Source: USA TODAY
Has American Idol ever had a closer Top Three? Season Two had Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken. Season Seven had the Davids, Cook and Archuleta. But has the show ever had three contestants so apparently well-matched, so deserving of making the finale?
It does this year.
Candice Glover, Angie Miller and Kree Harrison had to sing three songs Wednesday — one picked by record executive Jimmy Iovine, one by the judges and one by the show’s producers. And each round went to a different singer, at least according to Iovine, who gave Miller the edge after she sang his pick, Elton John’s Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, then switched to Harrison after her emotional rendition of the Chris Sligh-penned Rascal Flatts hit Here Comes Goodbye. Finally, he called Glover the winner of the night for her bravura rendition of West Side Story‘s Somewhere.
It was the one thing Glover — who also performed Emeli Sande’s Next to Me and U2′s One — hadn’t done all season: Just sing the melody and nail the audience to the wall with it. It was like she’d finally internalized all of Harry Connick Jr.’s advice from the previous week. She didn’t mess with the song, she just sang it and sang it hard.
Keith Urban went a step further than Iovine in assessing the performance, telling voters, “If you want to vote for Candice, dial the number on your screen. If you don’t, call your doctor.”
But one would be hard-pressed to argue with those who favor country singer Kree Harrison. Though she didn’t quite connect with Pink’s Perfect or The Band Perry’s Better Dig Two, Here Comes Goodbye had many people in tears — even Iovine seemed a little choked up.
And, to hear Randy Jackson tell it, Miller “became a complete performer,” starting the night away from the piano for Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, followed by a version of Pink’s Try that showed her rocker side better than her misguided take on Shop Around a few weeks ago could have. Finally, she returned to the piano to perform Sande’s Maybe, giving her audience what they love most about her.
Somebody’s going home tomorrow night, and you can have all the arguments you want about who it should be. Bottom line, though: There’s not a bad choice for the top two.
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