Idolator

Last night's American Idol allowed the contestants to sing the songs of the '70s, which meant that there was a lot of Freedom Rock, a Donny Hathaway shoutout, and an emotional tribute to Karen Carpenter. (Or Juno, maybe.) After the jump, I rank last night's performers from David Hernandez on down, moon over David Cook's love of crossword puzzles, and let the world know why David Archuleta has to be stopped, or at least pulled aside for a stern talking-to.

1. David Hernandez. Sang "Papa Was A Rolling Stone," rebounded well from his bland performance last week; I'm always going to compare any version of this song to George Michael's cover, but he had as much bite as anyone who isn't Amanda Overmeyer could have.

2. Chikezie. Another bounce-back from last week, Chikezie talked about how everyone he's met has mispronounced his name since childhood, so he just gave up and gave in to the way they were mangling it. (Dude, I totally hear you.) Performed Donny Hathaway's "I Believe To My Soul"; noted that one of his backup singers was actually Hathaway's daughter, a sorta cringeworthy moment that was probably marked by her flipping him off once his back and the camera had turned away.

3. Danny Noriega. Surprise! Danny performed the Carpenters' "Superstar," although part of me wondered if he recognized it as "that song from Juno" when he was presented with this week's choices. Very expressive, a little wobbly on the long notes; Simon mentioned that he looked terrific on camera, which probably counts for a lot in this part of the competition.

4. Jason Castro. Last week's winsome sweetness hardened into some Hootie-level strumming, with Jason tackling the Bee Gees' "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" and turning it into some lite-rock-ready pabulum. The dreadlocked 20-year-old was the second performer of the night, and part of me wondered if the producers did that so he could flash something like a peace sign during the obligatory "mime your phone number" portion of the performance.

(There's a big gap here in overall contestant quality, just FYI.)

5. David Cook. OK OK I'm going to admit it; I'm probably upgrading him a bit because he said he was a crossword puzzle fiend. He busted out Free's "All Right Now" and accompanied himself on guitar; the end of the song, where all the singers just repeat "allrightnowallrightnowallrightnow..." ad nauseam, was a little rough after about 20 seconds, but his guitar playing wasn't bad.

6. Michael Johns. Scream-sang through "Go Your Own Way." Was he sick or did his nerves get so jangled that he completely lost the plot? Paula and Randy liked it, but I suspect that Michael and Carly could turn in Antonella Barba-level performances and they'd still think it was "hot."

7. Jason "Michael Bublé" Yeager. Unfortunately he gave up the crooner schtick for the Doobie Brothers' "Long Train Running," and did an awkward, stompy dance to go along with his boring-wedding-band performance. Paula pointed out that the song might not have been the best choice since there were "not many notes in it," which was the most on-point thing she said all night.

8. Robbie Carrico. How do you do Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" without going into a high range? Too bad Mutt Lange wasn't on hand to push Carrico into "the extra octave." The judges panned him for the complete awkwardness lurking behind his rock schtick, which is why I'm thinking he's going to return next week (it's gotta be '80s week, right?) with a Daughtrified version of "You Got It (The Right Stuff)."

9. Luke Menard. Technically, the worst of the night. Why would you talk about your awesome a cappella group experience right before you mangled "Killer Queen"? While the backup singers weren't doing him many favors—they didn't have the swoops and sweeps that added to the song's majesty—he also messed up the Champagne cited in the song's first lyric (!) and kinda flubbed a few other lines as well. Terrible, terrible, terrible all around.

No rank: David Archuleta. The David Archuleta train is probably unstoppable at this point. He got the last slot of the night; the audience was packed with screaming teenage girls ready to empty their lungs as soon as his name was announced; he's Simon's pick hit to win the whole thing. But surely I'm not the only one who thought his pageanty performance of "Imagine" was borderline-disgrace? It was the ultimate beauty-pageant performance, which probably isn't surprising given that his "surprise" video was of him singing you "And I Am Telling You" for the first-season Idol contestants. In a hotel lobby. When he was 11. I mean ... I know that the producers want some of that sweet, sweet Jonas Brothers money, but there's something to be said for actually interpreting songs when you're singing them, especially one like "Imagine," which isn't supposed to be about how melismatic you can get. The whole performance—from his "stage kid 4 life" introduction to the judges' predictably swooning responses—seemed like it was lifted straight out of a satire of the Idol universe, only my full-body cringe during its duration made it pretty obvious that no one was kidding. At all.

WHO'S GOING HOME: Luke and Jason.

PAULA ABDUL OUT-OF-IT SCALE: 3/10. Points off for crying during "Imagine," though. I mean, come on!

[Photo: AmericanIdol.com]