American Idol- Top 7

In a week when many Americans have been shaken over a horrific act of evil at a Virginia university, American Idol once again took to the airwaves and offered a bit of a diversion to its millions of viewers, as well as three times paying tribute to the Virginia Tech community.

Last week, the trend of boy/girl eliminations was broken, somewhat to my surprise and Haley Scarnato was eliminated. While I had though it would have been Phil Stacey instead, I actually was somewhat pleased, as I thought Haley was the weakest performer that week.

This week, brought the theme of country music. I was unfamiliar with just about all the songs that were featured on this program, but American Idol's red state viewers probably loved it all.

Now that Haley is gone, there are 4 males and three females remaining, and it seems quite clear to me that all the females are more talented than all the males.

Here is how I ranked them this week from best to worst:

1. Melinda Doolittle
2. LaKisha Jones
3. Jordin Sparks
4. Blake Lewis
5. Chris Richardson
6. Phil Stacey
7. Sanjaya Malakar


To the surprise of me and many others, Sanjaya was actually decent last week. This week though, he really reverted to his out of his league ways and was clearly the worst performer. But will it be enough for him to be elimated? Sadly, probably not, at least for one more week, as it has been quite a while since he has even been in the bottom three.

The judges seemed to like Phil's performance more than I did, and found more in LaKisha's number to criticize than I did. For some reason, I get the vibe that Phil may have had his experience in the competition and would be content with being voted off. He seemed resigned to that last week and a bit surprised when he was not. I got the sense that he was even sort of just going through the motions while singing his song tonight.

I think LaKisha did a smart thing though by singing a Carrie Underwood song. That allowed her to endear herself to the very Idol country fans that had made Carrie the winner a couple years back. In a theme, when LaKisha might find herself at risk, because her fans may not really be all that into the theme, and thus perhaps not watching in as great of numbers, she also probably made a wise move by singing a song called "Jesus Take the Wheel", which could generate some heavy Evangelical support.

I am not all that familiar with the song, but I think he might be a better option than letting Billy Joel take the wheel.

So, who is going home? I have seemed to stay Phil Stacey several times now and he always survives, but really, I think it's all about fan base at this point in time, and I do not know who a more obvious candidate would be for elimination.

When is Bon Jovi night going to be already?