Here’s what critics around the interwebs are saying about last night’s American Idol 12 Top 4 Redux performance show. Read my recap here.
American Idol Recap: I Can See Clearly Now – You know how a good piece of art can take the familiar and make you see it in a brand-new way? Turns out total bullshit can do the same thing. Tonight’s Idol showed me what’s wrong with this show, with total clarity, in about a dozen different ways. The veil has been lifted from my eyes. Can we discuss it? – Read more at Vulture
‘American Idol’ recap: See You Again? – This week instead of lying to us 23 times, the judges focused on another of their talents: Hijacking the attention away from the contestants! Hooray! Why bother announcing the singers’ call-in numbers if Nicki Minaj wants to give Mariah Carey a Q-Tip during a routine cat fight? But the biggest attention-grab was the showdown between guest mentor Harry Connick Jr. and Randy Jackson. – Read more at Entertainment Weekly
‘American Idol’ Recap: Candice Glover Dominates as Finale Draws Near – If Candice Glover tops your list, then we should be best friends and then take Candice out to dinner when she inevitably loses the season-12 title to one of her vocally inferior competitors. (Let’s invite Keith Urban.) Yes, Kree “Kreedom” Harrison can carry a tune, and she’s cool and calm and consistent, but she’ll put you to sleep, too. And despite generally solid performances Wednesday, Angie Miller and Amber Holcomb were each out-sung by Candice, who nailed that Idol sweet spot — virtuoso voice plus smart song choices plus magnetic stage presence — to win both rounds and dominate the entire night. – Read more at Hollywood Reporter
‘American Idol’ final four: Who’s got the edge? – You gotta love when Harry Connick Jr. comes to American Idol to mentor the singers. He’s detail-oriented about the performances in a way that the judges only pretend to be. And, with a Top Three hometown trip hanging in the balance, Connick revealed significant flaws with most of the singers. Just sing the melody, he repeatedly told them, as they tried to tart up perfectly good songs with unnecessary runs. “Maybe some of the 14-year-olds in the audience won’t get it,” he told Candice Glover as she rehearsed Billie Holiday’s You’ve Changed, “but I’d be willing to take that risk.” – Read more at USA Today
‘American Idol’ Top 4 Redux: High Standards and Low Blows – Over the past few weeks of this “girls’ season” of “American Idol,” I’ve noticed an uncomfortable trend: The judges have repeatedly praised Angie Miller and Amber Holcomb–i.e., the two thinner contestants who tend to wear tiny shorts–as “marketable” and “current,” even when these girls performed Julie London, Celine Dion, or “MacArthur Friggin’ Park.” Conversely, the judges have blasted the two fuller-figured (though still quite attractive) contestants, Candice Glover and Kree Harrison, for being too “old-fashioned.” – Read more at Yahoo Music
American Idol Top 4 (Redux) Performance Recap: Standards Operating Procedure [Updated] – It’s no secret that American Idol‘s ratings have slipped in Season 12, and tonight — despite some stellar performances by the Top 4 ladies — we witnessed several moments where you could practically feel the Nielsen numbers dropping by tenths.
There was Randy Jackson leering at Angie Miller after a particularly harsh critique and declaring, “I do like the leather shorts!” [Tonight’s mathematical truth: Randy + the word “Leather” x Sexual Innuendo = Saw-level horror.] There was Nicki Minaj, trying to insert herself (her favorite pastime) into the middle of one of Mariah Carey’s critiques, and later, Ryan Seacrest breaking up one of the female judges’ tiffs with a “someone needs to be put in the corner!” scolding that played up the anti-feminist notion that “girls” simply can’t get along. – Read more at TV Line
‘American Idol’ Recap: A War At The Judges’ Table? – It was The Top 4: Part Deux on “American Idol”Wednesday (May 1), but the real fireworks were at the judges’ table, not with the contestants. Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey, who despite sitting a few feet apart all season long only recently started acknowledging each other’s existence, got in a pair of minor verbal skirmishes, one of which ended with Minaj trying to hand Carey a cotton swab “so you can clean them ears out!” And guest mentor Harry Connick Jr. got into it with Randy Jackson, telling the Dawg “Randy, Randy, stop!” — something viewers have wanted to tell Jackson for 12 seasons — after Jackson was caught giving bizarre mixed messages to Kree Harrison. – Read more at MTV
‘American Idol’: Harry Connick Jr. Lends a Hand – If we learned one lesson on “American Idol” tonight it’s this: bring the mentors back. They liven and changes things up for the better. They have noticeably been missed. Thank you Harry Connick Jr. He was value-added not just for the singers, but he added much needed energy to an otherwise stale season. The bonus for making it through this week on ‘American Idol’ is the much anticipated hometown visit next week, a reward for anyone who makes it to the final three. – Read more at LA Times
The Harry Connick Jr. Show: American Idol might be a joke—but he’s actually funny. – So I missed last week. But that doesn’t really count, ya know? Because there are still FOUR GIRLS in the competition. And American Idol is still pulling its desperate tricks to be talked about—now we’re sending Candice Glover to “personality training?” Shockingly, the contestants will be singing SONGS FROM 2013 tonight, but…the only bright spot is the appearance of my all-time favorite Idol mentor—Harry Connick Jr.—which also means its time for STANDARDS. – Read more at Top Idol Blog
‘American Idol’: Harry Connick Attacks! – Well, here we are again in the Final Four. It feels like we were just here. Oh, that’s right, because we were. Because last week’s dumdum elimination episode wasn’t an elimination episode at all. Nope! It was an annoying fake-out because the judges never used their save and Fox wants the finale to air on a certain date, so last week was a complete wash, it meant nothing. Ryan kept stressing last night that this was the really big night, that it was do or die now, but could anyone really care? I don’t know that anyone could muster up much energy to care. Just axe two of ’em and give us the finale and let’s be done with this whole trudge. (Though, to be fair, doesn’t it kinda feel like the season has gone by rather quickly? Am I just getting old, time speeding up terribly until my inevitable doom? Or has anyone else felt that too? Let’s hope so. Let’s hope the season just went quickly.) – The Atlantic Wire
