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American Idol Finals - Top 2, May 20, 2008
By PopSavant | May 20, 2008 | Email This Post
And then there were two. Hello everyone, and welcome to the liveblog of the final show of American Idol Season 7, from May 20, 2008. It’s David vs. David tonight. Going in, my money is on David Cook. I think he’s the more talented of the two. David Archuleta seems like a nice kid, but honestly I just don’t get the whole amazing child prodigy thing that everyone seems to want him to be. He’s adequate. Not great, maybe not even very good. Maybe he will be in time, but for now he’s just nice and likable. Perhaps the right producer could make him a star.
Anyway. We’ll see how it plays out tonight.
8pm: The show starts with Michael Buffer giving us the fight announcer treatment - did you know that’s he’s actually trademarked the famous “rumble” phrase? Maybe that’s why he sticks with “This is AMERICAN IDOL!” tonight. Carrying on with the boxing motif, David Cook comes out from the red corner complete with boxing robe, and David Archuleta comes from the blue corner. They bounce around confusedly for a bit, and then the festivities roll over to Ryan, who looks like he’s having eyeliner problems tonight.
Ryan tells us that each contestant will be singing three songs, and they go back with the boxing stuff, having Jim Lampley give us a little pre-fight segment for the contestants. Silly, but I love Lamps; he’s always solid. David Archuleta won a coin toss, and made the obvious decision to go second tonight. David Cook says he has “a tall order in front of him trying to keep up with this kid.”
Randy suggests each contestant has to “drop it hard” tonight. Paula tells them to “soak it all up.” Simon says “you’ve got to have a desire to win and you’ve got to hate your opponent,” which is perhaps the best quote in Idol history… very Gore Vidal. Archuleta immediately ignores Simon, saying that David Cook is amazing. Cook responds “great, now anything I say is going to be trite….” and goes on to say that as far as he’s concerned the competition is over and they’re just having fun tonight. Believe that if you want.
The first song for each contestant will be chosen by music industry legend Clive Davis. He explains that he looked for a song that captured the “yearning of a generation” for David Cook, eventually coming up with U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
David Cook starts off; the resident guitar player is nodding with a twinkle in his eye as he starts the intro; I wonder if he’s got a prediction. David has a bit of gravel in his voice that’s not completely un-Bono-like as he makes his way through the crowd to the platform behind the judges. He’s got the right look and the right vibe, and he didn’t do a straight U2 ripoff which was good, but other than the fact that the source material is fantastic I can’t say that he did anything particularly memorable with it. Randy says “I think it was a great way to start off… I don’t know if you did everything you could do with it, but I loved the scoop up with the note at the end.” Randy’s right, the last note was a great choice. Paula thinks David “arrived” tonight. Simon says “you looked very tense and very emotional” at the start of the show, but “taking all of that into account, it was phenomenal.” I’ll give this performance a B-.
David Archuleta sings Elton John’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. I don’t like the first few lines, his voice needs to be much more full, but I’m comparing him to the Elton version and maybe that’s not fair. He starts off sitting on the stairs and then slowly descends, using that gold spotlight everyone uses during this song since George Michael did his version. In fact, Archuleta is much more in sync with George’s version than Elton’s. The backup singers are overwhelming at one point, but this is a very solid performance top to bottom. Even being a bigger David Cook fan, I’ll give round one to David Archuleta. Randy thinks it was one of the best performances of the entire season, saying it was “flawless… crazy!” and keeps interjecting “crazy!” throughout Paula’s comment, when she says “the sun is never going to go down on you.” Simon says “I thought last week, you were okay. I thought this week is the best you’ve done so far.” Simon then copies me: “Round one goes to Archuleta.” Letter grade: A-.
The second round starts… American Idol took the top ten songwriter entries, and let each David pick their favorite to sing for the fans tonight. Cook picks a song called Dream Big, and Archuleta chooses In This Moment… from the titles alone, it sounds like they’re each playing right to their stereotypes.
David Cook comes out with a anthemic rocker…. “If you don’t dream big, what’s the use of dreaming” is one lyric. He gives it the big guitar-band treatment. It’s one of those automatic, cash money pop songs… probably not a number one, but it could get some airplay, and is destined to get picked up as the bumper music for some college basketball tournament show or Mentos commercial or something like that. It’s… a decent performance, and that’s about it. It’s Randy says “the song was just okay for me, but you were singing your face off… nice, nice.” Paula says “we sit in awe, mesmerized by you.” Simon says “using the boxing analogy, it was a bit of a lightweight.” Another B- from me.
David Archuleta sings In This Moment after the commercial. What’s to say about it? It’s adult contemporary… the kind of inoffensive, dreamy song that’s tailor-made for an Idol finale. Smart of Archuleta, picking a song that instantly works as a winning Idol clip; you’re already thinking it even if you don’t agree with the result. What can you say about it? It’s a phone-it-in, nothing-risked performance. If Cook had had a blockbuster this would have disappointed… but he didn’t, and this is good enough to overcome his performance. Randy says “once again, I wasn’t crazy about the song… but right now you’re so in the zone you could sing the phone book and it would be good.” Simon says “I love the egotistical lyric… fantastically self-centered. You definitely chose the better song, more in keeping with the night… round two goes to David Archuleta. Simon’s right, it does. I give it a B for the performance, an A+ for the image.
Third Round…
The contestants chose the song for this round.
David Cook chose The World I Know, by Collective Soul. Fantastic song,but is it right for this show? Let’s see what he does with it. He’s back to 1990’s modern rock, and he looks downright nervous as he plays the acoustic guitar… he knows the night is riding on this song. I hate to say it… it’s an excellent performance, exactly the right feel and tone for the vibe, but I don’t think it’s enough to win by itself. He needed a big show-closing moment, and this song didn’t give it to him. David cries at the end, probably the all the emotion of the season crashing down on him. Randy says “very nice job dude.” Paula says “you’re standing in your truth” - whatever the hell that means - “I truly applaud you David Cook.” Simon says “I just want to say publicly you are one of the nicest, most sincere contestants we’ve had…. that was a completely and utterly the wrong song choice for you tonight” and suggests that he should have recapped his Billie Jean performance. David responds that he views the competition as a progression, and why do a song he’s already done before, but he allows that he knows what Simon is talking about. Simon winks at him. I’ll give it a B.
David Archuleta will sing Imagine. Points off for him in my book for redoing a song; David Cook was right about that, IMHO. Still, let’s give it a listen. He goes for big notes early and lands them… good for him; most Idols would have saved it for one big one at the end, good for him for proving he’s got more where that came from. The performance seems a bit choppy due to the time constraints, but there’s nothing wrong with David’s voice. Randy offers “dude, you are so good tonight, you are exactly what the show is about… the best singer of season seven is right there!” Paula says “you’ve left me speechless…” okay, all of a sudden, I’m an Archuleta fan. Simon adds “this show is about finding a star… you came out here tonight to win, and what we have witnessed is a knockout.” I’ll give this another B.
Summary / Conclusion
And there you have it. The judges clearly think Archuleta will take the prize tomorrow night. Will he? I’m not 100% convinced. If you judge by tonight, he probably deserves it. Judging by the whole season? I still say Cook is the better of the two. David Archuleta, should he find the right producer, will have an admirable career, and be trotted out for every national anthem and awards show for the next ten years. David Cook, however, actually has a chance to do something interesting with his career. Maybe Arch will, too, at some point… but right now all I can say is that I’d buy Cook’s album, I’m not sure I’ll buy Archuleta’s.
We’ll see who wins tomorrow night.
Topics: American Idol, TV |
