Nice song, bad video. And why does he insist on the curly fro? I mean we all know Elliott is not the most conventionally attractive man in the world but you have to have enough money to get yourself to a barber at this point.
I only wish the much more talented and sexy Katharine McPhee had the success Elliott has has had. 
If any of you who watched American Idol season five and wondered why this season we saw Elliott Yamin, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry perform, yet no runner up Katharine McPhee, you and Katharine would be in the same boat. She herself has no idea why she was never invited back.
Scores of American Idol alums turned out to partake in this year’s season finale, but noticeably absent from the festivities was last year’s runner-up, Katharine McPhee.
Although fellow Season 5 competitors Elliot Yamin, Kellie Pickler, Taylor Hicks and Chris Daughtry all returned for guest spots this season, McPhee, 23, was missing from the rundown – and it was not by choice.
“Katharine called them herself, trying to get on the [finale],” a source close to the singer tells Us. “She’s really hurt.”
But she wasn’t the only former Idol who got dissed. When Sony/BMG president Clive Davis addressed the TV audience, he made sure to plug Taylor Hicks’ new single, but failed to mention Kelly Clarkson’s latest single or her forthcoming CD, My December, over which the two have reportedly butted heads.
McPhee’s rep could not be reached, and Fox had no comment.
I really don’t understand why she was never invited back. Don’t they make money when Katharine and RCA make money? Wouldn’t they have a vested interest in one of their most promising talents selling more records, or having a hit single? It doesn’t make sense to me. Anyone care to explain?
Getting off the Metro train and walking the scorching hot streets of D.C heading toward the Verizon center, excitement and anticipation bubbled up in my gay little stomach like a bad meal at Taco Bell–but in a good way. People piled into the venue with their hats, shirts and signs while shady scalpers heckled people on the sidewalk.
There was a moment of freak out because we saw someone standing in a corner holding a sign that said “Elliott Fans Sign Here!” and a group of people huddled over there signing it. Putting this together with the little fact that Elliott wasn’t at the White House this morning had us going into panic mode. Oh hell no. First Katharine McPhee–now Elliott? I’m gonna need a refund. But we went in and one of the ticket scanners told us that Elliott was there. Phew.
We go in, and after a few minutes of random commercials on the screen and walking Pop-Tarts taking pictures with “fans” the show starts. The door opens…Mandisa enters the stage and does a rousing rendition of the diva-queen Whitney Houston’s I’m Every Woman. It’s pretty much the same rendition she gave on the show, and she tried her very best to get the crowd amped as possible but the excitement died down toward the end of the song and into her next If I Were Your Woman.
Ace Young gave us an orgasm-inducing Father Figure was just as good if not better than his original performance, and it was great to hear him sing the entire thing. Except next time I’m gonna need it to be a little less ABC Family and bit more HBO. Thanks. His next song Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5 actually restored what little faith I had in Ace’s full voice–as his falsetto is what always made me love him.
Lisa Tucker comes out and there’s moderate applause. She gives an uninspired rendition of Signed, Sealed, Delivered that couldn’t end soon enough. That was followed by two of Elton John’s best songs Your Song and Someone Saved My Life Tonight in which she accompanied herself on the piano. That shit was a little too wannabe Alicia Keys, and not in a good way. I suppose it was supposed to be impressive, but it was really just boring. I know 12 year olds that can play those tunes.
She introduces her “best friend” Paris Bennett who was one of my faves on Idol, but her set was so incredibly weird. One minute she’s singing Gladys Knight’s Midnight Train To Georgia (which, by the way did not live up to her rendition of it on Idol), the next minute she’s trying to be Beyonce. Like…really trying. Hard. The beginning of her Crazy In Love stint took moves RIGHT from the music video. Yeah, honey–those don’t work in real life. Only in Beyonce music video land. There were so many things jiggling and wriggling I could hardly concentrate on the sub-par vocals. C’mon, Paris. Where’s the Be Without You? Do I Do? Put your little booty-shaking away and just sing something.
Now this is the funniest moment of the night. Bucky comes on stage–and literally hundreds of people got up and left. Not the entire concert I’m sure, but everybody and their Grandma Norma started heading toward the bathrooms and concession stands. Kids near me starting playing “patty cake” and I blurted out “anyone got a deck of cards? I’m in the mood for solitaire.” It was pretty sad. He gave us a lackluster performance of Superstition, some country song that I actually liked until tonight, and then began You’re The One That I Want from Grease. I heard a collective groan. Yes! Kellie Pickler came to save the day. They end their duet and Kellie begins her set.
I’d have to say I liked Kellie’s song picks the best–even though maybe that’s just because she picked songs she sang on the show. Ones she knew that people knew and enjoyed from her. I’m The Only One, Walking After Midnight, and Something To Talk About were the songs Kellie sang and all three were very enjoyable. The best part though, was when she told us a story in between songs about her messing around in the Library of the White House. She said she kept pushing all the books in to see if it would make the shelf turn around to reveal some secret room. Bucky told her she was doing it wrong and tried pulling the books instead. She said she told President Bush and he thought it was funny. Love this girl. Please come back to The View. The Hasselbot’s making me wanna die.
Intermission. A few minutes in we hear slight cheering. We look up on the screen…there’s no one important. The cheering gets louder, and louder, and louder. “What the hell’s going on?” I said. “It’s Elliott’s mom!” my friend yelled over the screaming crowd. Mrs. Yamin herself was strutting the main floor to make her way to to her seat and apparently everyone recognized her. Aww.
There was a really cool thing up on the screen that gave you a number to send text messages to–your message was then displayed on the screen. Of course we had nosebleed seats so we spent most of intermission trying to make out the orange blur that was the phone number. By the time we finally did make it out and sent in “I hate Bucky”, intermission was over and we just payed 30 cents for nothing. Damn.
Chris Daughtry takes the stage and the crowd goes crazy. I’m gonna need to meet this man so I can rub that shiny bald head and faint like a little schoolgirl named Susie. We all kept waivering between rocking back and forth, seizuring, and being stunned by the hottness that was his majesty. He sings Renegade, an excellent Wanted Dead or Alive in which the crowd participated, and then the Prince of Soul Elliott Yamin joins Chris for a duet that put the rest of the Idol match-ups to shame.
I was disappointed Elliott didn’t sing A Song For You which probably would’ve had me in the aisles crying my eyes out but I still enjoyed his set. He sang Moody’s Mood For Love, the song that made America fall in love with him back in the semi-finals, and Elvis Presley’s Trouble. Both of the songs were quite good and I’m all for anything Elliott Yamin but I feel like there could’ve been much better song choices there. And he had a cute hat.
Oh my God. It’s time for Katharine. Jesus Christ. This isn’t just her first time to the stage tonight. It’s her first time to the stage the entire freaking Idol tour. We’re such lucky bastards. All I hear is the “2! 3! 4!” and I start freaking out. “It’s Katharine! AAAAHHH!” You could tell from the crowd reaction as she took the stage to sing KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree that her presence was greatly missed. You could also tell from her vocals on the song that her cords were still strained. She was noticeably holding back and at times it was hard to tell if she was even actually singing. But give the girl a break–she had laryngitis AND bronchitis. Despite the okay performance, Katharine finished the song to a crapload of applause and cheers. People just kept going. The cheering didn’t end.
She wiped away tears and thanked everyone for their support as well as apologized for her absence. She explained that this was her first appearance on the Idol tour and that she was actually supposed to be at the Pittsburgh one but her flight from New York (she, like Pickler, also did The View in NYC) got delayed. “We were in the airport for 9 hours!” she says. Katharine tells us that the doctor’s orders are that she can only sing 2 songs, and that the second song will be Somewhere Over The Rainbow (surprise, surprise right?). This song goes much, much better, and her rendition is as beautiful as ever.
Continuing to hold back a little, as she did on The View the earlier day, her acapella “When all the clouds…darken up the skyway, there’s a rainbow highway to be found” still took me out of the crowd and into McHeaven. Katharine’s return was clearly one of the events of the night, and I feel so, so bad for Kat fans that didn’t get to see her on the earlier tour dates. If she hadn’t been there in D.C. I might’ve taken it out on Bucky’s face. Not that there’s much more damage you could do there. Incest puts you in pretty bad shape. At one point I heard a little boy behind me whisper to his parents “I think the doctors told Katharine she was sick but she stayed off longer anyway ’cause she wanted to.” Uhm, you do know I’m a 6 foot tall black man with heavy shoes right little boy? It made me sad actually, to hear that because it just goes to show how much influence parents have over their kids’ opinions. The boy was too young to have that much hatred for anyone. It’s just not something a little boy would think of on his own–it was clearly something he got from his parents, who I heard earlier in the show call Kat a “Diva”. They just kept repeating it “Diva!, Diva!”. Right, and your kid’s the 8 year old?
And now we hear Taylor singing Jailhouse Rock…but we see no Taylor. What the eff? Whoa! Taylor emerges from the elevated seats in the arena surrounded by security guards as he makes his way through the crowd and to the stage to finish a truncated version of the Elvis tune. He wasn’t boring to say the least. If standing seizures and jerk-jerk to the left and the right is your kinda concert, you would’ve enjoyed it. If not…uh…just think of Chris Daughtry and it’ll all be better. Taking It To The Streets was fun and got us dancing around–but it was difficult to enjoy it when there are two eight year olds sitting behind you squealing like pigs who smell bacon frying in the kitchen. “SOUL PATROL! SOUL PATROL!” Dude, I’m gonna “soul patrol” your flimsy little asses into oncoming D.C. traffic if you don’t stuff a sock in it. I have no problem with cheering–as we did our fair share throughout the whole show. But when you sound like a broken dog whistle or Mariah Carey’s ad libs in a bad 90s pop song, there just needs to be a rule against that shit. “Be warned: Annoying cheering will result in submersion into a pit of fire. -God”
The idols came out at the end for a few more songs–we sang, we danced, we waved our arms back and forth. And then the night was over. I still say the best Idol concert performance ever was La Toya London, Jennifer Hudson, Fantasia, and Jon Peter Lewis covering “Hey Ya” a few years back, but hey–what can ya do? The show was fun, and that’s what American Idol is supposed to be. Well worth the 50 bucks even if there was an ugly Laguna Beach wannabe sitting in front of me texting the entire time. Your pimp can wait, sweetie. Chris Daughtry’s singing.
Gotta run, but thought I’d leave you guys with some interesting stuff.
Pink’s new video was premiered over in Europe, and luckily someone capped it. I’m thorougly disappointed American radio has shunned Who Knew (one of the best pop songs in recent memory), especially considering talentless hacks like Rihanna and Ciara can shell out number ones like Britney Spears pops out babies, but hopefully they’ll be kinder to Pink’s new song U + Ur Hand.
***
I really wish people would stop making comparisons between American Idol and the Presidential election. Ryan Seacrest–stop constantly spouting how many tens of millions of votes came in for Idol–it says nothing as to how many people voted–just as to how many crazed teenage girls called in hundreds of times and voted.
But with that said–apparently Mr. President has invited the Idol finalists to the White House. Interestingly enough, though, winner Taylor Hicks does have a White House connection. Susan Whitson, Laura Bush’s press secretary taught Hicks in 9th grade.
***
The pitiful bastard of network television, NBC, has picked up minor hits Last Comic Standing and America’s Got Talent for additional seasons. Kevin Reilly, NBC Entertainment President says:
“Both of these series have been bright spots on the summer television landscape, we think they’ll be around for a long time.”
In other NBC news, for those of you who have either heard of or actually checked out that rejected pilot that’s been getting mucho hits on YouTube “Nobodys Watching”, it has been picked up by the network, and they’re hoping those thousands of YouTube viewers will tune into the hilarious comedy. We’ll see how it turns out.
***
One more thing. OMG OMG OMG. They’re making another Ninja Turtles movie, and it comes out next year. Mommmyyy. Can’t wait. Better be as good as the other ones.
Here’s the trailer:
Top morning talk show “Live with Regis and Kelly” will celebrate the Fourth of July in true All-American style — actually, all “American Idol” style.
On July 4, hosts Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa will take a look back at the outstanding “Live with Regis and Kelly” performances of “American Idol’s” top singers, including Kevin Covais, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, Paris Bennett, Chris Daughtry, Elliott Yamin, finalist Katharine McPhee and of course “American Idol” winner Taylor Hicks.
Source:USA Today
For a glorified karaoke album, this isn’t bad. Thanks at least in part to the curative effects of studio technology, nearly all 12 Idol finalists sound competent on these full-length versions of songs they performed in the finals or preliminaries. A few are pretty impressive: Paris Bennett on Gladys Knight’s Midnight Train to Georgia, Mandisa on an accomplished carbon copy of Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman, Chris Daughtry on Jon Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. Interestingly, the least appealing performance (aside from When I Fall in Love by the hapless, hopelessly outclassed Kevin Covais) comes from newly crowned Idol Taylor Hicks, whose drab Michael McDonald impression on Takin’ It to the Streets rates far below his best TV moments. Best by a long shot: runner-up Katharine McPhee, whose version of Aretha Franklin’s Think avoids slavish imitation and shows off grit, style and verve that former Idol champs Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Fantasia would be hard-pressed to match.
— Ken Barnes
Although she didn’t technically win American Idol–I’d argue runner up Katharine McPhee is still quite the winner. Considering her reported offer from KFC, calls from Steven Spielberg, an album in the works with RCA overlooked by Clive Davis, and an image that couldn’t be more marketable if it wanted to–Ms. McPhee seems to be in a pretty sweet spot despite her “loser” status.
As Simon Cowell said to her (which Katharine mentioned in her interview on Larry King Live), where her career goes now is heavily dependent upon choosing the right songs. And no one knows that better than the original, most successful, and most respected idol (who Katharine has been compared to on occasion) Kelly Clarkson. Here’s to hoping Kat goes Clay Aiken on us and not Bo Bice.
I’ve compiled Katharine’s best performances from this Idol season, that all make it pretty clear why she made it to the finals–and why she’ll continue to have a good career with the right guidance.
I’ve also compiled the comments I’ve made on her performances throughout the show’s run in my “Idol Watch” column.
***
“Over The Rainbow“. Wow. What an asbolutely magical performance. Going in as the underdog tonight, Katharine had a lot to prove. Especially after booting out favorite Chris Daughtry. But boy did she deliver. Poised, slow and steady–Kat returned to the woman we fell in love with back at the beginning of the competition who knew how to kill ‘em with the quiet moments.
Grade: A+
This was truly a “goosebumps” moment, and the closest thing season 5 had to a showstopper (unfortunately it never really had one). I hope Katharine somehow finds a way to mesh the beautiful talent she has for the standards with the bluesy sound of her voice and incorporate those things into the pop songs she’ll be singing on her record.
I wish she hadn’t sung this at the finale–as the moment had already passed and it was a perfect opportunity for Kat to remind America of the fantastic performances she had early on in the competition. She definitely needed some damage control after booting out favorite Chris Daughtry and beloved underdog Elliott Yamin.
***
“Black House and the Cherry Tree” Great song choice? Yes. Great performance? Yes. But why, Katharine, are you straddling the floor and crawling and bopping around like an unruly child at daycare? The world may never know. Good to see her return to her soulful roots and depart from the Mariah/Whitney power ballads that she’s not too great at.
Grade: A
This performance–mostly known for her on-the-floor bobbling around was one of Katharine’s best and to me–is the kind of song she should sing on her records. Again–this should not have been chosen for the finale–as Simon said “this night is bigger than that song”, but for the week of the Top 5, it was great.
***
“Someone To Watch Over Me” What’s with the Celine-Dion-belts-it-out-on-the-deck-of-the-Titanic necklace? I feel like I’m watching Divas Live (the original–not the new crap where somehow plastic-thin voiced Ashanti is invited). I agree with Rod’s assertion that Katharine’s genre of choice should be the standards–she’s got great instincts and knows how to put a story into a song. I don’t agree with Simon however, that she made the others look like amateurs. If anyone stood apart from the others tonight it was Paris or Taylor. But with that said, Kat was still great.
Grade: A-
As Rod Stewart said “Katharine was born to sing the standards”. This performance was just beautiful. It’s a testament to what can happen on American Idol without the crazy melisma and glory notes.
***
“Come Rain Or Come Shine”. Katharine looks so incredibly stunning tonight. Just as good as last week. I just wish there weren’t those little floppy flaps under the armpit of the dress. And that her last name was not tragically “McPhee”–as in the Nanny. This woman surely knows how to work the stage and the camera.
I can’t say enough about her performance skills–she SELLS the song like no other female singer in the competition. And vocally tonight, she was amazing, yet again. Her rendition of “Come Rain or Come Shine” was truly incredible. I still like last week’s “Until You Come Back To Me” better, but it was great nonetheless. Which brings me to the problem with Katharine. As Randy said, she’s been so good in the past few weeks, that this wasn’t her best performance. Katharine’s been so consistent, that it’s almost difficult for her to out-do herself. She is in essence, her own worst enemy. Let’s hope she keeps finding ways to re-invent her performances and she stays around for many, many weeks.
Grade: A
I can’t even count how many times I’ve played this performance back in my basement and strutted around with a water bottle pretending I’m singing it myself. There was such attitude–so much presence–I really felt like I was watching a star. And apparentl Simon did too. “Katharine, something happened tonight. Which is that I think tonight you turn into a star.”
***
“Until You Come Back To Me”. Katharine McPhee looks great tonight. She looks very Martina McBride meets old Hollywood. I love her. Yes, honey. Finally someone’s on pitch. Oh, she sounds great. Stevie’s right, this girl has a lot of potential. This rendition of “‘Til You Come Back To Me” is beautiful. The great thing about Katharine is she knows how to make a performance magical even with the quiet moments. YES! Wow. Simon just compared Katharine to Kelly Clarkson. What a huge compliment.
Grade: A
This still–to date–is my favorite performance of Katharine’s. It embodies the heart of her performance skills. It’s not a generic power belting ballad (see “I Have Nothing”)–it’s not some shrilly shout-fest (see “Who Wants To Live Forever”)–it’s just simple soul. And that’s what makes Katharine McPhee a great singer. Let’s not mention the odd maternity-looking nature of the dress.
Will Katharine be successful post Idol? Will Taylor be successful post Idol? Only time will tell. But both of these singers have undeniable talent and that usually counts for something right?
American Idol 3rd place finalist Elliott Yamin, whose duet with Mary J. Blige stole the show at wednedsay’s finale, has been rumored to have pulled out of the 2006 summer American Idols Live Tour. The top 12 appeared on Entertainment Tonight on Friday night, but Elliott was nowhere to be seen–nor was he mentioned.
Speculation is that it has something to do with his health, his mother’s health–or neither. Some speculate music distributing company Universal Urban has bought out the remainder of Elliott’s contract–relieving him of his obligation to go onto the 3 month summer tour.
