Oh, I *completely* agree about what we want to hear!

I was just trying to say that it’s undoubtedly really really hard to do that week after week in just a few days … and that, while a lot of us grumble frequently about the old songs they so often have to choose from, when you’re asking people to change stuff up in an interesting way — in a very short period of time — it may be more realistic to pose the problem using older songs a fair amount of the time. It’s just easier to do.

For one thing, while I agree with you that there are some great stripped-down versions of new stuff out there, I don’t think we want everybody to just do stripped-down versions all the time, do we? (I actually wonder whether a partial cause of the WGWG epidemic isn’t that it’s a lot easier to make a cool new version a lot of things by stripping it down, while it tends to be harder to quickly make a cool new version by poppifying something or R&Bing it up, or whatever. So the WGWGs have an easier time looking way creative, getting a boost from their genre to do so.)

Meanwhile, for some contestants who aren’t in acoustic-heavy genres, stripping things down really isn’t a suitable strategy for them to pursue, at least not frequently. And if you don’t have ‘stripped down’ on the table all the time, then it becomes extra-super-difficult for a pop singer to significantly change up a new pop song in four days. You have to think of a new way to pop it up that still sounds current.

I want to hear great stuff too. And I sometimes think I want them to do more contemporary songs. But I just think we’re asking a *lot* when we ask this, especially of those who actually are pop singers or R&B singers, for example.

Here’s a list of all the Billy Joel songs I know:
“Allentown,” “Big Shot,” “Blond Over Blue,” “Don’t Ask Me Why,” “For the Longest Time,” “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” “Just the Way You Are,” “Moving Out,” “My Life,” “New York State of Mind,” “Only the Good Die Young,” “Piano Man,” “Pressure,” “River of Dreams,” “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” “Tell Her About It,” “Uptown Girl,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and “You May Be Right.”
Who should sing any of these? And which ones should be avoided altogether?

“I think more specifically with Billy Joels music is that many of the
songs sound more dated because with some of the songs, the lyrics refer
to a certain time in history.”

Good point. Plus, every Billy Joel song sounds exactly like every other Billy Joel song. To me, anyway.

Ummm… that coversproject thing needs some serious fact-checking. I don’t know what the hell made-up album that is, but yes Westlife did an extremely popular cover of “Uptown Girl” in 2001. 

Being a chauvinistic American, I am proud to say I never heard of Westlife before and I found the video to be cheesy to the oint of embarassing.  Then again, I am not much of a Jedward or One Dimension fan.  This kind of confirms my pointf or me that it’s difficult to do a meaningful, genuinely good cover of a BJ song, I think. 

I love Billy Joel -so I hope the Idols do him justice-haven’t read all the thread so i don’t know if the full list of his songs are here -
http://www.billyjoel.com/ 

I love the song Leningrad -which ironically Jermaine would have done well-but Erica would also be suited to this but I’d love it if she did Still RocknRoll To Me. Heejun -instead of New York State of Mind could do Miami2017[ I've seen the lights on Broadway]. Deandre could do You’re Only Human[2nd Wind].There’s quite a few songs Elise could do -some of the more jazzy style ones Billy does.