American Idol again

Okay, so I was still hoping that there'd be a, "hey, after thinking about it and letting her sweat, we decided to invoke the judges' save and here's Alexis..." all the way up to when Matt first started singing. Probably I'm in denial, but I still want it to happen.

I'm gonna rank my favorite performances from tonight. Megan Joy (Corkrey) is still my fav in the competition, however -

1. Adam Lambert - Holy shit. Just, like, holy shit. Seriously. He's never been my fav - sometimes he strikes me as cocky and disingenuous. But I have never denied or been able to deny that he has voice and originality. After his take on Ring of Fire, I was flabbergasted. There aren't words for his Tracks of My Tears. Smokey Robinson gave him a standing O. When he ended on that last "I need..." oh my. This performance was incredibly controlled (mostly in falsetto!), but I don't think anybody could call it disingenuous.

2. Allison Iraheta - I have been begging for her to do something softer and more tender so that we can see that she's a great singer with dimension to her voice. She didn't exactly do what I've been asking for, but I feel like she gave me what I've been wanting with Papa Was a Rolling Stone. This kicked ass, it wasn't screamy and those final notes... Loved Kara's "It sounds like you've been singing for 400 years." But seriously, the judges need to stop reminding us she's only 16. It's getting incredibly annoying. As they always say (before they say she's 16), it doesn't matter how old she is - it sounds like she's been singing for 400 years.

3. Anoop Desai, Kris Allen and Matt Giraud - I couldn't really pick between the three of them. They were all supremely excellent with Ooh Baby Baby, How Sweet It Is and Let's Get It On respectively. Oh sooooo excellent, guys.

4. Megan Joy, Lil Rounds and Danny Gokey - I feel like all three of these performances had some really awesome moments but were generally a bit too frenzied or off in some way. For Once In My Life was a a good song for Megan, but she didn't really nail it. Heat Wave really should have worked for Lil, but she was screaming and pushing for some reason. And Get Ready really worked for Danny, but was a bit campy.

5. Michael Sarver and Scott MacIntyre - They're both just incredibly redundant to me at this point. I dig that they're both nice guys and reasonably talented. I think they can both have successful careers and I'll probably even download a song or two of theirs one day. But I very seriously doubt I'm ever going to want to listen to an entire c.d. straight through (let alone over and over) or attend a concert of theirs. I hope one of these two goes home and I think their performances of Ain't Too Proud to Beg and You Can't Hurry Love reinforce my prediction. I'd give them both up if we could have Alexis back - I can't help wondering what song she would've picked for Motown week. :'(