlist. Consider that the #1 way you make sure you don’t miss any other updates.

Madison VanDenburg, “Piece of My Heart” – Vocally, it’s hard to really have any objection to what Madison brought to the table. Can you say that she didn’t really get the emotional connection to the song fully? Probably, but it’s hard to really go too hard on her since we do think she’s working on it — and she is still so young. We definitely appreciate her tapping into her rock-star style in order to pull some of this off. B+.

Laine Hardy, “I Don’t Need No Doctor” – Admittedly, we would appreciate it if we saw Laine drift just a tad from his own lane into some different directions vocally. Doesn’t it always help to mix things up a tad? That would be nice, but it’s obvious that what he’s doing at this point is working well for him — he’s pleasing his fans out there and delivering enough creativity with his outfit choices to feel like very much his one guy. B.

Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” – This was the first time we’ve seen Jeremiah go sort-of-uptempo in quite some time, but we gotta say that we loved this. There was so much cool stuff in here from start to finish in between the big notes, the outfit, and the musicality. This just oozed cool — not bad for a gospel standard. A-.

Laci Kaye Booth, “To Love Somebody” – This was rockin’ and really nice to listen to. Laci had just the right amount of rasp and got totally into the vocal theme. She didn’t try to make it too much like the original, and we certainly think that this was a good thing. She helped to make it stand out — this was smooth and lyrical and constant entertainment from start to finish. It didn’t pop, but it didn’t really need to. B+.

Alejandro Aranda, “White Rabbit” – This was apparently a hard-rock period for Alejandro, who tried something really strange, trippy, but actually enjoyable to listen to in its own, bizarre way. This is probably polarizing, as are many of his live performances, but we actually found it fascinating and so much better than his last few numbers. Still, he did have a really shaky delivery on that final note of the night. B.

Wade Cota, “With a Little Help from My Friends” – This was basically the song that Wade was born to sing — he basically is a modern-day Joe Cocker with that voice! What we were looking for with him here was that he continued to bring something to the song beyond just the expected — we knew that he would be great here, but did he surprise us with his stage presence. He could’ve done more with the notes at the end, though. B+.

What do you think about tonight’s American Idol episode overall? Be sure to let us know in the comments! (Photo: ABC.)