Here’s what critics around the interwebs are saying about last night’s American Idol 12 Las Vegas Sudden Death Guys round. Read my recap here.
American Idol Recap: The Boys With the Thorns in Their Sides – It’s Boys’ Night! Coincidentally, they are putting Boys’ Night on their lower-rated Thursday broadcast! Have they mentioned that they’d like you to choose a lady this year? Because they really would. In fact, the whole first few minutes of tonight’s show are about last night’s show. Ryan asks Mariah what bowled her over about the girls last night, and she says “their talent.” Except she takes about eleven minutes to get it out. Mariah Carey is shook up by her current predicament. You can feel it. – Read more at Vulture
‘American Idol’ Recap: Nicki Minaj Offers To Have Contestant’s Babies – “American Idol” continued its brand of swift Las Vegas justice Thursday, presenting 10 singers and promptly cutting half of them by the end of the two-hour semifinal episode. It was good news for glorious oddball Charlie Askew, bilingual singer Devin Velez, heartthrob-in-the-making Elijah Liu, soul singer Curtis Finch, Jr. and the earnest Paul Jolley, all of whom survived the sudden death elimination. Jolley was let through after the judges deadlocked and Jimmy Iovine was brought in to break the tie. – Read more at MTV
‘American Idol’ recap: Sudden Death round claims male victims – For its second Sudden Death Round, on Thursday night, “American Idol” pivoted from “the ladies” to “the guys.” And those dudes, while on the whole nowhere near as talented vocally as the women we’d seen sing Wednesday on the same Las Vegas stage, turned in some performances that made the ladies look tea-party tame by comparison. It was a wild night, leaving Nicki Minaj at times a bit overheated. “So far tonight, Nicki’s wanted to marry Chris’s vibrato, cradle Charlie and have Elijah’s baby,” Ryan Seacrest noted after one commercial break. – Los Angeles Times
‘American Idol’: Five Guys Eliminated in Sudden Death Rounds – Someday we will all look back on American Idol season 12 as the year when the always-brutal competition show took it one step further with the introduction of the Hunger Games-esque “sudden death” rounds. On Thursday, Randy Jackson was Head Gamemaker. The veteran Idol judge, widely mocked for his predictable “yo dawg” commentary, took unexpected and merciless swipes at the 10 guy hopefuls during the live semifinal show in Las Vegas, while Nicki Minaj dropped her Simon Cowell edge to adopt a Paula Abdul-style flirtatious glow toward several singers. – Read more at The Hollywood Reporter
”American Idol’ recap: You Should Have Listened – And now American Idol — wondrous benefactor of the Great Future Lady Winner of Season 12 — will begrudgingly show us some guys. As on Wednesday’s show, 10 contestants performed and five were cut, with Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine craning his turtle head to Seacrest at one point to “tie break” the judges’ split vote on Paul Jolley with a programmed response recited off a TelePrompter. Riveting stuff. The guys weren’t great, to put it mildly. As Mariah Carey reminded us, the ladies have been doing “uh-mazing……..ly. Woot!” – Read more at Entertainment Weekly
‘American Idol’ Vegas Rounds, Part 2: The Guys Glorify Weirdness – After an excellent start to the “American Idol” Vegas rounds this Wednesday with a batch of 10 girls, the show returned to the Cirque du Soleil theater on Thursday to do it all over again with 10 boys. And what a diverse group of boys it was. Performing in front of a live studio audience—a first for “Idol’s” top 40 semifinals—the male contestants ran the gamut from conservative country to old-school R&B, from Spanglish Beyonce to a Pete Burns/Phil Oakey/Prince clone named Josh “JDA” Davila, who gave possibly THE most outrageous “Idol” performance of all time. And interestingly, there was nary a guitar-wielding Lee DeWyze or Phillip Phillips clone in sight. Seemingly determined to ensure that a girl wins this season—or at least that a “WGWG” doesn’t—the show’s powers-that-be stacked the deck with some very atypical contestants this year. – Read more at Yahoo.com
Sudden Death, Round Two: The ‘American Idol’ recap – American Idol’s women gave the guys a lot to live up to Thursday night. A few of them measured up to the challenge, while others fell apart. Song choice presented a problem all night, and proved the undoing of promising singers like Chris Watson, whose neo-Hendrix garb and pedestrian cover of (Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay made him look like a bad oldies act. – Read more at USA Today
‘American Idol’ Recap: Five Guys Eliminated in Sudden Death Round – On this season of “American Idol,” there are apparently two kinds of contestants: singers and performers. At least, that was the case Thursday night, when 10 of the top 20 boys took to the Vegas stage to proclaim their worth to the judges. Certain singers were, well, singers, while others, though decent vocalists, pandered to the crowd rather than focusing on a whole package good enough to move on to the next round. That said, while the previous night’s girls were fairly straightforward in terms of who eventually went through, the men were a lot tougher to pin down. You had the surefire bets going in like Curtis Finch Jr., but there were also many unknowns, and not just unknowns in the sense that they were never really featured on the show beforehand, like Kevin Harris. – Read more at Billboard
“American Idol” Calls Ten Guys to the Floor, Gives Them Something to Worry About – It’s night two of Idol‘s Sudden Death rounds, and we are still in Las Vegas, and we are going to watch as five male contestants make it to the Top 20. Nicki Minaj has pink hair. But the men should be worried, because the ladies, according to Mariah Carey, are amazing. The male contestants enter the stage through the underground. The styling from the close-ups looks very MTV 1987. Five of these people will make it through to the Top 20. – Read more at Popdust
American Idol Vegas Round (Part 2) Recap: Men of a Certain Range [Updated] – Been dreaming for six years now about discovering America’s next great female artist — though not the “current” type that looks and sounds like she spontaneously sprouted from the dark, moist corner of a dumpster. (Sorry, wannabe Ke$has!) Turn-ons include girl-next-door charm, working-class backstories and the ability to crush a glory note like The Rock slamming his fist down on an empty Diet Coke can. Turn-offs include pale-skinned males who’ve ever plucked a guitar, bass, violin, eyebrow or even a chicken. In fact, if you’ve got a penis, go to The Voice. Go directly to The Voice. Do not pass the SwayBot pit and do not collect 200,000 text votes. Willingness to share our affections with 11 prior winners a must. Reply to LadiesLoveBritishNigel@aol.com. – Read more at TV Line
