Hollywood, Round 2 (Duets)

Round 2 (Duets) ended with a very nice and touching moment when Jayna Elise came out of the audience of Idolists to sing Adam Lambert’s Whataya Want From Me with Fire when early contender Kaya Stewart shocked the judges by dropping out after coming on stage.

And that ends the Feeling portion of the blog.

Here’s something that I should have mentioned by now. With country singers now dominating Idol, there has been a marked shift from Celine-Mariah-Whitney diva-wanna-be’s to Chris Stapleton wanna-be’s. I suppose there is a best one in the pack but to what end? There is already THE Chris Stapleton and how is any Idolist gonna compete with that?

Back to Round 2. I have usually found the Duet round to be the hardest to critically judge. I firmly believe that demonstrating a capacity to perform with others is an essential skill in any field of endeavor. But all that we get to see is a brief performance with very little behind the scenes of each Idolist’s contributions. And except for the trainwrecks and/or stories, most of what gets selected for TV are the duets where both Idolists performed well. Therefore, if you – and by “you” I mean “me” – are looking for The One, the duet round makes it challenging to do that.

So, I’m simply going to rattle off some names that I thought did well and deserve our – and by “our” I mean “your” – continued attention. Many will be names I have already mentioned. It was nice to see those Idolists live up to their vaunted status LOL. In particular, I am now (below) mentioning Hannah Nicholaisen for the third time.

Really Stood Out

Matt Wilson, Hannah Nicholaisen, Wé Ani, Pjae (the duet of these latter two on The Carolina Chocolate Drops Hit ‘Em Up Style was exceptional).

Stood Out

Elise Kristine (first-time mention), Warren Peay, Tyson Venegas (Platinum Ticket), Kaylin (Platinum Ticket), Tongi, Oliver Steele, Summer Joy (first-time mention).

As always, these evaluations are not my predictions of future results and are constantly subject to re-evaluation under the light of my withering musings. This is especially true because:

1. Round 3: The all-important Showstoppers live performances are coming next week.
2. The Evil Genius Producers typically use this round to spring unseen Idolists on us that are amazing.

See you next week. I hope you get to listen to some good music. I have a long and eclectic list (Jungle, Melanie Martinez, Ad Infinitum, Larkin Poe, Niia, Jax, Liv Kristine) of new albums and singles waiting for me.