This is their moment! Paula is wearing awesome pink bling! Kara is smiling with her mouth hanging open! Someone in the audience is distractedly pulling the limbs off a child!


Tonight is More Money for ITunes week! The Idols will be mentored by the equipment in the studio where they tape Ryan's radio show (it's the show that Dick Clark started!) where Ryan demonstrates how he says, "This is American Idol!" into a microphone. Wow, at the push of a button, music comes out of the speaker! It's like magic, but really predictable unawesome magic. This week, our singers can pick any song that's popular on ITunes, with "popular" defined as "available."

ANOOP DESAI: Anoop sings an Usher song. Who is Usher? Is he that cartoon dog with the square head? Anoop is wearing a grimly ill-fitting black suit with the collar turned up. The epaulets are made of Rainbow Brite puffy stickers, all in a row, and there's a chain around one armpit. His shirt has a Care Bear on it (the one with the raindrops on its gut). I don't know the song, I don't want to be glared at by Anoop, and I have a feeling the backup singers could give us a better show than this horse's ass. What a staggering tool is Anoop Desai. What a quivering, gelatinous mass of toolage is this eyebrow waggler. The judges are unimpressed. Anoop defends himself by clarifying that their opinions are their opinions, adding that his butt has a hole in it, like most other people's butts, and that he wants to be an R&B artist. He is wearing a sparkly dog tag when he says all this. Can anyone else make sense of this man's wardrobe? It just mystifies me, but not in a good way, in a, like, how did the corpse of a hedgehog get stuck in my garbage disposal way.

Tom Colicchio wants me to keep it simple. I do not want Listerine to do six things. Just one thing.

Shock: Every song you hear is available on ITunes!

MEGAN JOY: Megan doesn't care, she's singing Bob Marley's "Turn Your Lights Down Low." This is finally, she says, a song she really loves. She sings it in her own special twitchy gutteral way, channeling Katherine Hepburn and also that lady at the old folks' home that won't shut up and keeps looking at you with that knowing wink, like, we understand each other. But you don't know her. And she smells like cabbage. Megan (not the hypoethetical old lady) is wearing chains and necklaces all over her collarbones, a teal corset top, and jeans. Kara doesn't like it. Paula suggests she sit on a stool with a spotlight and sing a sensitive ballad that rips the heart out of everyone. Simon calls it boring and indulgent. Randy says it took forever. They encourage her to sing Amy Winehouse, Duffy, and Adele.

DANNY GOKEY: Danny tells Randy that last week he had to sing his fifth choice of song. This is not the first time, this season, that Idols have referenced the song choice process, and suggested that they aren't completely in control of the song they sing. It's almost like you start questioning the way they're grilled and blamed about song choice every week, but then you don't, because the shiny lights are so sparkly, you forget about it. He sings "What Hurts the Most" by Rascal Flatts. Maybe the mix is off tonight -- everyone sounds kind of wobbly and dim. Danny never quite finds the pitch or the beat. The song is another reminder that his wife died, and that is pretty sad, but... if he sings "The Dance" by Garth Brooks, he is fired. This is the last "my wife died" song of the season. The next one he sings, the floor opens up and he gets dropped into the basement full of wolves and scary clowns. The judges love him. He responds in his squinty oh-golly way.

ALLISON IRAHETA: Allison practices the guitar in her tape, and we get to see her chewed, wrecked, nasty black fingernail polish. Endearing. She appears in a deconstructed prom dress and Pat Benatar hair, awkwardly stumbles through the first guitary part of "Don't Speak" by No Doubt, with the guitar. Then she flips it around to the back to rasp through the song holding the microphone. The guitar was a mistake. I hate this song. Allison looks like a muppet. No one can understand her clothes. Simon calls it "dressy-uppy." Allison is actually a 45 year old mother of three, she works in telemarketing, smoke three packs of Camels a day, and vacuums her trailer in heels. Vote!

SCOTT MCINTYRE: Don't go changing to try and please him. You've never let him down before. Just lead him over to the piano, so he can smile in your general direction. Scott has new fancy George Michael hair and jacket, and sings Billy Joel. I want to believe he is wearing a t-shirt under there. He is, right? The piano is bangy, the singing is loungey, and his sister is so excited she's bouncing out of her headband. Kara loves the eighties hair. Paula is proud. Simon calls it his best performance. I have been told to stop making fun of the blind guy, so... I will say nothing about the waving. The weird zombie waving. But if you saw the show, you know.

I do not like the overdubbed exaggerated eating sounds on Hardee's commercials.

MATT GIRAUD: Matt reminisces about being in the bottom three last week. No one cares at all. We're just waiting for him to get voted off and then release some precious little album on some sweaty little label and someone will call it "Intense!" and then he will go back to playing standards in a piano bar. Dear Matt, if you have to wear outerwear onstage, do yourself the favor of buying a jacket that fits. "Fits" means the sleeves go at least down to your wrists. Jackets that do not go down to your wrists do not "fit." Ill-fitting jackets counteract intensity. All Best, LYDIA. Matt sings a song by The Fray (you know, like in Scrubs!), with the keyboard set up in the middle of the crowd. The judges say it's like that horrible time he sang Coldplay, and that he needs to choose between the rock side of pop and the R&B side. Between the resentful glow of his colorless mole and the apologetic sheen of his giant pink gums, I don't know what to think either.

LIL ROUNDS: Lil has chosen "I Surrender" by Celine Dion, and between her rained on hair and her aging diva gown, she seems like she's going to play it completely boring. She sings it straight Celine for about the first half and then she lets it rip a little bit, funking it up Lil style. Pretty strong -- I was impressed. The judges don't want her to be adult contemporary, though. They want her to stay young. Ryan brings Lil's daughter to Randy so she can punch him for the criticism, but she gives him a big, adorable hug and Lil cries. That should be good for a few thousand votes.

ADAM LAMBERT: Adam is singing my favorite song, "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)" tonight. He does it kinda Lenny Kravitz, but more Aerosmith. Lots of screaming and tongue-waggling and strobe lighting. Whatever! Okay, it's a super-cheesy song, and there is NO WAY on earth to do it without cheese. Adam does cheese in a way that acknowledges the corniness and then flips it up. The judges like it. It's really weird that he chose it, given that he could have chosen, apparently, anything in the whole world, but yeah. He says he had fun and salutes the band.

KRIS ALLEN: Kris confesses that he is trying to make one of those special moments with "Ain't No Sunshine." Kris, don't you know, when you want to make one of those special moments, you need a string quartet on stage with-- oh, there's the string quartet! Awesome! The moment should be along any moment now -- WOOPS, there it is! He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows. The performance is strained, full of anxiety, like if a chimp got up on stage to play the keyboard, and we all sat there kind of listening to the chimp play the piano, but mostly just worrying that he was going to poop or something. The chimp did not poop but he also didn't blow it out the box metaphorically. Kara has three words for him: "That is artistry." Wow, did you really need "That is"? You could have just given him one word. They really want to keep this fuzzheaded poser in the competition -- they gave him the pimp spot and a string quartet, and yet he still comes off like someone's earnest, nervous brother who wonders if you got a chance to listen to his demo yet.

Best performance: My newly refurbished icemaker.
Worst performance: Anoop Desai

Going home: Matt Giraud

It seems like Anoop has some kind of voting mojo that we mere mortals cannot understand. He should have been gone after "Beat it" and yet, here he is. Megan, also, has a strong fan base. Matt is a lame poser -- he was a wild card, nobody likes him, and I think this is his week to damply depart.

Related posts: American Idol

Labels: adam lambert, american idol, itunes, recap, summary, top nine