American Idol Top 8 - The magic of the year you were born

The title and top 8 comes at an appropriate time as I went to my first magic tournament since December 2007 (wow right!?) and got 10th place out of 99. Should've cashed, but ran into bad luck against two guys who ended up 1-2 in the swiss. But that's neither here nor there. We have a top 8 to resolve on American Idol, and that's why we are here.

And as for the theme, woot to the strong 1980's and 1990's theme tonight. We'll see if anything genius washes out like Archuleta's most boring song ever last year.

Danny Gokey - 1980 - Stand By Me - The Gokey takes it down a notch and sings something soft this week, which is a decent change of pace for him. He still oversings a bit, but his soulful voice doesn't make it seem to bad. I think he really forced too much into the song, and by the end, it was the upbeat point at the screen crap again. Solid purple shirt and black suit. Mediocre by his standards.
GRADE: C+

Kris Allen - 1985 - All She Wants To Do Is Dance - Oh joy another week of retarded mosh pit fan show for Kris Allen. They have to stop that. Kris's guitar playing doesn't seem to add much to this song, but at least he looks better than usual. Still needs to shave the faux-moustache. A jazzy sort of arrangement is admittedly different, but I don't know that it was a good choice. Pretty safe choice I think, and a flat performance.
GRADE: C-

Lil Rounds - 1984 - What's Love Got To Do With It - If there's one thing Lil needs to learn, you don't need to match the exact appearance of each singer and the year they performed the song. What normally would be cute has become a bore. She shouted the back half of the song and turned what looked promising into pretty crappy. She may find herself in the bottom three with this kind of safety dance effort.
GRADE: D

Anoop Desai - 1986 - True Colors - Aww cute he was born on the same day as David Cook. Too bad, we've filled our quota and he's better than you. I like the idea of the tie and unbuttoned collared shirt, but then he slaps a whole slew of gay lime green sweater on it. Icky icky. At least he won't be hit in traffic if he jaywalks, as nobody wants that color smeared on their car. I speak of all this because his slow performances bore me. It's what he does best, but again this seemed like too safe a choice. Good performance though. The roller coaster continues.
GRADE: B

Scott MacIntyre - 1985 - The Search Is Over - Wow Scott can play guitar too? McBlind is showing talent, well if he ever starts playing it. He's actually hooked to a noticeable amp, and I don't mean just that we can see it on the stage. We can hear his playing, and while it's not perfect, it's realistic. McBlind's hair is a lot less MacGyver this week thank God. The song choice was good but he really missed some notes in there and did not sound great at all.
GRADE: D

Allison Iraheta - 1992 - I Can't Make You Love Me - Apparently there was a sale on cheap leather outfits for ladies this week in the glam crew, as we're 2 for 2. I get the feeling that they keep telling us she's 16 to try and help her, but she'd really have been better served being on the show at 18 probably. Nevertheless, Bonnie Raitt is a good choice for her voice and she did a nice job. Safe from the bottom three perhaps, which would be an accomplishment.
GRADE: B

Matt Giraud - 1985 - Parttime Lovers - This performance must have been inspired by Stevie's performance last week. Totally creepy grinding of Paula on Simon during the song. Matt is trying to be the bluesy guy with the look and he pulls off the performance. I don't know about the song choice, but good job overall.
GRADE: A-

Adam Lambert - 1982 - Mad World - Well I'd love to say something wonderful about the Glambert again, but Idol found it perfectly OK to try and fit 100 commercials into an hourlong show and my DVR cutoff before he even started. Bunch of fucking wankers. Learn to schedule Idol, honestly. Anyways, saw it online and performance was good, but normal Idol crap. Of course Simon and company loved it, but would you expect anything less?
GRADE: B

Can't believe Gokey is about 5 years older than pretty much everyone in the competition. Anyways, ...

TOP PERFORMER: Matt Giraud (yes really)
SAFE: Matt Giraud, Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey, Allison Iraheta, Anoop Desai
BOTTOM 3: Scott MacIntyre, Lil Rounds, Kris Allen
BUH-BYES: McBlind (even with the VFTW support)