American Idol 17 review: Alejandro Aranda, Laine Hardy, top 5 perform!

Tonight, the American Idol top 5 are hitting the stage and with that, doing a wide array of different performances! For the sake of this article, we’re going to be focusing on just a handful of them, and that includes songs chosen by none other than the show’s in-house mentor in Bobby Bones. We’ll be refreshing this article as the night goes on, so as long as you stay attune to what we’re talking about here, you won’t be missing too much!

Remember that if you want to check out some more American Idol video coverage, check out the video at the bottom of this article! Meanwhile, remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube and also check out our official playlist.

Wade Cota, “You Are the Best Thing” – We would’ve seen Bobby pick a song for Wade that was a little bit more out of his comfort zone — doing something from the same artist as “Trouble” isn’t really letting us see anything new from him. B.

Laci Kaye Booth, “The House That Built Me” – We do think that this was a perfect way for her to fight for her survival — this was a song that really played well to the country crowd out there, and then also showed off her unique voice and style. It was soft at times, but incredibly emotional from start to finish. A-.

Alejandro Aranda, “No Woman, No Cry” – He totally made this song into something that was smooth and worthy of his talent — also, kudos to the band for finding a way to actually collaborate with him rather than just drowning him out with sound. This may be his best cover — we know that he can kill original music and made it into something more. B+.

Laine Hardy, “Can’t You See” – We don’t think that Bobby really challenged Laine at all with this song, and really, we wish that there was a chance to see him do something really current to see how he tackled that. Laine did sing this well, but other than the outfit choice, nothing really caught our eye that we haven’t quite seen from him before. B.

Madison VanDenburg, “What About Us” – The way that Bobby was talking to Madison going into this performance, we totally did feel like this was going to be the performance of the night for her. Was it? Vocally, she was incredible — we didn’t really love the arrangement, though, given that any hope at all of her capturing any new emotion was drowned out amidst the enormity of the band. A-.

So of the Bobby performances, nobody was bad — unfortunately, at the same exact time, we don’t think that anyone was altogether so great that they distanced themselves from the field. We blame Bobby in part for this, since most of his song choices were a little bit expected — except for Alejandro. We wouldn’t be upset if we heard him do more Bob Marley covers in the future.

What do you think about some of the American Idol 17 performances that you got a chance to see on the show tonight? Be sure to share right now in the comments, and also come back soon for some other news. (Photo: ABC.)