American Idol Top 12 Results

Who should have been eliminated: Jena Irene
Who I predicted would be eliminated: MK Nobilette
Who was eliminated: Emily Piriz

Once again, the bottom three of my rankings were the ones with the lowest number of votes. I thought that it was hard to rank them this past week, as all of the performances were just sort of middling, without a great deal of distinction between most of them. I suppose I am glad that Jena is still around because I think she has a lot of potential.

I guess I was somewhat surprised to see Emily eliminated but maybe I was subliminally influenced by Keith Urban "guaranteeing" that she would be back next week. That was not to be, and now the two pure pop singers are out of the competition. I suppose there were not a lot of Hispanic voters who were impressed enough by her bilingual take on a Jennifer Lopez dance number to vote to save her. I also sort of wonder if a lot of Idol's female voting fanbase for some reason decided not to vote for Emily because of the video greeting her Marine boyfriend gave her. If so, I am not sure I can understand the logic behind that.

In many ways, Emily is quite similar to the singer who went out in 13th place, but besides being Latina, I thought that she was a more competent singer than Kristin O'Conner. For the most part, Emily has sounded pretty good in every live performance this season and I felt she also did a pretty fine job on her reprisal of "Stars", which was what she sang in the Hollywood Final Judgment. There was no surprise that the judges did not save her though, although we were once again told that it was "not unanimous."

Emily seemed to take the developments leading to her elimination from the show with a great deal of poise and maturity. I think she should be recognized for being able to do so, despite being pretty young and probably crushed inside that her journey would end so soon. I think she is a talented enough singer to make a living in that field, although it is probably pretty unlikely that she will ever be a major label recording star. Hopefully, this experience will help open doors to Emily in all sorts of media or entertainment avenues. She definitely is a lot more deserving than the Cuban-American from last season.

Now, Idol is down to 11 and on Wednesday, they will be singing movie songs. I think the bottom three will once again be female. With Kristen and Emily the first two to go, there probably will not be much more in the way of pop songs for the rest of the season, perhaps besides the contestants each singing their own version of Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" in the video package as they leave the show.