American Idol Journal – Week 10 HOLLIE CAVANAGH IS GONE!
Hollie Cavanagh
At some point my prediction of Hollie‘s departure was bound to be correct, I honestly thought it was bound to be correct many weeks ago however! I think of Colton Dixon and Elise Testone at a time like this and lament that their fan base was not aggressive enough to save them from their premature departures.
Phillip Phillips was the first to face the music. Jimmy liked everything Phillip did last evening and thought he has finally found his ‘voice’. No results, he was sent back to the couch.
Hollie Cavanagh was next. Jimmy thinks Hollie is going in the wrong direction. He characterized her performances last night as a crash and burn. No results, she was sent back to the couch too. Continue reading
American Idol Journal – Week 10 (Top 4)
A Final Four by any other name
The proverbial Final Four of the American Idol Season 11 is upon us. I know it’s a college basketball metaphor but it applies here. This is an exciting time for the contestants and the fans and although I believe Phillip Phillips is the guy to beat this season I find myself unsure of that outcome at this late stage. The voting fans are not easily to read this year, combine that with how the judges have been conducting themselves and you have a formula for unexpected results.
The themes for tonight, California Dreamin’ and songs that you wish you’d written.
Phillip Phillips sings CCR’s Have You Ever Seen The Rain. Phillip has a quirky style without his guitar and I think it suits him to go ‘commando’ from time to time. I think his vocals struggled a bit. I enjoyed this because of his own way of doing things. Steven called him an original, Jennifer was impress and Randy pointed out that his vocals were pitchie in the beginning but at the first chorus he hit his groove.
Holly Cavanagh sang a song by Journey, Faithfully. I think she struggled in the beginning, must be something in the air. This was not a great choice for Hollie since most of the song was in her lower vocal range where she doesn’t have much power.
I think this performance alone puts her in the bottom two.
Randy thought she is peaking at the right time. He liked it. Jennifer said she always believed in Hollie. Hollie nearly made it to Season 10 and the judges told her to come back for Season 11. Steven gave her high praise but didn’t actually critique the performance. I’m always suspect when a judge avoids that part. Needless to say, I couldn’t disagree more with the judges on her singing Faithfully, it wasn’t good. Continue reading
American Idol Journal – Week 9 SKYLAR LAINE IS GONE!
Skylar Laine
The stakes are particularly high this week since everyone in the competition has skills and one dark horse, Hollie Cavanagh, is making a move at the right time. Tonight we have the Bottom Two! It’s all about fan support and it’s now that the votes from the eliminated contestants will make their biggest impact. Remember the late surge for Kris Allen… and he won!
Tonight’s special guests are Coldplay and Carrie Underwood.
Ryan called Joshua Ledet to the stage first. Without much drama Ryan announced he was safe, leaving four on the hot seat, sweating it out.
Coldplay took to the stage to sing their new song, Paradise. Tonight’s effort was ok musically speaking but the lead vocalist went sharp when he sang the refrain. Ouch. Continue reading
And Then There Was One
ORIGINAL DATE OF PUBLICATION is March 14, 2010.
Eric Nelson, a regular contributor here, offered his view of a health care solution (Risk-Based Health Care Premiums: A Modest Proposal). Well done Eric. In this post I offer an Altered Focus for you, the reader, to consider.
Recently I heard a Professor of History from the University of Virginia respond to the suggestion made by actor Tom Hanks that World War II was largely driven by racism. His premise is made by drawing comparisons to modern day rhetoric with that of WW II rhetoric. Hanks concludes our fight with the Japanese and ultimately our use of “the bomb” was from a racist motive to utterly and completely wipe them out. I think the 1940′s era phrase he invoked was “…just wipe them all out!“, referring to how America should dispatch with Japan. Unlike any true historian, he reflected current wartime rhetoric about our enemy, Al Qaeda, and the calls to “…just wipe them all out!” as proof to cast a new light on World War II motivations.
The historian referred to this as “presentism“, that is to say, taking today’s values and overlaying them on past events and coming to new conclusions. Continue reading
American Idol Journal – Week 9 (Top 5)
Steven Van Zandt
Just five remain now. Tonight is 60′s and British Pop night. It’s an opportunity for the contestants to show their originality by bringing fresh interpretations of the songs they pick to the stage. We want an American Idol not a good karaoke singer.
Steven Van Zandt of E Street Band and The Soprano’s fame was the guest mentor. This guy is part of rock and roll history and a great guest to have at this point because he doesn’t mince words. The contestants need that so deep in the competition. He gave Hollie the best advice I’ve heard all season, but is especially good advice now that the judges Save is gone. He told her to forget about anyone’s opinion and do her own thing now. Rock is about the “Who are you? I don’t give a rats ass about what you think of me.” attitude.
Hollie Cavanagh started off the night singing an upbeat song that she seemed very confident doing. Randy and Steven gave her a standing ovation. Hollie is getting better each week at this point although I still consider her the weakest link. Continue reading
American Idol Journal – Week 8 ELISE TESTONE IS GONE!
Elise Testone
The eliminations get tough tonight because all of the contestants have shown the can get votes.
A Queen Tribute band has been put together by the two remaining Queen originals. I don’t know how they found him but they discovered a guy who not only sings like Freddie Mercury but he resembles him too! It was a great opening medley by the band.
After the tribute band performed Ryan called Jessica Sanchez and Elise Testone to the stage. This means my previous prediction is already wrong since I picked both to be in the bottom three. Elise was sent to the cheap seats, the bottom three again. Continue reading
American Idol Journal – Week 8 (Top 6)
Queen
Welcome to a night of QUEEN! They haven’t opened the Queen catelog since Season 5. It’s a two song night, I always enjoy the two song nights because it gives the contestants a chance to redeem themselves if their first performance is lacking.
And so the real race begins this week on American Idol, the first ‘thought to be’ top tier contestant has been eliminated, Colton Dixon and the remaining contestants are by default significant fan favorites. Like last year, we enter the closing weeks with some controversy. Last year Jacob Lusk managed to with enough votes to still be a dark horse contestant, how similar is this to Hollie Cavanagh making it this far?
It wasn’t until late in the show that I noticed the Hilfiger piece was missing too.
The opening group sing was horrible except of Elise and Phillip. It wasn’t a great start to the night.
Jessica Sanchez picked Bohemian Rhapsody. One wonders if she’s ever even heard this song before. A rocker she is not! If I said she killed the song I would not mean it as a compliment. The judges started out pumping JChez up, first Steven Tyler said he thought it was good but conceded that rock was not her genre. Niffer thought is was pretty amazing… (I want what she’s drinking!) on what planet would this version ever make the radio? Randy Jackson was really impressed. He also noticed she didn’t use any of her signature vocal runs. Continue reading
Growing a blog in a Facebook world
Let’s face it, we’re slowly being absorbed by Facebook and all it has to offer. It’s easy to be angry at the Facebook machine but to what avail, in the end it’s just wasted energy. Perhaps then the better strategy is to understand it and leverage it!
Altered Focus has been running for nearly three full years and our growth has been… well… modest at best. By modest I should explain that in our best month we had some 2000 visitors. In my wildest imagination I had believed we could be clipping along at 15k hits or more by now, we live on a planet of some 7+ billion folks now so it’s now such a stretch. The blog posts that appear at Altered Focus range from very personal accounts of events in our lives to regular features like “American Idol Journal” (in it’s second year!) and “Netflix Friday”. Continue reading
