American Idol Gets It’s Groove Back

Happy American Idol season 11, everyone!

Idol had its own “Battle of the Sexes” competition last night; the guys sang the songs of Stevie Wonder, and the ladies sang the songs of the one and only Whitney Houston. I was expecting the evening to be quite the train wreck, but I was oh-so pleasantly surprised by the high quality performances.

In this Idol “Battle of the Sexes” competition, the ladies won, hands down. Not to say that the guys didn’t have great performances last night. Joshua Ledet kicked off the night with a rousing rendition of “I Wish,” Colton Dixon showed versatility with his vulnerable performance of “Lately,” and my hometown boy, DeAndre Brackensick, rocked it out on “Master Blaster (Jammin’),” which was a huge improvement from both of his performances from last week. And I loved Phillip Phillips’ arrangement of “Superstition.”

But the girls truly had something special going on last night.

For someone (read: me) who had been feeling lackluster about Skylar Laine, well she made a believer out of me last night after hitting that incredible note during her performance of “Where Do Broken Hearts Go.” It was simply breathtaking.

Jessica Sanchez continued her streak of outstanding performances with spot-on take of the iconic song, “I Will Always Love You.” I had mixed feelings about this song in particular being performed last night. This was mostly due to the fact that I have a firm stance of “Whitney Houston or bust” when it comes to this song, but I thought Jessica pulled it off seamlessly.

While most are handing the title of “Performance of the Night” to Jessica, I’m handing the title to Hollie Cavanagh, the tiny girl with the big voice, who sang “All The Man That I Need.” In the words of Jennifer Lopez, she gave me “goosies.” This girl is the real deal.

During the Top 13 results show tonight, the competition between the “Battle of the Sexes” continued as the guy with the lowest amount of votes and the girl with the lowest amount of votes were the bottom two and then the judges went all X Factor on them and made the final decision on tonight’s elimination.

So who went home?

My money was on Shannon Magrane, since she completely botched the big note during her performance of “I Have Nothing” last night, but alas the bottom two tonight was Elise Testone and Jeremy Rosado, with the judges opting to send Jeremy home.

Jeremy didn’t have the best performance last night. His vocals on “Ribbon in the Sky” were just alright.

Elise didn’t have a particularly strong performance last night either with “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” but she had that memorable performance from last week’s Top 25 on her side. I think the judges probably thought she was the contestant with the most potential at this point in the competition, so sending Jeremy home was the right decision.

What did you think of this week’s Idol performances and tonight’s elimination?