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  • American Idol Season 9 – Who Will Be The First Loser?

    David Cook at the American Idol Tour in 2008
    This has been a very newsworthy season for American Idol and we’ve just started.

    – Paula left and Ellen joined.

    – Simon made it official that he’s leaving at the end of this year and starting X-Factor in the US.

    – And unbelievably, Janell Wheeler was eliminated after wearing the greatest pants a woman has ever worn.

    But we also have some pretty big news at SonicClash as it pertains to this show. Before you continue with this post, head over here to join a contest in which you can win an Amazon gift card. Check out the post for details.

    Ok, you’re back.

    Last night, the show was much better than I expected it to be. There were very few truly wretched performances and there were even a couple standout performances too.

    Now, on to the elimination show.

    David Cook opens with a performance of Jumpin’ Jack Flash which is most newsworthy for the pimp suit he’s rocking, but the dude also shows off some great energy.

    Ryno brings up Paige and she’s in the bottom three. Even the laryngitis story didn’t save her. People are mean.

    He tells Lee that he’s safe.

    Siobhan, who will be known here from now on as creepy girl because she literally scares me, is up next and Ryno tells her that she’s safe as well. If she’s so safe, how come I need to double check that I locked the door when I see her on screen?

    Little Aaron Kelly is up next and little Aaron Kelly is safe.

    Ryno tells Andrew and Tim, who were two of the worst guys last night, to stand up. Kara says she’s not surprised that either guy could be in the bottom three. It’s not Andrew. It’s Timothy.

    Orianthi, who is most famous for being one of Michael Jackson’s guitarists on the This Is It tour that ended before it started when he passed, is performing her new single According To You. It’s very much on the Kelly Clarkson tip.

    We’ll see how long this stays up on YouTube, but here’s her performance:

    Ryno tells Didi that she’s safe before doing the same with Crystal.

    After getting inconsistent advice from the judges on what her best lane is, Katie is safe.

    Big Mike is safe.

    Casey and Lacey are up next. Lacey’s my pick to go home. We’ll see what happens. Lacey is in the bottom three and Casey is safe.

    Your bottom three are Lacey Brown, Paige Miles, and Timothy Urban.

    My pick is still Lacey. Paige absolutely doesn’t deserve to be there. Not this early.

    Ryan says Tim is safe and sends him back with the rest of the crew. It’s down to Paige and Lacey.

    Ke$ha, who’s kind of like a low rent Lady Gaga, is performing before the elimination and I’d add the video here, but it’s not really worth it. Two dudes called 303 dropped a few bars each in the middle and I’m just in awe. I get Ke$ha somewhat. She’ll be gone in two years. But 303 look like two guys who should be drugged out characters in an independent college film.

    And now it’s time. The first person eliminated from this season’s American Idol is Lacey Brown. Well, I nailed that one.

    The judges still have the opportunity to use the save on her, but I think there might be better odds on East Tennessee State upsetting Kentucky tomorrow than on the judges saving Miss Lacey here.

    Will Young’s elimination song tells Lacey to Leave Right Now.

  • Sonic Spring Singing Contest

    So you think you can judge singing talent?

    So do we. But we’re putting our gift certificates where our mouth is.

    Join SonicClash’s Spring Singing Contest.  You get points every week you play!

    1. Each week, log in *BEFORE* the results show.
    2. Choose the bottom two singers.
    3. Choose the singer who gets sent home.

    You get 1 point for each Bottom Two singer you correctly pick and a 2 point bonus for choosing who goes home.

    But there’s more:

    In the first week that you enter the contest, you pick the Top Three Finalists and The Winner.   You get SIX points for each of the Top 3 and another SIX points for picking the winner.  If you join the contest with 10 singers, those numbers go down to 5 points each.  If you join with 8 singers (the last time you can join the second part of the contest), each correct answer is worth 4 points.

    Enter every week — you could score more than 40 points just by picking the Bottom Two!

    The grand prizer winner gets a $25 Amazon gift certificate and bragging rights on SonicClash for months

    To enter, go to the Sonic Spring Singing Contest page now!

  • We Are The… Canada. Young Artists for Haiti take on K’Naan’s “Wavin’ Flag”

    “And then it goes back. And then it goes back. And then it goes back…”  And here it comes again. “Wavin’ Flag”, Somali-Canadian rapper K’Naan‘s loving and mournful, hopeful anthem to his home city of Mogadishu has, in the year since its release, taken on a life of its own – or rather:  several lives of its own. A top 10 hit in his adopted home country of Canada (where he’s lived since his early teens), the song’s also been used on a video game soundtrack and later last year, was given a stadium ready bilingual remix (“The Celebration Mix”) when it was chosen as the official theme song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Then, a couple of months ago, after the earthquake in Haiti, K’Naan performed a delicate acoustic version of the song on the Canada for Haiti telethon. In a timely reminder that Haiti still needs help, a group of Canadian recording artists calling themselves Young Artists for Haiti got together in the studio with producer Bob Ezrin (producer of both Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Berlin’s Count Three and Pray) to re-record the song all “We Are The World” style with a the obligatory in-the-studio, right-hands-to-headphones, documentary music video.

    The guest list for this gig includes a few international stars like Nelly Furtado and Avril Lavigne, some super-hip alterna-faves (Esthero, Emily Haines of Metric, rapper Kardinal Offishall, the bands Broken Social Scene and City and Colour), along with a few alterna-also-rans (Deryk Whibley, of Sum 41 – remember Sum 41?); there are a few wonderful “only-in-Canada” names (Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans?); there’s a token old guy (Tom “Life is a Highway” Cochrane doesn’t rate a solo, but you catch a few glimpses of him in the video), and a lot of pretty youngsters including Fefe Dobson, Drake,  Nikki Yanofsky (who wasn’t born when Tom Cochrane had that big hit), and Justin Bieber, who also wasn’t born when people knew who Tom Cochrane was, and has the strange distinction of having sung the first lines of “We Are the World 25” and getting to sing the final words here.   This assemblage of stars gets an added kick of wide-eyed optimism from a gaggle of singing, flag-waving children at the song’s climactic key-change.

    The result may be a bit “over-inspirational” (as is wont for this type of project), but on the whole, it’s significantly less artistically misguided than “We Are The World 25”.  For one thing, it’s shorter.  Which is nice.  But I think the major thing it’s got going for it is that, while it’s still a remake (K’Naan does get the first few lines),  it’s a current song; it’s not attempting to re-conjure quarter-century-old charity-single magic.  The original “Wavin’ Flag” is still charting in the Canadian Top 10.  (How it continues to elude a significant American audience is absolutely beyond me.)   The rap section in “We Are The World 25” felt like a freakish appendage to a song written for a pop landscape that had no idea rap was coming, but when Drake drops a Haiti-specific verse leading up to that final chorus (you know, the part where the flag-waving kids come in), it makes absolute musical sense – it feels organic and right, and places that final flag-waving moment in an appropriately empathetic context.   On “We Are The World 25” it seemed like a bunch of rappers trying to out-machismo each other on a rhyme that seemed ghoulishly self-involved and self-aggrandizing.    (I’d quote it here, but I honestly can’t bring myself to watch it again… so:  sorry.)  Also, aside from the rap, there’s a general (and refreshing) lack of Auto-tuniness here.  These singers mostly just sing, and some of them sing pretty amazingly – amazingly enough for me to want to spend my evening Googling my brains out trying to figure out who they are and where I can get my hands on some of their other music.

    All in all, the song gets more right than wrong, and this actually feels like the proper heir to the original “We Are the World” and all the other idealistic charity singles of the 80s.  Even if the faces and names aren’t as recognizable as will.i.am and Barbra Streisand.