American Idol- Top 8

Last week, I predicted incorrectly that Phil Stacey would be eliminated. However, as I suspected might happen, not enough of Gina Glocksen's core base of rock fans tuned in based on that night's theme and she was sent back to the metropolis of Naperville, Illinois.

I also should have realized that this season, like in every season that I seem to recall, the finalists are eliminated on a boy/girl/boy/girl basis at this stage of the comeptition. Hmmm, it almost makes you wonder if it could be planned that way. It might make the lineup for the summer tour easier to produce as to order of perfomance. So, the thinking going into this week, is that it will be a male contestant's time to be eliminated.

Tonight's theme was Latin music and the special guest mentor was JLo who as far as we can tell, has not left Marc Anthony for any of the American Idolists. The round of competition featured some music by Puerto Ricans and Mexicans but also a good deal of the (anti-Castro) Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. I wonder if Tom Tancredo decided to boycott this week.

All in all, I think that most of the contestants were not as good as they have previously been, but do the particular genre and the importance of song selection, there were some pretty unusual results in my rankings this week from best to worst:

1. Blake Lewis
2. Jordin Sparks
3. Melinda Doolittle
4. LaKisha Jones
5. Sanjaya Malakar (yes, I am shocked too)
6. Phil Stacey
7. Chris Richardson
8. Haley Scarnato

I have to say that I think Haley was pretty subpar vocally. She once again resembled Kathie Lee Gifford, this time trying to rap to a latin beat. She was the worst one, but because of that boy/girl thing and the fact that the votes of the state of Texas (perhaps increased with more Latino viewers this week,)she may survive for another week, although nobody should be shocked if she does not.

As for Sanjaya, the most famous American this side of Don Imus and Larry Birkhead, he actually was not the worst. Not even in the bottom three! I had actually suspected that he would choose to perform either Ricky Martin's "Shake Your Bon Bon" or Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" and either thrill or repulse America with his dance moves, but instead he chose to go a different route, with the oldie Besame Mucho. The song was done with verses in both English and Spanish and Sanjaya was actually much better doing the Spanish where I could not understand exactly what he was saying. That should be a lesson for him: sing in languages other than English.

So, as I have done before, I am predicting that it will be the follically challenged Phil Stacey who will be watching a video tribute set to the music of another bald American Idol contestant on tomorrow night's result show. But I have been off base with these predictions for a few weeks now, so that might be good news for Phil.