:: A Malaysian on Music, Gigs, Concerts. ::

Another week passes by, another contestant up for elimination.

First up, Katharine performed Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing. She did well but there were parts where she struggled despite her voice. The judges felt she was nowhere near a Whitney but the crowd were clearly displeased. I thought she was good. She should be safe.

Elliot was next. Donnie Hathaway was on the playlist but I’m not too familiar with his work. Somewhere in the middle, I lost track of what he was singing and what he sang. But Paula crying? What? All the judges loved him but I’m not convinced.

Next up, Pickler. Kellier doing Unchained Melody. In the mortal words of David Foster, if this song is sung by someone without emotion, it would sound a little bit boring, which is what I thought it was. Even the falsetto was not great. She’s got the popularity vote but she might have did herself in this time.

Paris, Paris, Paris. Barbara Streisand’s The Way We Were. Superb song choice for her. With that being said, I felt she had some ennunciation problems as compared to Barbara who sets the bar of one of the clearest lyrics ever. There were some pitch problems as well but overall I think she did a decent job.

Next up, Taylor Hicks gave an ode to James Ingram. His rendition of Just Once was decent but it was bland. He should be safe.

Chris gave a stirring performance of Brian Adam’s When You Really Love a Woman. I liked this choice of song for him. Chris is born to rock you and even with a love ballad classic like this, the subtle rock elements that he added were superb and perfect. The BEST performance of the night.

With 6 left, one leaving tomorrow. Who is it going to be? With more bad performances than good, it’s a tough decision this week. If there is going to be a bottom 3, it’s going to be Pickler, Paris and Elliot. Bye Kellie. We love you.

Katharine vs Chris final showdown.

Update: Katharine and Chris highest amount of votes. No bottom 3 this week but I’d bet Elliot is in it.

And there were 5.
American Idol Top 5: Katharine, Chris, Paris, Elliot, Taylor
My Original Prediction: Katharine, Chris, Paris, Mandisa, Lisa

3/5 aint bad.

Chris kicked off the night with his rendition of Louie Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World. If you thought that this would have ended up sounding like Michael Jackson doing Nirvana, you’ve got it all wrong. What a performance by Chris. No doubt that he does have a rocker’s vocals, but he showed his sentimental side where most don’t even come close.

Paris, Paris, Paris. Paris did a Sinatra. She blew the roof off with her rendition of Foolish Things. She looked great, she sounded great. Enough said.

Taylor did a Sam Cook. Big shoes to step into. I couldnt really remember the title of the song but it was fun, rocking and Taylor at his best. No worries for him this week.

Elliot did Sinatra’s It Had To Be You, one of the best classic Sinatra songs. I imagined that his voice would be great for this song, but somehow it didn’t really work that well. It was good, but..well, just but. Bottom three again this week.

Kellie tried an Ella. Bewitched is one tough cookie of a song and unfortunately for Kellie, she bombed. It was poor and uninspiring and She knew it, Randy knew it, Paula knew it and Simon always knows it. She might be in trouble this week. But I have to say, the way she reacted after hearing the judging was amazing. I couldn’t help but symphatize and want to vote for her.

Ace. Hair pulled back, suit on. Schlick. He connected with the audience and it wasn’t a great song but it was a good performance overall.

Katharine. Save the best for last. Katharine looked fabolous with her hair pulled back, a wicked glow in her eyes and just looking perfect. Yep, she’s my favourite and she did a Sinatra, Someone to Watch Over Me. She could sing that to me every night. Superb, absolutely superb. Best of the night easily.

Bottom 3? Elliot, Kellie and Ace. Tomorrow, we say goodbye to Elliot.

Update: Ace got eliminated. Another one from my Top 5

Katharine, Paris, Taylor, Chris and Kellie are in my new Top 5. Katharine for American Idol!

I’ve been thinking about this Massive Attack entry for quite some time now, but I only completed my two-piece puzzle about 3 weeks ago when I stopped over at HMV in Singapore and bought the newly released Massive Attack’s Collected (Best Of). Eleven Promos is a DVD that has a collected set of 11 videos from Massive Attack. For any ignorant fools out there who have no idea who or what Massive Attack is, this twin-pack is all you need.

Massive Attack tells us their stories through their songs and the videos shown us the stories. What I love about Massive Attack is, their songs doesn’t seem to get dated. I suppose, most songs in this genre (trip-hop, I hate this term) hardly ever get dated but Massive Attack are certainly one of the pioneers and main stays in this constantly evolving music world. Once the non-believers have been exposed to this double dose of Massive Attack, ask them again what they think of Massive Attack. I’d bet that they would have been converted.

Woot. The night of Queen. Freddie’s vocals are unmatchable in its uniqueness and skill. It started out as a night where I along with the audience were wondering whether the school of American Idol could pull off a Freddie. Was it safer to do it in your style or to do it Freddie style. 

Bucky made Queen country. After about 10 seconds, his performance sunk into the background and it was fast becoming a very forgetable performance. Randy and Paula liked it (but they do like performances 90% of the time).

Next up, Ace with his version of We Will Rock You. He was in no man’s land. He threw in a bit of falsetto but in all honesty, the performance was weak. He wanted to do it Ace style. Perhaps it was a bit cocky to ask Queen to completely change the arrangement, but this was possibly one of the worst performance of the night. I say this after just two performances.

Kellie’s up next with BOHEMIAN RAPSODY. Huge song. Small girl, pretty big voice. I thought she did well! There was a bit of innocence, combined with the rock star in her. She’s got country written all over her, but tonight she rocked on.

Then came Chris who did a slow one. I thought it was one of the better performances tonight. Chris is a rocker and he brought a slightly new flavour to one of Queen’s lesser known songs, the title track of Innuendo, which was one of Queen’s newer albums. It was a superb performance but when you choose a relatively unknown song, the audience does not have a base of comparison. This probably worked out great for him.

McPheever! From Don’t Stop Me Now to Who Wants to Live Forever. This song was the theme for the Highlander, which ironically had the tag line, “there can be only one”. She did struggle at some parts, but it was a huge song and she did great overall. I just love her.

Taylor like McPheever, changed his song from the Champion song (yep, that one), to a Crazy Little Thing Called Love. The dancing, all-entertaining Taylor was back. He did miss the first mic-kick but he got it down on the next try. He was definitely in his element tonight. I know I might have doubted him in the past couple of weeks, but he is definitely a main stay.

Elliot gave a rendition of Somebody to Love. Another Queen classic. Aside from the knee-bopping, it was great. Just about. Somebody to Love was Freddie’s ode to Aretha. His voice is somewhat relatable to Freddie’s. He was one of the best tonight.

Paris tried but it didn’t really work for me. She gave her rendition of The Show Must Go On. To me, it sounded like a MTV Awards performance, where a popular artiste does a Queen classic. You might think that would have been good, but I have always thought that even the established artistes could sound out of place. I think she did enough to bring her a decent vote count this week.

Bottom three. Paris (Still in there), Bucky (Yep, I still think he should be out) and *gasp* Ace (based on his poor, poor performance). I’m going to take a wild guess at this, Bucky is on his way home.

Update: I finally get a prediction right again after a few weeks of just getting it wrong. Elliot was in the bottom 3 instead of Paris and Bucky goes home.

As we move on to another week of American Idol and as the competition gets tougher, I’m going to detail out only the best highlights of the week and of course, to give my elimination picks.

Katharine McPhee probably chose one of the tougher songs of the night and belted out her bluesy number with a McPheever style and composure. Ace Young showed his falsetto expertise in a great song selection for his voice and turned on the charm with his deep-in-thought look. Pure class. Paris did a Trisha Yearwood and even with her voice, she struggled a little but it was a good performance. Chris applied his natural rock demeanor into a country ballad and made the song his own. Kellie and Bucky felt right at home in country land and they did good in familiar territory.

So who’s in the bottom three? My week’s picks are Taylor Hicks (who had an absolutely horrible night), Bucky Covington and Elliot Yamin. And we’ll say goodbye tomorrow to Bucky Covington. I guess he is not one of my favourites but despite country being his forte, I don’t think he has done enough. Till tomorrow then.

Update: 1 out of 3 aint good as Mandisa, Elliot and Paris made up the bottom 3 and Mandisa goes home. Who would have thought as it was definitely not me. She grew to become one of my top 5 candidates. I suppose my original theory of her loosing votes because of the way she looks proved to be true as America began to see through her stylist’s work.

My new top 5 in no particular order.

1. Katharine
2. Ace
3. Taylor (Despite a bad week, still going strong, which is a clear indication of how popular he is)
4. Chris
5. Paris (Despite being in the bottom 3, she’s still all that)

I never got around to writing a review myself, but here’s just a few words re-living my whole experience that amazing day. Myself and 3 friends took a little road trip down from KL to Singapore, stopping over a historical Malacca for some food and drinks and finally reaching a raining Singapore at about 3.30 pm. So after checking into our hotel, we recharged our batteries and made our way to Suntec, which was pretty nearby but somehow the roads were jammed with Singaporeans returning home from work (concert was at 8pm) and we took a wrong turn, causing me to get all anxi and taking a little jog to collect our tickets first. So all was good and we loaded up on the best fast food joint ever, Carl’s Junior and proceeded to the little 600 capacity theatre and awaited the arrival of the musical genius.

And then, the moment arrived and Damien proceeded to stun me into complete aweness as I was in the presence of a musical genius, listening to him and watching him live. I could not believe that I was actually there. The moment he started with that Professor song (The Professor & La Fille Danse, heheh I never really knew the full title) and continued on with Delicate and I Remember, I already knew that this is the best gig I have EVER been to. Damien just blew me away with his humour, his un-sober-ness, and his music. It was a pity that Vivienne nor Lisa made the trip, but it was still an amazing performance. I suppose, he was telling everyone in the theatre hall a bunch of stories with his songs. It was pure class. And when he said good night, we stood and applauded for a good 3 minutes or so, to which he returned for the obligatory encore (I think it was 7 songs worth), with a little Creep (Radiohead) thrown in. He closed it all off with The Blower’s Daughter, which left me on a high for the rest of the weekend, reminiscing and wishing he will come back soon with the rest of the posse. I shall keep this quick review short, as there is no way I could have written a better review than this one below. I beg all of you if you have a chance to see Damien Rice, please do, even if you don’t know his songs, he will teach them to you in his immortal-like performance.

Damien Rice Review - The Jakarta Post, Kenny Santana