Alexandrea Lushington: In Memoriam

As I gloomily predicted yesterday, Alexandrea Lushington–the spunky 17-year-old who turned “Spinning Wheel” and Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” into songs that actually sounded somewhat current, despite the best efforts of the show’s worse-by-the-minute band–was eliminated from American Idol last night, thus continuing my track record of inadvertently voting off the people I’m voting for. (Well, at least Carly made it through. Uh, yeah.)To add insult to injury, yesterday I found out that she lost to David Archuleta on Star Search back in the day!

Anyway, while I do feel bad for Alex, I wonder if getting the early boot from Idol and its wedding-band ways, which emphasize Celine-style chest-pounding over “boring” things like nuance and interpreting lyrics, may not be a bad thing. As Chris Molanphy noted yesterday, she turned one of the whitest songs on Idol‘s license-ready list of ’70s tracks into something resembling a believable R & B track; perhaps her early exit will allow her to hook up with some struggling-to-make-it producer and craft a fine little album while Archuleta is forced to sing whatever overly melismatic songs Simon Fuller et al throw at him. In the immediate, I’m just bummed that Alex had to exit the same week that Kady Malloy, whose out-and-out blandness is only exceeded by the craptasticness of her Wilson sisters impersations, was given another chance; the only thing that she should really be starring in at this point is the second-tier touring run of Britney Spears: The Opera.

As far as the other eliminations go: I’m not surprised that Amanda isn’t going home, since Vote For The Worst’s servers are back up and seemingly stronger than ever; Alaina probably wasn’t helped by the way she blended in with last year’s Alaina, who was also given an early exit; Robbie Carrico can now go home and brush his wig; and Jason Yaeger revealed that America is not ready for Josh Groban to cut an album of ’70s soft-rock classics just yet.

One final note–America kept the dude who botched “Bohemian Rhapsody” around too? This makes me afraid of just how large (and vocal, ha ha) the a cappella lobby in the United States is.

[Photo: AmericanIdol.com]