I’ve Got To Have A Mohawk Before I’m 30

I’ve Got To Have A Mohawk Before I’m 30

by Paulette Frank

Thank God Crystal made it. How mad would the guys have been if they’d all had their mani-pedis interrupted yesterday for nothing? I’m wondering whether they’re even going to mention her illness–I know full well they’re not going to be so cool as to actually tell us what really happened. But Ryan brings it up right off the bat after the girls do their run past the camera making retard faces, pulling Crystal to center stage, talking about how she was in the hospital last night and how she’d had a rough 24 hours, and then asking how she’s doing. She’s okay. “I’m a tough cookie,” she tells him, which is not a phrase one usually uses about oneself, right? But whatever. She’s great, so she gets a pass. After she walks off to prepare, Ryan introduces the judges and we get some words of wisdom from Randy, about how last night some of the guys were really trying to win this thing. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I think most people on AI really don’t care one way or the other who wins, right?? Then Ellen talks about how important song choice is, and tells us how she sang “Who Let The Dogs Out?” at her grandmother’s funeral, and how that was the wrong choice. “Sorry, Nana,” she says to the ceiling, and then we’re treated to weird, uncomfortable, awful mock flirting from Kara and Simon after Ryan notes that Kara’s chair seems to be getting closer and closer to Simon’s. Lucky for us, Ryan cuts it short. “Well, this is uncomfortable,” he says. “Simon, how about some advice, seriously, for the ladies tonight. What would you want to say to them?” According to Simon, this week is more important than last week, and they’ve got to remember the words and the melodies and stuff. Right-O.

So Crystal is up first, and we find out that she has a twin brother named Carl who’s a square, and also that at some point in the past few years, her family thought it was a good idea to don leather jackets and neckties and go to Glamour Shots. Come on, Crystal, I know you’ve got a less embarrassing picture than that SOMEWHERE, right? Get someone to snap a picture of Carl with a cell phone and text it to you. We’re then reminded of what the judges thought of her rendition of “Hand In My Pocket”, especially the part about how Simon said that if he heard that outside a subway station, he wouldn’t stop in his tracks and go, “You are the most original artist I’ve ever heard.” It seems Crystal and I share the tendency to pick out the worst bits and pieces of what people have to say, because all she heard was, “I wouldn’t stop in my tracks,” which isn’t exactly what he meant. She said that when she did used to perform at the subway, some people would stop and listen. But anyway, her goal this week is to prove to Simon that she WOULD make him stop on a subway platform. So she’s doing CCR’s “As Long As I Can See The Light”. And oh my God. It’s beautiful. I don’t really know what to say about it. It opens with just organ music and her voice, and yeah, she said it would have a kind of gospel-churchy spin, but it’s much more than that. Then she starts in with her guitar, and she seems much calmer this week, so I’m not distracted by the nervous breathiness that got me last week. She’s the kind of performer that moves you, and I’m moved. And I’m rapt, and a little teary. Everything is perfect. Randy loves it, talking about how she’s the truth, and she’s not trying to be anyone else, and 50 weeks from now, she’s still going to be that girl. “I love that girl! That girl is hot!” Ellen says that it’s just pure, raw, natural talent, and she was scared Crystal wouldn’t be there, and tells her to please stay healthy, because we need her. “I’m working on it,” Crystal says. Then Kara says, “You completely recovered … from last week. ‘You Oughtta Know’ is a more contemporary song, and it just didn’t fit you.” What? Just pick any old Alanis song, Kara. “This is who you are,” she tells her. “You are that Americana rock.” She talks about how she’s effortless and centered and focused the way the greats are, and it’s coming from her heart, and she hit a new level. Then Simon takes this sip of whatever concoction is hiding in his Coke cup, all slow and deliberate like he’s about to deliver some bad news and is relishing it. But then he talks about how he knows how ill she was yesterday, and it wasn’t just like catching a cold or something, which I thought was pretty cool of him. I’m sure there were people (okay, maybe I was one of them) who thought there may have been some overdramatization going on, but Simon pretty much fixed it. I’m actually convinced. He likes that she didn’t play the sympathy card (although I’m not quite sure how she could have … “Ladies and gentlemen, rather than perform tonight, I’m going to tell you all the places I’ve puked in the past 48 hours and how I got to get a catheter.”), and then tells her, “I completely misunderestimated you from last week.” Hey, you and me both, Simon. And George W., of course. He likens the performance to the moment they all realized with Kelly Clarkson that they had a serious artist on their hands. When Ryan joins her, he fixes the “You Oughtta Know”/“Hand In My Pocket” issue, and then when he announces the number to call, Crystal goes and holds up two fingers, then seems to realize it’s the wrong number and switches it to one finger. But she was actually flashing the peace sign. Cool.

Haeley Vaughn in all her lispy, smiley, adorableness is up next. She tells us how she loves to make headbands, and we see Michael Lynche in one of her creations, and then she talks about last week’s performance, which everyone but Ellen pretty much hated. Simon said she was like a windup doll that never stopped smiling through her performance, so she says she’s going to try not to smile so much, but it’s hard because she’s such a bubbly, happy person. Then for, like, 30 seconds of film (take after take after take after take), she tries to not smile, but can only hold for about .73 second at a time. She’s doing Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb”, and, okay, it wasn’t very good. It actually starts off well, all the way to the chorus, and then it’s a little shaky, but even then I’m still fine with it. But then she takes the mic off the stand and it gets more pitchy and just worse. But I still don’t care! Usually when people sing off-key, I sort of cringe and just want to put my hands over my ears so I won’t be embarrassed for them , but when Haeley does it, I still want to listen. What’s the deal with that? The judges aren’t under the same spell I am, though. Randy starts off his bashing by confirming with her that she wants him to keep it real with her. It was excruciating for him. Ellen starts her bashing off by talking about how she’s got a great smile and she should never stop smiling and she’s adorable. There was no connection between Haeley and the song, though. Kara just goes right into her bashing by telling her she’s got the Alex Lambert factor with people rooting for her at home. “Unfortunately, honey, you need about a year of really strengthening your instrument.” Nice, Kara. Get her into the Top 24 before you tell her that. Now she can’t come back. Beautiful. “Look, I agree,” says Simon. “I don’t want to make this any worse than it already is, because it was a complete and utter mess.” Then he talks about how it should’ve worked in theory, but how it’s ironic that she sang this song about climbing and she actually fell off. The judges chatter about that for a few seconds before the AI music starts and Ryan asks, “How is that not making it any worse? What good did that do?” Ooh, silence. Very uncomfortable silence.

We hear a little bit about what Lacey does with antiques but it’s not very interesting. Definitely not worth repeating. We hear about her last performance, which Simon found boring, and Lacey apologizes to America for possibly boring us. We’re reminded that Kara thought a Sixpence None The Richer song would’ve suited her better, and then we find out that she’d taken Kara’s advice and is going to do “Kiss Me”, but she’d been planning to do it all along anyway. And for good reason, really, because it suits her voice really well at times, mostly because she sounds so much like what’s-her-name. But still, though, it’s just kind of blah. And whenever she starts to get into it and put a little more into her voice, the tone gets unattractive. Randy feels like it was a good choice, or would’ve been, but she didn’t really bring anything to it and it was too karaoke. Ellen, though, is all about some Lacey and thinks it was great. Kara likes the song choice (!) and liked her tone, but thinks she should’ve done more with it and needs to step it up. Simon feels like she’s taking part in a competition rather than showcasing who she is as an artist, and tells her she sucks and Crystal rocks. And then does his best shocked expression when people boo.

Now it’s Katie Stevens’ turn, and she talks about how it’s pretty much all Crystal’s fault that all the people she knows can’t watch her perform on TV because they’d been planning to watch last night and it got switched and now they can’t watch. Because there’s a No TV on Wednesday’s rule in Connecticut. She can say “give me a kiss” in six different languages, and tonight she’s going to try to be more modern since she’s 17 and the judges thought it seemed like her parents dressed her and picked out her song last week. She does “Put Your Records On” and I have this vague memory of thinking she had a great voice at some point, but I’m listening and wondering what I was thinking. The song is too low for me to really tell what her voice is like, but then when it gets higher it sounds better except for this one sour note, but it’s still just blah. Randy felt like he caught a glimpse of the Audition-Katie when she was in the upper register, but Ellen was reminded of the music she hears at the dentist’s office and wants her to be more hip. Kara wants her to pull the audience in from the beginning of the song, and also to choose songs that don’t just sound good on the radio. Simon wants her to demonstrate what kind of recording artist she wants to be, and thinks it wasn’t a winning performance but she’ll stick around another week because people like her (not me, I find her rather boring).

Next is Didi Benami, whom I’ve really liked from the very beginning, tears and all. She tells us that before she goes on stage, she meows to open up her vocal cords. Simon thought last week that her performance was a bit indulgent, and she thought there might be an alternate meaning because his calling her performance indulgent didn’t make sense to her. So she looked it up. It just means indulgent. Still though, she’s doing “Lean On Me” to show she can connect with the audience and bring up her star meter a little bit. She’s half-sitting on a stool and the melody at first is almost recognizable, and it’s a little jolting, but it’s really just the first couple of lines and then when she gets to the chorus it’s closer and better, and I sort of love it. I really like her voice, and for now, it’s bluesy and doesn’t seem to totally fit her, but it still is really good. She stands up and is trying to get into it, stomping one foot and sort of trying to put on a performance, but she seems uncomfortable. But it’s still really enjoyable and it sounds really quite good. When she gets done, she smiles at Randy and looks happy to be done but also happy to have done well, but that doesn’t last. Randy says white girl got no soul, and Ellen loves her voice and loves Bill Withers but thinks it wasn’t the right song but doesn’t say why, and Kara just says, “Didi, it wasn’t good. It really wasn’t good.” Then, because a scout from Team Bitch is in the audience, she says some other stuff, ending with, “It wasn’t good. But I’m still a fan of yours.” And Didi says with a smile plastered on her face, “Thank you,” and Kara continues, “Even though this was not good.” Thanks for the input, Kara. I just wish I could be clear on whether or not you thought it was good. Simon says she continued the cat theme and tells her it was screechy and all over the place, and he’s frustrated that she wasted this opportunity to sing in front of millions of people. So then Ryan goes up to Didi and says something to her and she just looks at him with that same plastered smile, and he tells her he knows it’s tough and asks whether she can make anything out of it, make it a positive, and all she can do is smile and shrug and look away, and you know if she opens her mouth at all, she’ll be sobbing. I want her to stay on the show now not just because I like her much more than a few others and I think she’s good, but also because if she gets kicked off and is forced to sing that song again when she thinks the entire world hates it … well, I think that’s just inhumane.

Michelle Delamor is apparently taking some sort of risk by doing Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open”, though I’m not sure what it is. All she does to the song is make it incredibly boring, and it’s fine, technically, though she stays mostly in her head voice. The last note, though, is just weak and kind of terrible and makes me immediately forget that the rest of the song was fine. Randy loves her outfit, which appears to be a strapless white mini-dress with a poofy skirt, a short black leather jacket, and skinny jeans. Or leggings, maybe. Randy thinks she didn’t do enough with the song, but Ellen doesn’t agree, though she agrees about the outfit. Kara then tells her very slowly and dramatically that it was her favorite performance of hers ever, even though it may not have been technically perfect. It was believable, apparently, and she took a risk. And Simon agrees, then tries to ask Vera Wang, who’s in the audience, whether the outfit is indeed good. But all we see is Michelle’s family. Thanks, camera crew.

Next is Lilly Scott, who last week showed me she’s not as cool as I thought she was, and her hippie indie chick act is just an act. I could deal with her favorite peacock feather earrings, and whatever the hell she’s got hanging from her right ear tonight (it’s some kind of huge, huge, huge feather, I think) would’ve been okay if she’d put one on her left ear, too, but the fact that it’s only on one makes me feel like she’s trying to make some kind of a statement, which just bugs the hell out of me. Okay, so she’s singing “A Change Is Gonna Come”, and a few weeks ago, I would’ve adored it. But now all I can think about is how she seems forced and she’s trying so hard to be different and yeah, maybe Crystal’s trying to be unique with her hair, too, but she still seems so natural. Randy thinks it’s the best performance of the night, and Ellen thinks it was by far the best performance of the night, and she doesn’t know exactly what ‘it’ is but feels Lilly has ‘it’, and Kara tells her she had her first ‘moment’, and then explains what that means, and talks about she was riveted, and Lilly‘s going to be the reason why people who wouldn’t normally try out for AI are going to try out. Simon thought it was good but wasn’t crazy about it and thought she oversang it in parts, and then told her Crystal did better. And then Lilly looked all pissy and bitchy.

Katelyn Epperly is up next, and I don’t know what it is about her, but I just don’t like her. The thing is, though, that I really enjoy listening to her sing, and usually I can’t separate the two. But I did like her “Oh, Darling” performance last week (man, we have to listen to her talk about her makeup habits again), and this week, she’s doing “The Scientist” by Coldplay. It’s just her and the piano, and it’s very slow and really very beautiful, and I’m sort of stunned that she hits these big, beautiful notes sitting down, and she’s this enigma to me. How can I dislike her so much but still love hearing her sing? What I don’t like, though, is watching her. She had the “Mad World” blue lights on her and she was trying to look as emotional as Adam looked while she stared into our eyes, I think, but it just seemed fake. I know that I really should be letting performance fakeness go, because it’s got to be hard to get really into just one song, especially in a contest situation, but I’m not ready to let go just yet. Sorry. Randy thought it was too slow but he really liked it, and Ellen liked that she was playing guitar … “You weren’t playing guitar,” she corrects herself. “You were playing piano.” Ellen then blames Katelyn for the mix-up, because the song sort of put her to sleep. Kara understands what Randy and Ellen are saying, but then tells Katelyn that she kind of loves her, and says how she’s got this incredible instrument, but it’s a problem because she’s switching things up each week. One week she’s doing a rock song, and the next she’s doing “Oh, Darling” (and Kara, of course, has to sing the title of the song so we’ll all say, “OMG Kara you have an AMAZING voice!!”, except I didn’t say that–I only puked), and she’s reaallly goood, but she needs to figure out really quickly what kind of artist she is. Then Simon accuses her of plagiarizing Natasha Bedingfield, who apparently did an almost identical version, but Katelyn pleads ignorance. Despite the cheating or whatever, Simon thinks this week was a million times better than last week, but she needs to work on not being corny when she performs. Katelyn blames the corniness on her hiatus from solo performances and says she’s getting used to working with cameras and maybe she’s trying too hard.

Next is Paige Miles, who enjoys coloring before going out on stage. Yes, like, ‘don’t go outside the lines’ coloring. With a crayon. She’s doing “Walk Away” by Kelly Clarkson, and last week, Simon told her she had the best voice out of all the girls, though he wasn’t basing it on that performance. And definitely not this one either. It was actually okay through most of it, but then came this big, huge, note that I’m sure Kelly would’ve belted out, but all she did was sing it as loudly as she could in her head voice. What the hell? It was terrible. Randy asks her if she knows who wrote the song, and she does know that Kara wrote it. But Randy didn’t hear her voice enough through it because there were too many short notes, but Ellen completely disagrees and thinks it was fantastic and thought she changed just enough and was very energetic. Then Kara talks for three and a half hours about how she was feeling when she wrote the song and how if Paige knew how she’d been feeling, she wouldn’t have been smiling throughout the song. Simon agrees with Randy and thinks Paige is making bad decisions with the songs and it was forgettable.

Siobhan Magnus is last, and I still don’t know what to think of her. She doesn’t seem natural to me. But then we see a picture of her with a mohawk from a year and a half ago, and I understand what’s wrong. She needs to ditch the dresses and go back to the mohawk, because it totally, totally suits her. “I’ve always said, ‘I’ve gotta have a mohawk before I’m 30, I’ve just got to!’” she tells us. She’s going to do “Think” by Aretha Franklin because that’s the meaty kind of singing that she likes to do most. So she’s singing, and her voice is sort of strained like she needs to open her throat like it always sounds to me. It sort of reminds me of Wynona Judd’s voice, which is also strained, although Siobhan’s really is far better. It’s fine for a bit, then there’s this awful, awful pitchy part, and then it’s time for the whole “freedom” part. That part is really good, really powerful. And then there’s that other note, the ‘WAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!’ note, which is really, really, high. And for a couple of seconds, it sounds good, just because it’s the right note, but then it turns awful somehow, sort of really thin and just screamy-screechy or something, but it’s still the right note. And the crowd goes wild, and when the song ends a few seconds later, they go even more wild, and Randy has to shout the first part of his judgement because of the cheers, and he says he loved it. He thinks she slayed it and she’s really dope. Ellen loved it, too, and she talks about how most people would say not to take on such a big song. “But, you know, they also said don’t mix sleeves with a blanket, and look at the Snuggie. It’s huge.” Kara can’t get over that note and wonders if there’s some kind of correlation between Siobhan’s occupation as a glassblower’s apprentice and her ability to hit that note. Siobhan confides that she learned how to sing that high when she was belting out Kelly Clarkson tunes in the shower two and a half or three years ago. Simon points out that she’s such a strange person but says it’s a compliment, then says there were parts of the song that were terrible, but then there was that note that was incredible. “But you are interesting, and very, very talented,” he concludes. Ryan wants to know if she’d been at all worried about that note, and she tells him it was the part she was least worried about because it was her favorite part.

After we see a recap of the night, Ryan gives the judges a chance to sum up the night, and Randy says there were a lot of bright spots, but then all he can really think about is Siobhan’s note. Ellen and Kara agree that there were a lot of good performances and that there was progress from last week, and Simon agrees, as well, but then also points out that there were horrific performances, too. But then he gives nine girls a little dose of reality all at once. “For me, the person that stood out … was Crystal.” I’m hoping she stood out to everyone else, too, and that going first didn’t hurt her. I guess we’ll find out on Thursday. Maybe we’ll also find out that Lacey’s overdue exit has arrived or that other people are as bored with Michelle and Katie as I am.