This week was “Hollywood Week” for American Idol – FINALLY! This week we saw the group rounds and solo rounds, and the group of nearly 200 was whittled down to 40 that get to go to Hawaii (for some reason?) for the live audience (but not live on TV) performances that decide the final cut ahead of the live shows.
Several of my picks made the Top 40, which I was very happy about.
I continue to be captivated by Alejandro Aranda and his masterful guitar playing. While I was not a fan of his original song that he performed during the solo round (it seemed VERY repetitive in the bits they showed), he clearly is still a favorite of the judges and fellow performers. On the other hand, I am not a fan of the hippie dude also featured in this clip – and was surprised he was let through to the Top 40:
My “Gentle Ginger” Clay Page did not feature much at all in the Hollywood Week episode, but I *think* I saw him make the Top 40 when they divided the singers into three groups to give them the final news at the conclusion of the week. This is the year of the redhead – there were a number of them in Hollywood, and last night they seemed to focus on only two of them: Walker Burroughs (the Harry Potter lookalike who is a bit vanilla but will probably go far because he actually has a lovely voice), and Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon (who has a great voice but his rendition of “First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” was excruciatingly slow and I just wanted it to end at some point even though technically his voice was on point).
My other male pick is Shawn Robinson, who is just fantastic and just seems like a nice kid. Hope he makes it to Top 20!
As for my female picks, I only really had two stand out for me during auditions. Thankfully, my main female pick, Madison VanDenberg, did a GREAT job after switching her song from an original to an Adele song that she slayed. So, so good and hard to believe she is only 17 years old.
The only other female that I really liked was Kai the Singer, who was adorable during her talking head when she didn’t even know the right word for “escalator” because she had not ever been on one. Small towns will do that do you. But she performed well even though you could tell she was nervous.
I don’t know if she’ll make the Top 24 if she continues to be so nervous (she was nervous during her original audition as well), but I hope that if she does not make it that the judges give her encouragement to COME BACK and WORK ON IT during the next year. But I truly hope she makes it and is able to overcome her nerves.
At the moment, these few are really the only ones I’m rooting for, and if they all make the Top 24 live shows I will be very, very happy.
