Scotty and Lauren

A few bullet comments:

– The show seemed almost frantic after the fairly leisurely pace of most performance shows. It was like…… Get up get set sing get the hell out of the way the next song is coming up shut up Randy you windbag ok Scotty you are next bring out the drumline get it the hell out of the way Lauren has to sing please please don’t let her voice give out good good she got through that one Scotty you’re up good job now get off the stage Lauren one more time good good whew we have some time now so go ahead Randy tell us how incredible everyone is in it to win it for chrissakes can we retire that line J-Lo hanging them out tonight lets hope they don’t get loose she seems embalmed and confused lets create some drama even though everyone even Lauren knows Scotty is gonna win oh good Steven is awake lets ask him about basketball he thinks Lauren is so cute she should win thanks for playing Steven cue Cookie run some old footage over his head to confuse everyone and SCENE!!!!

– Lauren sang her butt off, while Scotty was more sedate. Both sang well, but I didn’t note any moments from either one of them. Lauren’s vocal problems didn’t really affect her other than when she was singing quietly. She sounded scratchy and breathy on some of the high notes, but she’s always done that.

– Ryan was genuinely nervous tonight until late in the show, probably because of Lauren’s voice issues.

– I almost listened to the filler song, but I noticed that the guy was lip synching the song so I hit the fast forward button.

– There is a report (Haley’s parents were the source) that Haley already has a recording contract, and that she is going to sing an original song tomorrow night. If this is true, it would be a first for Idol.

– I didn’t think all that much of Scotty’s “original” song, but it’s radio friendly enough. He’ll need better songs on his CD if he’s going to fulfill Idol’s dreams of a platinum selling album.

– I preferred Lauren’s original, but past history tells us that the winner’s song always massively out-performs the runner up’s song even when the latter song is the better one.

I’m working on my end of the season round-up, and one of the things that I’ve been doing is going back and re-listening to as many of the songs performed during the season as I have time for. A few notes:

– Lauren was better the second time around, in almost every case. While she made some mistakes, her voice soared on several of her performances more than I gave her credit for. Her “Flat on the Floor”, in particular, was much better than I originally thought.

– It’s almost jarring to listen to Haley early in the season and then listen to her late. She improved so much that she almost seemed like another singer. One of the videos that I’ll send a link to shows Jen almost cutting her in Hollywood, and then mentioning it to Randy the next night, when Haley was much better.

– Hollywood Week didn’t have nearly as many cool performances as last year, until round three when seemingly half the contestants blew up “God Bless the Child” or “Georgiaon my Mind”. Idol concentrated more on the drama, and didn’t really showcase any new revelations like they did last season.

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I live blogged the finale last season, and I’ll do that again tomorrow night. It’s not exactly live, since I use my DVR and pause it when I type, but I’ll use the time on the show as I recap. I promise not to hammer on Bono too much, but don’t expect me to kiss him.

The finale is always special to me because all of the finalists get to come out and perform again, and the atmosphere is always happy and full of the joy of creating music and memories.