If You’re Coo-Coo and You Know it, Clap Your Hands: Simonese for Final 8

If You’re Coo-Coo and You Know it, Clap Your Hands: Simonese for Final 8 by Roxanne McDonald

Maybe I was off, maybe my hearing has gone, and maybe Simon was just going with a different tact this week….

I was surpised. Usually, I am thinking what Simon ends up saying. Well, not in so many exact words, but Simon is usually spot-in honest with the performers about their pieces. This week, however, I found some off-key and dull work that Simon found good. Or I was stunned by super singing that Simon said would never ever win.

I don’t know.

Here is the Simonese for the final eight, anyway, which came after Latin Week and Lopez’s lovely mentoring

(God, I love her, so nice, so nurturing, so un-Simon):

After Melinda does an actually sensuous in a reserved way version of “Sway”:

Well it had to happen, Melinda. I didn’t like it…because that song is all about personality, [but] you appeared much older than you are; I thought it was quite cabaret… [and] a bit lazy, a little bit wooden. I think you’re better than that.

After Lakisha does a rendition with stunning control of a most difficult song to perform, “Conga”:

I actually do agree with Paula: you were having fun. I’m not sure everyone at home was, though. It was safe…; the dancing wasn’t good…; it wasn’t great.

Once Chris hacks away at the otherwise sexy Rob Thomas rendition of “Smooth”:

I’m not gonna say it was the best vocal I ever heard because it wasn’t; but compared with the first two…hotel/cabaret performances, it was good.

After Haley has the smarts to showcase the legs by wearing shorts and actually delivers a spunky, spot on “Turn the Beat Around” (also terribly hard to sing):

I think you have a very good tactic at the moment, and that is wear the least amount of clothes as possible…[and have fun]. You can’t do well with your voice, because it’s not good enough, because there are better. I agree with Randy…it was so rushed at the end….

Once Phil finishes a lovely and sentimental version of “Maria, Maria”:

You’re a good singer, but I found little good in that song—flat, lifeless—so I found nothing good. Sorry.

When Jordin finishes what I thought was an un-Jordinesque, so what rendition of “The Rhythm is Gonna Get You”:

I feel about you pretty much how I felt all night, to be honest with you. I haven’t seen a progression tonight, and that’s really frustrating me.

After Blake delivers a seductive-despite-the-smarmy-getup “I Need to Know”:

Blake, best choice of song of the night, best performance so far.

And once, Lord help us, Sanjaya offers yet another flattened foisting of a song, “Besame Mucho”:

Right. I couldn’t understand a word of it. You sang like a fourteen-year-old. And I’m gonna hate myself for saying this: it wasn’t terrible.

So I differ with Simon for once. So what?

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