I believe Hollie’s best traite is the innocence in her voice…..I think no matter where she finishes she’ll have the best career going forward. The other 6 are at the top of their game now with no where to go. Hollie is all upside….a blank slate with a great natural voice.
I hope they let her continue her career, on her own pace, without people like Jimmy and the rest of the industry screwing her up.

does anyone else miss Ricky Minor?

Desperately!

I wonder whether Hollie wouldn’t be better served in some other genre. Her strength is the gorgeous tone, and she seems to aim at technical perfection, and it just doesn’t work as an interpretive strategy for Pink songs or pop or so on.

Could you sell a female classical-crossover Josh-Groban-y sort of thing? That’s where people are buying and listening for the beauty of tone and for singers who  interpret music for beauty’s sake, and doing that seems to be her interest. (I’d even suggest country if it looked as if she were interested in it …) I’d like to see her beautiful voice at work some place where its beauty would be really valued and would work well with the songs.

“As a fan of Pink, I loved Hollie’s song this week.  I agree with those
who said that she did the right thing by steering clear of sounding
karaoke.  Pink’s interpretation is defiant.  Hollie’s is inspirational. 
It was perfect for her and it was perfect to me.”

Well, I see what she did with the Pink song as sort of classical-crossover Pink!…. “Inspirational” is classical-crossover-ish rather than rock or pop to me just in general. i.e., I saw her interpretation as not being in the same genre as Pink, and I see a lot of her interpretations that way.

That doesn’t make them bad interpretations (this one didn’t work for me, but other have…). In fact, it can make them quite *good* interpretations — moving a song into another area.

But I just hear Hollie aiming at something different than rock or pop are aiming at these days, and I think it would be nice if she could get into some genre that valued the strongest aspects of her performance. Maybe it’s jazz, down the line, or something.

Gorgeous tone doesn’t feature much in most rock or pop performances, as far as I can see, so I can’t see future potential employers in those fields waving Hollie in the door on the strength of that. I think she’d be better served, singing-gig-wise, to either change her performance focus to something other than beauty (which I think would be a waste and, probably , not what she actually wants to do) or find a genre where that’s the most highly respected quality.

I think the best thing Joshua did this week was to sing a current song.  Otherwise, I’m just not a fan of this particular one.  It’s like too rushed or too many words or something, and it light of Bruno Mars’ UNREAL Grammy performance, it sort of pales in comparison.  His voice is fantastic as ever, but I think he needs the right uptempo song.  This just didn’t do it for me.

I would have to say that Jessica and Colton’s tracks were the standouts here.  The drum track for “You and I” is very distracting indeed but Elise sounds good otherwise.  Hollie’s vocals on perfect are very nice but as mj said, the emotion is lacking a bit here.

Thanks mj!

 See, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong if Hollie sang “Perfect” in a “pretty, mellow, and * * * sad[]” way.  Though I’d substitute “melancholy” for “mellow.”  Perhaps I am at an advantage in NOT being too familiar with the original version of the song.  I felt like Hollie connected with the song and was singing it to the judges who had called her out the previous week about her supposed pitchiness, AND to herself, to not buy into their criticisms of her.  Hollie isn’t P!nk, and she’s not going to be overtly angsty and rebellious in the same way.  They have different personalities and will express themselves differently.

I also don’t understand why Hollie not remaining faithful to the emotional tenor of the original song is a negative.  When artists change up a song, they often change the meaning/emotional impact as well.

FWIIW, I went back and listened to P!nk’s version (radio edit version), and paid particular attention to the lyrics.  There is nothing wrong with what Hollie did with the song, IMHO.  It’s a legitimate interpretation of the lyrics.

Skylar- I loved this one! She’s great, but a country star won’t win again this year.  (plus has anyone noticed how much she looks like Reba!?) 

Colton- Boring studio version :( Loved him live, not sure why this isn’t doing anything for me! I think he’ll make it to top 3 for sure.

Elise- I love her, but she doesn’t compare to Haley’s version of You and I. I wish Haley was on this season instead because her and Phillip would be AWESOME together in duets!!!

Hollie- Not feelin’ it. She’s adorable and has such a powerful voice, but she over-analyzes everything. She needs to not listen to anyone and just sing!

Jessica- She has never been my favorite but this version is actually pretty good! I still think there’s no chance she’s making it to the finals, especially since she got booted this week. She just doesn’t connect in my opinion…

Joshua- Okay, I loved this live, but the recorded version is so blah! Bruno Mars is tough to beat and Joshua just didn’t in my book. He’s still amazing though and I think he could easily win the whole thing. 

Phillip- I’m a lil bias when it comes to Phillip because he’s been my fav since auditions. I think every song he sings is amazing. This week was probably my least favorite though. He could have made the arrangement more exciting. He needs to drop the guitar and sing a ballad this week to show that he can sing something different and mix it up! No matter what though he’ll get my vote!

Here’s my prediction for this week:
Bottom 3: Hollie, Skylar, Elise
Eliminated: Hollie

GO PHILLIP! ;)