A Barry Bad Night

This is gonna be a hard one to write. With only two performance shows remaining in Idol's sixth season, I'm completely unsure of who can win this thing. One thing for sure, LaKisha, I love you but you're going home tonight.

Personally I'm rooting for Jordin Sparksbut this is still a tough one to call. This wouldn't be such a problem if Melinda Doolittle, Jordin, and Blake Lewis were all performing at such high levels that I couldn't bear to choose just one. But instead, each of them has done his or her part in turning this Idol season into the musical equivalent of that Whack-a-Mole. Blake pops up with a way-cool remix of "You Give Love a Bad Name" on Bon Jovi night, then retreats into an abyss of lameness on "You Should Be Dancin'." Jordin positively soars on "Broken Wing," then hits the ground with a thud on "A Woman in Love." Melinda comes roaring to life on "Have a Nice Day" but flatlines with "Love You Inside and Out." Let's take a look at them individually.

Take Blake, for example. I could envision a day when I download his debut album, because when the dude is on, he gives Idol an undeniable and much-needed jolt. He's the one contestant I can easily envision finding success in a forum where each of his live performances isn't followed by Randy Jackson saying, "Yo, yo, yo, what's goin' down?" That said, tonight's hideous one-two punch exposed Blake as a vocalist of limited means. There were severe pitch problems, a wobbly falsetto, and some highly questionable choreography. I'm also tied oh his beatboxing in every single song. So in other words, the emperor wasn't totally naked, but his wiggity-wack gray jacket with pink floral embroidery wasn't much better.

As for "This Is Where I Came In," let's just say I can understand why the song wasn't a hit the first time around for the brothers Gibb. It was so distractingly unmelodious I found myself trying to figure out if Blake was wearing an argyle sweater vest over a white sweater, or a sweater that had three-quarters of a sweater vest stitched onto it. Still, Blake probably should avoid creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by delivering lyrics like "this is the danger zone" on the Idol stage.

Jordin's performances were void of the effervescent joy she exuded in earlier weeks. I'm still loving her and to be fair, her rendition of "To Love Somebody" was probably best of the opening four performances. And Mr. Gibb's fawning remark about never having heard a greater version of the song also helped a lot. He even said that "Jordin is going to be one of our greatest female recording artists" right before her slightly unpleasant rendition of Barbra Streisand's classic "A Woman in Love." Talk about putting the shill in shrill! Thankfully, Randy, Simon, and (sort of) Paula called Jordin on her pitch problems.

Despite Blake and Jordin's missteps, I can't shake the feeling we'll be seeing Melinda and LaKisha as this week's bottom two. To my ears, Melinda's pitch-perfect cover of "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" gets the gold star for the night, but I also wouldn't argue with Paula's insightful remark that it's time for Mindy to stop focusing so intently on technique and instead hurl her soul onto the Idol stage. And while Melinda was concerned about not uttering the word "loser" during her performance, she'd have been even wiser to avoid covering the sterile "Love You Inside and Out," a song that led to La Toya London's fourth-place finish during season 3. Melinda did with it what she could, delivering the verse with the kind of restraint one rarely sees on Idol and attacking the chorus with a fervor reminiscent of a young Gladys Knight. But it doesn't change the fact that the song's a snoozer.

Anyhow, Melinda fans, don't stress too much, since it's pretty likely that LaKisha's Idol journey is about to end, not with a bang but with that cracked final note on "Run to Me." To be completely realistic, she entered the final four on borrowed time — with her country-night and inspirations-week debacles still fresh in the public's mind — and it would've taken a showstopper on par with last week's "This Ain't a Love Song" to save her. And while "Run to Me" was more enjoyable than either of Blake's subpar efforts this week, its occasional rough spots and those moments of full-on yelling toward the end couldn't have inspired too many speed dialers.

If Kiki does go home tomorrow, I'm hoping she performs "Stayin' Alive" as her exit number. I know, I know, Randy said it was "too much," Paula said it was too down-tempo, and Simon found it too scary. For my part, I was bothered by the way she clipped the song's biggest notes, and her failed attempts to channel Fantasia on those closing riffs. But on the plus side, "Stayin' Alive" also marked the first time since, well, ever that LaKisha Jones has dared to color outside the lines of an established arrangement. The way she delivered the "ah, ah, ah, ah" off the beat, her added sass on the line "I'm a dancin' sistah who can't lose," the slightly funkier bass line — they all made me smile in a way that her fellow surviving finalists failed to do tonight. And if the resident nonprofessional bank teller is destined for fourth-place status, I want her final performance to include the lines "It's all right, it's okay/I know I'll make it anyway." Because, hopefully, whether it's on the R&B charts or in a residency at the piano bar of a high-end hotel, I'm hoping LaKisha will continue to live by those very words.