Greetings, Archuleta fans!

Last night’s show was another interesting one. We had it all, full-voiced jam sessions, shaky vocal tone qualities, near meltdowns, and funky syncopated arrangements. It actually turned out A LOT better than I had expected, and Andrew Lloyd Webber was an amazing mentor (and I can’t STAND Andrew Lloyd Webber). He really did an amazing job with the contestants, and I have to give him kudos for giving each contestant more insight into exactly what they needed to do to deliver their performance to the audience effectively.

Follow me over the jump for my review

The night started with Syesha Mercado singing “One Rock & Roll Too Many”, and she absolutely knocked this song out of the ballpark! THIS was the performance that we’ve all been waiting for from her. She wasn’t trying to be a Whitney/Mariah/Christina Aguilera pop diva, she was completely in her element with this song. She looked HOT!!! and she sounded AMAZING!!! She did lose a little bit of control on the higher notes towards the end, but there were so many AWESOME things that were happening in this performance that the negative elements were FAR overshadowed by the good. Way to go, Syesha!

Then we went from AMAZING!!! to pathetic. Jason Castro followed singing “Memory” from Cats. Andrew Lloyd Webber was half-right about his prognostication for this performance. He stated that Jason would probably not take any of his advice, but that it probably wouldn’t matter because it would turn out better for him not having taken the advice. ALW was absolutely correct about the former. The latter, not so much. Wow, was this a bad performance. This is not the kind of song that Jason should sing at this stage of the competition…it went completely over his head, and he missed the whole point of the song. In addition, his shaky vocal quality was so grating to my ears that I wanted to pull a “Vincent van Gogh” with the pair of scissors next to my couch! The whole performance was boring, whiny, and strained. Am I being harsh??? HELL YES! Because it was deserved.

Brooke White followed with “You Must Love Me”, and I must say that this was the perfect song choice for her. The vocal tessitura of the piece is exactly within Brooke’s range, so she made a very smart decision to perform this one. I also thought she did admirably well with the delivery of the song, and I felt the emotion shining through as she really got into the performance, especially when she stood up on the stage and belted out the refrain. However, it was such a jarring experience overall, due to her having to stop and start the song all over again. I really hope and pray that this isn’t her “last hurrah“, because I think she has it in her to do really well again. These past few weeks have been very taxing on her, one can tell, and I just think she has so much more potential than what we’ve seen.

And then our man David Archuleta took the stage with a funked up version of “Think of Me”. I really enjoyed this performance from him (Duh, can he do any wrong???). The kid just knows how to put on a great performance, he knows how to communicate the lyrics to the audience. I love that about him. The arrangement was very syncopated and would’ve made a great cover for a future album (hmmmmm…) I did catch a small vocal flub in the middle, but it was so unnoticeable and Archuleta covered it up very nicely. As fans, we should be very proud of this kid!

Carly Smithson followed with her performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar”, and she totally brought the song to life with her energetic delivery. It was so energetic, in fact, that it almost became a circus…and I don’t mean that negatively. “Jesus Christ Superstar”, as a musical, is very much “out there“, and so the songs within it also have that type of feel, and Carly delivered the song with the appropriate amount of show-stopping verve. She was full-voiced and looked very hot! I fear, though, that people may find her performance “preachy.” The song itself is not very “preachy”, but it’s a very touchy subject with some people when the words “Jesus” and “Christ” are added into an AI performance. I’m hoping this doesn’t hurt her chances, because she did very well.

David Cook followed with his performance of “Music of the Night”, and I was very uncertain how he would do with this song when I heard this would be what he was singing. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought he did very well with it. His low register is not as full and resonant as his middle and high register. He almost sounds like he’s straining, or digging down for the lower notes, and it’s almost like he’s croaking the notes. This is a very minor problem, though, because the overall performance was very effective.

My official rankings:

6. Jason Castro - F

5. Brooke White - C+

4. Carly Smithson - B

3. David Cook - B

2. David Archuleta - A

1. Syesha Mercado - A+

I would like to add a small editorial comment, though. This is a comment brought to you courtesy of Chenson, another Archuleta supporter from Planet Idol. Here’s what Chenson has to say:

“Archie HAS to start picking more songs that have the capacity for greatness as I think it was the song that actually stopped him from being #1 this week, Cook just had the better/best song tonight. Having said all that, it was in the top 2 performances of the night (as usual) and he sung it really great and did the most with it you possibly can with it but i really want him to OWN a week and we still havnt seen that.

The 2 Davids are in a league of their own (Syesha was also very good tonight) but Cook is the smarter of the 2 contestants it seems. Weve seen David do really really good for many many weeks now but I really to see that #1 performance that nobody can dispute was the best of the night, and hes definitely easily capable of it.”

Chenson has a very good point. I’d like to see Archuleta absolutely OWN the stage on the night of performances. It’s time for him to REALLY assert his dominance over the rest of the competition.

Enjoy the ride, Archuleta fans!! He’s totally safe, I’m not even worried about it!!