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Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

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  • American Idol Season 10 – Who Makes The Final 11?

    I understand the Black Eyed Peas perform tonight. Sigh. That just means I’m going to see the Fergie-monster in my nightmares when I go to sleep. And David Cook, I mean Kris Allen, I mean Lee DeWyze is also going to perform tonight.

    Last night, I thought Miss Haley and Miss Naima performed pretty badly. I think Miss Karen could also be on the cutting block, but J. Lo loves her too much for people to see how pedestrian she’s been so far.

    I think the Idol contestants are performing a Born This Way and Born To Be Wild mash-up. All the members of Steppenwolf decided to put on t-shirts made out of meat to show their disproval.

    Ryno calls Jacob, Lauren, and Casey to the stage. It’d be hard to imagine either of the three being in any real danger. Ryno tells Jacob he’s safe and he has to pretend that he was worried. Ryno tells Lauren that she’s safe too. Ryno tells Casey he is also safe. He thought he was a goner. I think he fell for the banana in the tailpipe. Come on Casey! You know you weren’t going anywhere son!

    Ryno calls up Haley and Paul. Haley already has the boo-boo face going. She knew what was coming. She and her red lipstick are in the bottom three, while Paul is safe. [sarcasm]Yay! More drunken dancing![/sarcasm]

    That ever original artist who sounded nothing like the two previous American Idol winners before him, Lee DeWyze is singing his new song Beautiful Like You. Blake Lewis just gave Lee a thumbs down and said at least he was a creative cookie-cutter white guy.

    Ryno asks Lee to give the Idol contestants advice and Lee starts with, “I mean …” No really Lee, it’s not like we didn’t understand you and you had to reiterate considering you didn’t say anything before saying, “I mean.” Crystal Bowersox lost to this dude?

    Ryno brings Scotty, Pia, and James to the stage. If either of these are in the bottom three, we riot. Ryno tells Scotty that he’s safe. He says that Pia is also safe. He finally tells Big Game James that he’s safe too.

    That leaves us with Stefano, Naima, Thia, and Karen.

    He brings up Stefano and Naima to the stage. One is safe and one is in the bottom three. Stefano, the new Elliott Yamin is safe, and Naima is in the bottom three. He then brings up Karen and Thia. Karen is in the bottom three. Maybe the audience is finally seeing through Karen’s very so-so performances.

    The Black Eyed Peas are on stage. Fergie has a dreamboat body, but a shipwreck face. They’re performing Just Can’t Get Enough. Fergie has either had bulldog cheek implants, or she had a bad day. Fergie’s one of those girls who looks good from afar. Oh yah, the song is pretty wack. Dirty bit.

    We’re back to the bottom three. Your girl Naima is safe. So it’s down to Haley’s lipstick and Karen. Whoa, Karen is the goner! Ryno’s trying to tell Karen that the judges may bring her back. We know that’s not happening. She could sing La Bamba with the ghost of Richie Valens behind her and they’re not bringing her back. She could’ve asked a very pregnant Mariah Carey waddle out on stage and sing Hero with her and they weren’t going to save her.

    Randall says they’re not going to use the save on Karen, but it wasn’t unanimous. I think we know who tried to keep her. Here’s a hint: her name is Jennifer Lopez.

    Seacrest out!

    Photo of Fergie by Wikipedia and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

  • American Idol Season 10 – Who Makes The Final 12?

    If you missed last night’s American Idol show, head over to Popblerd!, which is where I’ll be writing my Wednesday play-by-plays. On this website, I’ll do the Thursday show, recapping who goes home.

    Last night, I thought Karen, Ashthon, and Thia could be in the bottom three. I also don’t know for sure how many folks are being eliminated tonight. I seem to remember the last time they brought thirteen to the finals, they eliminated two on the first night.

    Puffy and Dirty Money and Adam Lambert are on stage tonight (in separate performances) for the show. Diddy can have his Dirty Money. But give me my Danity Kane and Day 26 back, and even Donnie Klang if you have to.

    Ryno Seacrest said that Casey was sick and in the hospital, so he wasn’t on stage tonight. The group is performing Michael Jackson’s Wanna Be Starting Something and Rock With You. I couldn’t really tell how the performance was because I was too busy looking at Pia and waiting for her to appear on screen again. I do know that Jacob Lusk was doing some terrible dancing. They also went into Black Or White and Man In The Mirror. Looks like Thia wanted to sing Smile again, but they vetoed her and told her these were real Michael Jackson songs.

    Ryno interviewed Amanda Seyfried who is in the new movie, Red Riding Hood. Seyfried looks like she could’ve been in the animated film A Bug’s Life and she wouldn’t even need to be animated. Her eyes are so big, it’d take hubcaps to blind fold her. And I think the wolf is offended in the movie when she tells him, “What big eyes you have.”

    Ryno pulls Jacob, Stefano, and Karen to the stage. Karen is in the bottom three. Jacob and Stefano hugged like they just won the World Series.

    Adam Lambert is singing Aftermath. His hair is more poofy this time, like a young Brandon Walsh in his prime. And I’m jealous. I think he’s sizing up James Durbin for competition as Idol’s biggest wailer. There was this very odd live television moment where Ryno said he Dougie’d to the remix of Lambert’s song and then J. Lo called him out on it. She then bopped her shoulders back and forth and can get away with it because she can actually dance and she’s J. Lo. Though I’m not sure that was quite enough Dougie.

    Ryno invited Lauren, Ashthon, and Haley to the stage. Lauren isn’t leaving. We know this, man. She’s safe. Haley and Ashton are in the bottom three. Well, I predicted all girls, but I got the wrong third girl. Thia’s peoples definitely represented for her.

    Puffy and his Dirty Money crew are on stage to perform Coming Home. Where the heck is my girl Dawn? And why is Skylar Grey here? Wait, she may sing on the actual song.

    (I was told that Dawn was there, but for whatever reason, I missed her.)

    Did you know that Diddy hates the songs Tears Of A Clown and A House Is Not A Home? Did you also know that it’s easy to be Puff, but harder to be Sean? And really, it’s hard for him when his twins ask him why he ain’t marry their mom. Did you also know that he would’ve taken the bullet if he saw it?

    Puff decided to talk to the crew and you could see it in Jacob Lusk’s eyes that he was so happy that he didn’t try to make the band. He didn’t want to be the next E. Ness, Young City, Babs Bunny, or Q.

    Ryno is back with the girls in the bottom three. Karen is safe. If Haley is eliminated, we riot. Ashthon just gave Puff a dirty look because she’s coming home. She has to sing for the judges now to see if she’ll be saved.

    Ashthon did Diana Ross again and it was better than last night, but it’s not good enough to be saved. Ashthon is gone. David Cook sings Ashthon home. He sings the new goodbye song and it’s his own version of Don’t You Forget About Me. And it’s pretty terrible. She joins the likes of Brandon Rodgers, Vanessa Olivarez, Lindsey Cardinale, and David “Stripper” Hernandez as folks who are eliminated in the first week of the finals.

  • Paul’s Song Journal 3/10/11: OMD’s “History of Modern Part 1”

    Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily contemplating the end of, like, everything.

    ”History of Modern (Part 1)”
    Here’s the recently reunited British synth-pop pioneers Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark with the third single and title track from their latest album History of Modern, their first full-length studio record since 1996. While the band is best remembered for “If You Leave”, their contribution, via the soundtrack of Pretty in Pink, to the mid-80s John Hughes hit parade, it’s worth remembering that such lovely, lush, and lovelorn ballads (see also “Secret”, “So In Love”, “Forever Live and Die”) were the exception more than the rule in a catalog full of songs about technology, communications, science and religion.

    This is a band that named one of their albums Architecture & Morality (and boy, did they mean it!), and who turned the bombing of Hiroshima into one of the most chipper, urgently effervescent pop singles of the 80s (and that at the dawn of the Reagan Administration, when World War III seemed like a real possibility to this nine-year-old kid in Paddock Lake, Wisconsin, when the President could make a joke about outlawing Russia and letting the bombing commence immediately.)

    It’s that tradition of setting historical and/or philosophical and/or scientific inquiry to catchy, electronically-enhanced three minute pop ditties that OMD plays to on their latest. “History of Modern Part 1” is, more than anything, an adorable piece of insistent melodic candy in a shiny, shiny wrapper. But its lyrics tap into what might otherwise be a terrifying contemplation. Not just the inevitability of physical death, but something even greater and even more unfathomable. And they do it in a way that not only doesn’t sound doomy-gloomy, but actually conveys a feeling of – yeah! – liberation, man!

    This song finds me at a strange moment, what with all the rotten things afoot in the State of Wisconsin. For the last six or eight weeks, each morning and evening local news broadcast has offered up a increasingly overstocked buffet of fresh outrages; and it’s been surreal to see those homegrown outrages – it’s all happening just ten miles down the road – amplified in the broadcasts and web-pages of national and international news media. There are few times – no times, in fact – I can remember being as consumed with anger over abstractions like “rights” and “democracy” as I have been these last few weeks, and at one point, I had to make a conscious decision to step back and remember to – y’know – be a person.

    Inside the Wisconsin State Capitol, February 19, 2011
    “History of Modern” is more than just a healthy step back though. It’s an astronomical-scale zoom-out. While I might be keeping a running tally of “Likes” on the “Recall Alberta Darling (R-River Hills)” facebook page (it topped 4000 today) to compare with my running tally of “Likes” on the “Recall Mark Miller (D-Monona)” page (150 so far), this is a song about the recall efforts currently being mounted by the cosmos against, in OMD’s words, “all that went before and all that follows this.”

    Earlier this week, I was feeling a little bummed out watching the news and seeing all the signs taken down from the Capitol, whose marble walls, for weeks, had turned into a spontaneous, ever expanding, interactive mosaic of citizen outrage – one of the coolest works of collective outsider art I’ve ever witnessed. Mixed media with blue painters tape. And then there it all was on the news, all laid out in piles for people to reclaim if they so desired. Each sign has been photographed for posterity; some, it’s been said, are even Smithsonian-bound. Eventually, the signs would all have to come down sometime. Everyone knew that. But it was still sad when it actually happened.

    And then there’s OMD singing to me from my iPod: “All will be erased, and replaced.”

    A strangely hopeful reminder of the Almighty Whatever’s pending Repeal and Replace legislation which will certainly pass at some point, no matter how many people take to the streets in protest.